Tom's Blog

Big Bend in December

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 13:00:39 -0600

I described my trip to Big Bend last December in such glowing terms that it was easy to convince some fellow-photographer friends to make the trip this year. There were five in our group: Bruce, Terry and Mark from Austin, Tom from Aurora, CO, and me.

It was a four-day trip that yielded photos that were different in some repects than spring photos. The first thing is that the landscapes are generally brown…it is after all late fall. The second is the lighting. The more southerly azimuth of the sun precluded some shots but enhanced others. And the skies were very clear—not much pollution in the air and very few clouds.

One other aspect of the trip was different than most in the past: the Rio Grande was very high, and had been even higher. As a result, we were unable to cross into Santa Elena Canyon, and were not very successful shooting in Boquillos Canyon.

The Starlight—almost the best place to eat in Terlingua

This trip focused more on scenery pictures, although I could not resist some wildflower shots as well. One of the benefits of visiting at different times in the year is that you find the same species in different stages, like this example. The photo on the left was taken in the spring, showing the fruit (in this case a burr) of the White Rataney plant. The second, taken in December, shows the blossom of the same species.

Another benefit is that you can return to the same spot and try to improve a shot. A couple of years ago, photography-friend Rick and I hiked up to the top of Lost Mine Trail before sunrise and were disappointed in the vista (we’ve becoming very picky). It was smokey. Wildfires north of us in the Fort Davis area had made a mess of the skies. I took shots anyway, and this was the best of the lot:

This year with less smoke in the air, the results were "clearly” different:

Click here for more scenery shots and here for more wildflowers from the trip.

Canyons

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 13:00:37 -0600

In late October and early November Linda and I visited several canyons in Utah and Arizona, something we had talked about doing for several years. The trip finally happened and we saw Canyon de Chelly, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the Grand Canyon over a 2-1/2 week period. We were accompanied for part of the trip by cousin Bob and Wendy. As a geologist, he was able to explain much of what we were seeing, making the trip even more interesting.

It was great trip with spectacular sights that help one bring into perspective the scale of geologic time, and understand better how our environment came to be.

Click here to see some photos and descriptions of these stunning places.

Before sunrise at Hopi Point, South Rim, Grand Canyon National Park. Layers from 1.68 billion years ago up to 270 million years ago are visible.

Spring Wildflowers

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 09:36:08 -0500

The experts said that this would be a great year for wildflowers in Central Texas because of sufficient rains last fall and this winter. They were right. The drought is still with us, unfortunately, but over the past two weeks I’ve found an abundance of flowering plants, many of which are new additions to my website. You can see all the recent additions at the site, but I wanted to highlight a few here.

All of these were shot with a Nikon 70-180mm macro zoom lens and a macro flash attachment. They are single shots.

Blue-curls (Phacelia congesta), member of the Forget-Me-Not family. I found a couple of these plants next to the river at Pedernales Falls State Park near Johnson City. You can almost see the “curl” on this one, and imagine why another name for the plant is “caterpillars."

Red Buck-Eye (Aesculus pavia var. pavia), member of the Soapberry family. This photo was taken at McKinney Falls State Park, southeast of Austin. I found only one of these bushes hidden away in the cedar forest. It was about 10 ft tall and loaded with large clusters of these pink blossoms.

Texas Clematis or Scarlet Leatherflower (Clematis texensis), member of the Buttercup family. While shooting the red buckeye above, I noticed these bright red blossoms just behind me, and the more I looked, the more I found. The clematis vines are several feet long and sparse except for a few leaves and the occasional blossom.

Silver Puff (Chaptalia texana), member of the Aster family. The inconspicuous little white flowers are often seen as nodding buds, not usually opened up like this one. I found a couple opened along a greenbelt in northwest Austin. They open during the day, but this one’s nearby buddies were sleeping in.

False Dayflower (Tinantia anomala), member of the Spiderwort family. This odd looking blossom with the big blue ears was found at St. Edward’s Park in northwest Austin. I also found specimens a few miles away at Mayfield Park. The anthers resemble eyes and a bulbous nose, sort like a cartoon character. One white variant of the plant, which seems to be quite rare was found, too.

