Rock

Just when you think it's safe to go back to the car....

This had been one of the best shoots for a long time, with hours of great light, and crazy conditions, the sun had dropped down below the horizon and I was just skirting along the coast looking for potential compositions for (possibly) dramatic black and white images, I never ever leave the scene until about 30 mins after the sun has dropped, today was no different but nothing much was happening in the sky until this epic scene just kicked off for about 5 minutes with breaks in the clouds, some absolutely beserk and very unusual colours came and went quickly, thankfull I'd already found this little spot and was pretty much set up to shoot so I just stayed until it was over and fined tuned the spot I was in a few times to get it exactly how I wanted it.

An absolutely fantastic end to a completely epic day.

Hopefully I'll be uploading quite a few more shots than usual due to being housebound most of the time