Mexican Buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa), member of the Soapberry family. Several plants with these beautiful pink blossoms were found at McKinney Falls State Park and at Mayfield Park. The bushes are small to fairly large, and very conspicuous.

Union Station-Denver

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 22:22:29 -0600

Last fall we saw an article in the Austin newspaper about Denver’s renovated Union Station. As a boy I remember Union Station well because we traveled on occasion from our home in Sterling, Colorado, to Denver on the Union Pacific’s City of Denver streamliner. So on a trip to Denver in January we decided it would be fun to visit the newly restored station.

The current station was built in 1914 as an expansion to the existing Denver Union Depot. The heyday of passenger rail traffic of the 1920’s-1950’s gave way to air travel and the station, while still used by Amtrak and other limited passenger service, became what one might have called an underperforming asset.

Redevelopment of the site began in 2010 and included major construction to accommodate Denver’s RTD buses and light rail system, as well as Amtrak. The building was renovated keeping much of it’s old character, but adding restaurants, shops, bars and a hotel, The Crawford.

Union Station is in LoDo, lower downtown Denver, near a lot of the city's nightlife. After a late evening at a cabaret, we walked back to the station and were surprised by the large number of people in the Grand Hall. The crowds were gone when the photo below was taken the next morning.

We stayed at the Crawford Hotel and were lucky enough to find that on that particular Friday night they were offering discounted rooms.

Click here to see more photos from our short visit.

For more information about Union Station history and its redevelopment, go to the Denver Union Station Master Plan website.

All photos except the nighttime shot above were taken with a Sony RX-100III. The nighttime shot was taken with an iPhone 4S.

December Wildflowers

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:00:37 -0600

On a trip to Big Bend in mid-December, 2014, I found a surprising number of plants in bloom, and many species that I had not photographed before. The names of most of them stumped me so I relied on Roy Morey’s book “Little Big Bend” and Geyata Ajilvsgi’s “Wildflowers of Texas," along with various websites, including SEINet, USDA Plants, and wildflower.org. And, before giving up, I resorted to the plant identification forum at davesgarden.com, and almost always got a good lead if not the actual ID.

The recent rains brought out a lot of blooms...not the proliferation that you see in April, but far more than I had expected. Below are several of the new species I found.

These shots were all taken with a Nikon D300S and a Nikkor-Micro 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6 lens. Most were shot between f/14 and f/18.

On the left is Hopi Tea Greenthread or Green Threads (Thelesperma megapotamicum). I found several of these plants on the trail to Ernst Tinaja, which is about 5 miles north of Park Rd 118 near the turnoff for Hot Springs.

Slender, weak stems 2-3 ft. long support small solitary flower heads. Normally yellow, they turn darker with age like this one. Hopi tribes used the plants or tea and dye.

Nearby along the trail I found a species of Clematis on the right. I think it’s either C. pitcheri (Purple Clematis) or C. drummondii (Old-man’s-beard). This plant had gone to seed, producing the striking display of silky tails you see here. A definite ID will have to wait until spring when it's in bloom.

These next two were found adjacent to one another, also at Ernst Tinaja. The one at the right is Havard Fiddleleaf (Nama Havardii) and the below is Mat Nama (Nama torynophylla). Although small, the Fiddleaf is easily spotted because of its bright pink flowers. Mat nama is not so obvious because the plant is much smaller and the blossoms are tiny, less than 1/4 inch long.

Near Sierra de Chino in the southwest part of the park I found a lot of different flowers, one being the Trans-Pecos Senna (Senna pilosior) to the right.

If you look closely you might even see some dew…in Big Bend!

Nearby in a sandy dry wash I found Mesa Greggia (Nerisyrenia camporum), on the left. It is also called Bicolor Mustard. The plants have white and lavender or pink blooms and have grayish-green, curly, hairy leaves.

Yup, that is dew. It was a very humid morning with dense fog early. The camera lens fogged up, too.

The last one I wanted to show has the unusual name Edwards'-hole-in-the-sand plant (Nicolletia edwardsii). I have no idea where the common name came from. There are a large number growing in the gravel adjacent to road above Glenn Springs.

The plant is very short and resembles a small, tangled-up wad of wire, green when blooming, otherwise black. The pale pink/white blooms are very striking in contrast to the stark environment.

You can see more wildflower images from Big Bend here.

Big Bend Scenes-December 2014

Mon, 29 Dec 2014 10:00:29 -0600

This trip to Big Bend National Park in mid-December yielded a lot of nice photo opportunities. The lighting conditions were different and more variable than during springtime trips because of the lower angle of the sun and its southerly azimuth. The Milky Way isn’t visible in December, so dramatic nighttime shots were limited, but I tried a few anyway.

This was the first time my new Toyota 4Runner Trail made the trip to Big Bend. It easily handled the River Road, Black Gap Road and other back-country roads in the park. But, it got a little scratched up, too.

The first morning I drove to Desert Mountain Overlook for a sunrise shot. It had been very foggy all along Ross Maxwell Drive until dropping down toward Castolon. The fog lifted just before dawn and I was able to get the image below. Cerro Castellan is in the center right, with the Chisos Mountains about 14 miles away in the distant background.

One objective of the trip was to see if there were any photo opportunities at Sierra de Chino, a prominent volcanic dike in the far southwest portion of the park. The next morning I went to find out. According to the iPhone app (The Photographer’s Ephemeris), the dike was supposed to light up at sunrise, and it did.

Volcanic rocks are strewn about everywhere atop white tuff and gravel. The clumps of yellow flowers are Desert Marigold.

This spot is on the River Road, about an hour from the west end near Castellon. The road is not too bad, but it does require a vehicle with high clearance.

After a day of driving the backroads I headed to Hot Springs to take a sunset shot of the Sierra del Carmen, as recommended by fellow AARPer Jim. It turned out pretty nice, but I don’t know if I was at the spot he described.

On a side note, the parking lot at Hot Springs was full, and so was the spring. It looked like the Park Service had made some rudimentary improvements to keep the Rio Grande from overflowing into the small pool. It must have worked because I didn’t see anyone with knee-high mud on their legs.

The next two days were spent biking in Big Bend Ranch State Park (see previous post for details). Without mountains like the Chisos, the scenery inside the park is different and less spectacular than the national park's, yet it has a certain appeal. The shot on the right was taken on the west side of The Solitario, a huge collapsed caldera behind the ridge.

If you’d like to see more scenery shot from this trip to Big Bend, click here.

My next post shows some of the wildflowers I found.

Biking Big Bend Ranch State Park-2014

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 09:00:36 -0600

On December 13 and 14, I toured BBRSP on a mountain bike following the Epic Ride trail. The trail route is 59 miles long and goes from the Warnock ranger station on Hwy 170 near Lajitas north about 30 miles to the ranger station at Saucedo in the middle of the park. The trail consists of single-track, jeep roads, stream beds and some graded roads.

Click here to see photos taken along the way.

While covering only a small portion of the park’s interior, the trail affords a sampling of the open spaces, grand vistas, and desolation (and isolation) that characterize the park. The park is huge, the largest state park in Texas at 310,000 acres, and is very remote, attracting few visitors.

View of The Solitario and Flatirons from Madrid trail

The ride took me a long time, about 7-1/4 hours outgoing and 6-3/4 on the return. Wheels-rolling times were about 4-3/4 and 4 hours, respectively. The elevation gain was about 2000 ft from Warnock Center to the highest point of 4400+ ft at Pila Montoya 24 miles away. The trail yields 3900 ft of climbing overall. The outbound portion is somewhat technical, but mostly gradual grades on single track and old jeep roads. The return was much more intense with a lot of everything: steep, technical sections, lots of soft sand in stream beds, jeep roads and fast single track.

It is possible to do it much faster. In fact a few do the whole thing in a day. But age and common sense caused me to take it easy, hiking the bike when prudent and avoiding serious injury. My objective of staying upright was met, but the ocotillo and other thorny things along the trail gave the legs quite a workover.

I did the ride solo, which few people do. There was no one but me on these trails for two days. I was well-prepared for the ride and took my time. The park ranger at Warnock center (the start) took all my important information and emailed it to the ranger station at the other end (Saucedo), and they were expecting me. The same was done on the return.

Very little wildlife was to be seen, just one deer and no signs of bear or lion (thankfully), although both are in the park.

December weather was perfect for riding: mid 60’s, sunny, light breezes.

There were some areas of abundant water, especially around Madrid house, with recent rains replenishing springs. However, none of the windmill stock tanks except one had any water, so taking enough water to be independent is a good idea. Each day I started out with 5 liters and used 3-1/2. Had the weather been warmer, all of the water would have been used, so I probably would have needed to take another liter.

Click here to see a list of equipment, provisions, etc.

Overnight accommodations are available at Saucedo. There is a bunkhouse with clean bedding, showers, towels, and cooking facilities, all for $35.00 plus park fee. The bunkhouse has two single beds each in several cubicles with separate quarters for men and women. For larger groups, the main ranch house (the Big House) can be rented.

Click here to see more of my photos along the ride, and to learn more about the park, see the TPWD website.

Sunset from Saucedo

Big Bend-April 2014

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 21:30:06 -0500

As usual, trips to Big Bend are a surprise. You never know for sure about weather and conditions (or the food at the Chisos Mountain Lodge…). The number of blooming wildflowers was the most I have seen in the times I have been there. On the down side, it was very windy most of the time.

Rick, Bruce and Rigo and I made the trip on April 22. Rigo’s brothers Mark and Jaime joined us as well.

Texas Claret-cup cactus along road in Green Gulch.

Saturday, Rick and I rented a Jeep and explored the River Road along the south edge of the park. The road was not too bad (but don’t take the family van!) and the sights were different. It took us about 7 hours, including stops here and there.

We saw some possible places for sunrise shots for next year, including the one on the right. It is a view of the Punta de la Sierra range about 2 hours from the west end of the River Road. Pride of Texas cactus is in the foreground.

There are a number of ruins along the road, include a large one at the Mariscal Mine, about 3 hours from the east end of the road. It was a quicksilver (mercury) mine that operated off and on from early in the 20th century until 1942.

We planned on staying at a campsite, called Talley 2, about 30 miles from the east end of the road and hike to the top of Mariscal Ridge for some shots. We arrived about 2:00 pm and found the site to be very inhospitable. The high winds and 100+ degree temperature convinced us to drive back to Terlingua.

Go to the Big Bend website to see more photographs from the the trip.

Texas Capitol

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 06:00:00 -0500

This weekend Linda and I visited the Texas state capitol building in Austin and took our first guided tour. It was very informative, and the building itself is certainly impressive. We stayed downtown so early Saturday I decided to try to take some pictures of the building from Congress Avenue. I wanted to do it early enough to be able to stand in the middle of the street safely. There was almost no traffic save a few buses.

Getting a clear shot was hard to do because there are lot of distracting street lights, stop lights, signs, etc. But, here are a couple. The first was from Congress and 10th, the next two from the Capitol grounds, all on a breezy Saturday morning between 5:30 and 6:00 am.

Click on the photo for a larger image.

40mm, ISO 200, f/14, 5.0 sec.

20mm, ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/3 sec.

18mm, ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/3 sec.

Spring is here

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 10:00:05 -0500

After a cold, windy and dry winter, spring has finally arrived in Central Texas and the opportunity to capture some new wildflower species with it. Last week on three separate photo shoots I was able to get several new-to-me species in the area around Brenham, Texas, Pace Bend Park on Lake Travis, and here in Austin.

You can see all of the shots here, but some samples of the more photogenic new species are below. They were taken with a Nikon D300S and Nikkor-Micro 70-180mm lens. Click on the image to enlarge.

Flaxleaf Pimpernel (Anagallis monelli), Pace Bend Park [180mm, ISO 400, f/18, 1/25 sec]

Berlandieri’s Anemone (Anemone berlandieri, Pace Bend Park [180mm, ISO 400, f/29, 1/15 sec]

Fringed Puccoon (Lithospermum incisum), Austin [180mm, ISO 400, f/22, 1/25 sec]

Celestials (Nemastylis geminiflora), Pace Bend Park [180mm, ISO 800, f/18, 1/30 sec]

Creeping Woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata), Washington-on-the-Brazos [180mm, ISO 400, f/18, 1/125 sec]

Windmill Catchfly (Silene Gallica), Washington-on-the-Brazos [180mm, ISO 400, f/29, 1/40 sec]

Narrow-leaf Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), Winedale [180mm, ISO 400, f/20, 1/200 sec]

On a side note, I finished re-developing the photos on the Scenic Places website. Makes me want to go back to these places and get some new shots.

Details, details...

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 16:17:05 -0600

The past few months I have been spending time re-organizing the Colorado and Texas wildflower websites. I wanted to make them better in terms of accuracy, photo quality and usability.

The work involved several items:

Double and triple-checking the names of the species. A lot of errors cropped up, found mostly by some very nice viewers who politely let me know that I made some stupid mistakes.
Adding plant descriptions when available, extracted from a variety of sources.
Resizing all of the photos to a standard size to optimize viewing. I chose 1440w x 960h (pixels) for landscape and 960 w x 1440h for portrait orientations.
Culling some and re-developing the remaining photos, including running through NIK Color Efex Pro and sometimes NIK Define 2 for noise reduction.
Adding watermarks. Maybe they’ll do some good. It would be flattering, I suppose, if someone stole some pix and made postcards out of them. Hasn’t happened that I know of.
Adding information about how the photos were taken on the Colorado wildflowers site; I plan to add this info to the Texas site, too.
And finally, adding a search function to both sites. I am using Google’s Custom Search Engine. Give it a try.

As a result of the point 1 and 4 above, I have a big list of flowers to re-shoot this spring in Texas and Colorado in the summer.

The next job is to do much the same with the scenery websites, but I’ll leave that effort for the next spell of bad weather.

Austin at Night-Part 2

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 07:15:48 -0600

This week, Rick and I made another trip to downtown Austin this time in search of a viewpoint to capture the Congress Avenue and First Street bridges over Lady Bird Lake. But, we didn’t get the bridges because we could not access any view points.

So, we walked over to Auditorium Shores and captured a nice cityscape at sundown.

These were taken with a Nikon D300S and 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.
• The top one at ISO 200, f/9, 0.6 seconds.
• The bottom one at ISO 400, f/8, 5.0 seconds.
• Both were “unskewed” to reduce (but not eliminate) the tilted building effect on the left.
• Both were run through NIK Color Efex Pro 4.0 for contrast.

Big Bend, May 2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:25:27 -0500

Big Bend usually provides wonderful opportunities for scenic photographs and a trip with fellow photographers Bruce Leander, Rigo Vallejo, and Rick Capozza on May 9-13 was no exception. A mix of cloudy and clear skies yielded a variety of shots.

We tried nighttime shots of the Milky Way, and learned more about the technique for getting these pictures.

There are some new additions to the Big Bend wildflower collection as well.

Milky Way over the Chisos Mountains

Evening Sky over the Chisos Basin Window

Sunset on the Christmas Mountains

Sunset on the Chisos Mountains

Dawn at Dugout Wells

Rio Grande at sunset from a cliff at the top of Big Hill, FM 170 west of Lajitas

Austin at Night-Part 1

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:08:14 -0500

Rick Capozza and I decided to try some night shots downtown last week. Here are a few that try to do justice to the nighttime view. These were shot on a cloudy night, after 9:00 pm, with a Nikon D300S camera and a 18-200 mm Nikon zoom lens, focal length set to about 24 mm.

There was plenty of light, so to avoid noise in the darker portions of the photo, ISO 200 was used (at Rick's suggestion).

The first photo was taken from Auditorium Shores, across Lady Bird Lake from downtown. The aperture was set to f/5.0 and shutter speed was 2 sec.

This is a shot from nearby but with statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn in the foreground. For those unfamiliar with the blues guitar, he was one of the best, they say. Settings: ISO 200, focal length 24 mm, f/11 and 15 sec.

Oh, for a PC lens...

Here is one of his most famous songs, "Little Wing":

This browser cannot play the embedded audio file.

The last shot of the evening was taken at the Texas Capitol. Settings: ISO 200, focal length 40 mm, f/8 and 1 sec.

A Day in Fredericksburg

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:00:38 -0500

Linda and I celebrated our anniversary at Fredericksburg this year. We stayed at Baron's Creekside Inn in one of their "Swiss Cabins" - very nice place, quiet, comfortable and clean. Our cabin "Wasserfall" was next to the wasserfall on the property.

We had lunch at Peachtree Inn, dinner at Navajo Grill and breakfast at the German Bakery, each highly recommended.

On the trip back to Austin, we went through the Llano area and took a number of wildflower photos, a few are shown here.

"Wasserfall" Cabin

#42

The grounds at Baron's Creekside Inn

Linda found these Horse Crippler Cactus behind our cabin

A few early morning bluebonnets near the cabin

Roadside pasture southwest of Llano. The yellow flowers are Cloth-of-Gold.

Lesquerella gracilis (Cloth-of-Gold)

Springtime Photos

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:00:23 -0500

Anyone driving around Brenham in April has been impressed by the huge displays of wildflowers along the roadsides. So, with fewer wildflowers in the Hill Country, Rick Capozza and I decided to head east and capture the bounty of a wetter climate. We were a bit disappointed because the drought had also affected the wildflowers in the area, and there was a lot of wind. But we managed a few shots.

One of our "finds" was Washington-on-the Brazos State Park, northeast of Brenham, Texas. The park is dedicated to the founding of the Texas Republic in 1836, and was the site of the original capital of Texas. Fortunately, the wind wasn't so bad in the morning. But by noon, it was useless to do much so we headed to Chappell Hill for lunch and, as a reward for our efforts, to Brenham for some Blue Bell ice cream at the factory.

Several days later, an early morning trip to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center provided some unusually fine conditions for shooting macros. Thanks go to the good offices of fellow AAR photographer Bruce Leander for the opportunity.

Here are a few of the photos. Click here for more.

Roadside north of Brenham

Argemone albiflora (White pricklypoppy) at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park

Gaura coccinea (Scarlet Gaura) at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park

Iris fulva (Copper Iris) at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Erigeron modestus (Prairie Fleabane) at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

My First Night-time Photos

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:00:18 -0500

Moonlit panorama taken of Ten Mile Range, Summit County, CO. ISO 800, 15 seconds, 35 mm, f/4.2

With the recent interest in night-time photography I decided to delve into it a bit. I took a lot of shots in the Colorado mountains this winter, where the air is pretty clear and there is not too much light pollution. I found out some things that are might be helpful to others and will share them in this post.

These websites, pointed out to me by Rick Capozza, were helpful in getting started:

Ben Canales tutorial: http://vimeo.com/16833554
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/night-photography.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/10-extraordinary-photographs-of-the-starry-night-sky.html

Based on this info and the experience gained over several nights' work, here's what I found:

Equipment:
1. Use a low noise camera. This will be very important especially if there is no moon. Any of the newest DSLRs should be OK. The Nikon D200 is not OK.
2. A super-high ISO camera is helpful but not required. A more sensitive camera will allow you to reduce the shutter speed and avoid star tracks.
3. Use a wide angle lens or a zoom, something around 18mm. I used a 18-200mm Nikon f/3.5-5.6. A faster lens would be better to allow lower ISO when using something like a D200.
4. A tripod is required, and a camera level is helpful. A headlamp is better than a flashlight.
5. If it's cold be sure to have gloves, hat, and warm clothing.

Moonlit panorama taken of Ten Mile Range, Summit County, CO. ISO 640, 20 seconds, 18 mm, f/3.5

Sample shots:
Since you cannot see anything through the viewfinder, and very little on the LCD, take a sample shot to get the composition you want. Set the camera for manual exposure, ISO as high as it will go, use a 10 sec shutter speed (or longer if it's really dark), manual focus set to infinity (or close to it). Open the aperture all the way (lowest f-stop) and set the zoom to its minimum focal length to start. For the sample shot you don't need a cable release or mirror lock up, but if you have them already set up, all the better. Also, be sure vibration reduction is turned off.

Take as many shots as you like adjusting the zoom, ballhead, tripod, etc. and decide which set-up you want to use for the real shot.

Real Shot:
Now you need to set the ISO to a lower value, based on your experience for the maximum you can use without getting noise. Better yet, try several different settings.

The next thing to determine is the shutter speed minimum. The "Rule of 600" is useful to determine what the maximum shutter speed can be to avoid star tracks. For full frame cameras, divide 600 by the focal length. At 18 mm you get 33 seconds, so set the camera to 30 sec. If you are using a cropped sensor camera, divide again by the crop factor. For a Nikon DX with 1.5 crop factor, you'll get 22 seconds, so use 20.

Use a cable release and mirror lock-up to avoid vibrations.

Problems:
I ran into a few problems, and the main one was noise. My D200 is not a low noise camera. At ISO more than 640 or 800, the noise becomes objectionable. Another problem was the amount of light pollution. What was hardly noticeable with the naked eye became very obvious in some photos. The last problem I ran into was airplanes: some photos were plagued by airliners' lights streaking across the sky. See the shots below.

Depending on your objective, have some moonlight from behind is helpful to light the foreground. Too much, and the stars are not visible.

Noise is obvious on this moonless night shot, as are star tracks caused by a violation of the Rule of 600. Gore Range, Summit County, CO. ISO 800, 30 seconds, 35 mm, f/4.2

This shot shows both light pollution from Denver, some 80 miles away, and lots of airplanes. Gray's and Torrey's peaks in the center, shot from Frisco, CO. ISO 1000, 15 sec, 35 mm, f/4.

Future Plans:
I'll try more shots in low-light pollution areas. There might be some good places in the Hill Country. Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle and Big Bend National Park should be good with both offer some interesting foregrounds. Further away, Utah's national parks would be great places, too.

For equipment, I'm looking at a D600 for a lower-noise/higher ISO camera.

Mountain Winter

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:06:53 -0600

It's finally winter, even in Texas. It's been cold in Austin for the past week or more and snow and sleet are falling in West Texas. We might even get some here in the next day or two. The moisture wil be welcome, so we are hoping for something, but no ice storms please.

I thought it would be a good time to show some winter shots. These are mostly from the Colorado mountains but a few from Wyoming as well.

Click here to go to the page.

Cars-Part 2

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 08:40:07 -0600

Note: to view the pictures of the cars in a larger format, click on each or go directly to the blog website.

Several years ago on a day trip to Fredericksburg, Texas, I noticed a '50s era car under a canopy at the Chrysler dealer, Crenwelge Motors. I stopped and started looking around and found a trove of junked-out cars nearby in the back lot of the dealership. It looked like they just drove (or hauled) them back there and parked them, probably for parts.

They were mostly Chrysler products from the 1930s through the early 1960s. Weeds and vines had grown up all over, submerging them in a green jungle.

Even when new, most of these cars were not all that good looking, especially compared to some of competitor's products of the time. Now, with broken windows, rust and missing parts, the images are a bit sad with one exception. The 1956 Imperial was one of the best looking cars of the age, and there was one there, sitting in regal decadence beneath a tree.

If you are interested in Imperials there are many pictured at the Imperial Club website.

Click on the thumbnails below to see larger pictures or a slide show. I also posted the same ones in color here.

As I mentioned in Part I, there has been a family connection to Chrysler products. My dad's father owned a 1923 Dodge, 1930 Chrysler, a 1936 Plymouth, and a 1937 Dodge, among several others. He also owned to other makes including a 1926 Studebaker and a 1948 Fraser. Identification of the oldest car I found on the lot in Fredericksburg was not difficult: it was almost like Grandpa's '36 Plymouth, right.

On the other side, my mom's family owned just a few cars, all GM products, from the the 1926 Chevrolet left to a 1953 Chevrolet Bel-Aire two-door hardtop.

The car lot in Fredericksburg was still there in 2012, but gone later.

Click here for color versions of the cars.

Plymouth 1937 4315

Plymouth 1937 4317

Plymouth 1946 4331

Chrysler 1948 4323

Chrysler 1949 4325

Plymouth 1950 4321

Plymouth 1950 4324

DeSoto 1952 4330

DeSoto 1953 4338

DeSoto 1956 4344

Imperial 1956 4329

Imperial 1956 4332

Chrysler 1957 4335

DeSoto 1958 4346

DeSoto 1959 4326

Imperial 1962 4342

Cars-Part 1

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 08:39:06 -0600

I want to show some pictures of cars from a junk yard Fredericksburg, Texas, but some perspective is needed since the idea of junk car photos may seem a bit strange. If you can't wait to see them, though, skip to Part 2.

Like many of my generation, I was fascinated by cars. Don't know why, exactly, but during the late 50s and thoughout the 60s I always looked forward to the new models coming out, usually in September or October, and it always seemed that there was something new.

Maybe my fascination was a reflection of my father's attitude about cars. He owned a lot of them, trading every couple of years, or more often sometimes.

One of my family's first cars was a 1941 Dodge, shown here with my older brother Lyle in 1947. Dad kept it for a long time because of family economics and the war. Then he bought a '48 DeSoto, the first car I can remember, followed by a '51 Mercury. This Ford product was followed by a red '53 Dodge Coronet sedan. The photo on the right shows the car with Mom, my little brother Steve and my aunt in California. After that we had a green '55 Ford station wagon, very practical for a family of six. It even had green tires. Apparently this second diversion to Ford products was unsuccessful because the next car was a '56 Dodge sedan. Nice, conservative.

In 1957, Dad bought real sharp '57 Pontiac Chieftain two-door hardtop. It was pink like the picture, but with charcoal accents instead of white. I even had a pair of pants with the same color scheme. The car had a 4-barrel carb on a 347 cu-in V-8. It was a hot rod, when it ran. Unfortunately, it was very temperamental and was kicked out of the family the day it stalled in downtown Denver not too far from a Dodge dealer. The result was the purchase of '57 Dodge Sierra station wagon, two-tone green, on the right. This one that lasted three years.

I recall vividly a trip to the Oldsmobile dealer with Dad in 1960. We went to look at an Olds 88 sedan, very sharp, and took it home. Mom was unimpressed. It was too expensive, the roof was too short, people would talk, or something. So, no Olds. Instead, he bought a 1960 Chrysler Windsor sedan, red with a white top, like the one on the right. Beautiful car. I asked why he didn't buy the top of the line New Yorker which, to me, was the best looking of the brand. I was told that it would not be good for business.

The Chrysler lasted until 1962, when I got my first car, a 1962 Dodge Lancer 4-door sedan. It was a "compact", the new genre that was all the rage. Dad liked it so much he decided to sell the Chrysler, and buy a Lancer GT 2-door hardtop for me keeping the 4-door for himself and Mom.

I was on top of the world, having a car at 16, and a real looker at that, white with bucket seats and a red vinyl (looked like leather) interior. No hot rod, though. The slant six 225 put out 145 hp. But I thought it was great. I went off to college, and the Lancer and its red interior became somewhat famous with girls (none that I knew) as it was often borrowed by my fraternity brothers.

After that Dad owned many more cars, almost all Chrysler products. He did have a Buick in the early '70s, though.

The Chrysler thing rubbed off on me, and I have owned many of their products. I kept the Lancer through high school and college and upon graduation bought a green 1968 Dodge Charger. Beautiful car. I kept this car until I had a company car. Then I met Linda, and she had a Chrysler product, a 1964 Plymouth sedan. We were meant for each other.

In between I had a 1962 MGB for a year or two, similar to the photo below. This was a sorry vehicle mechanically. But it was a hoot to drive. Like a go-cart that would go 70.

Chrysler products of the 70s suffered from major quality problems, even more than than Ford or GM, and I didn't own another until 1989.

So with this background, the reason for the photos in the next post might be clearer.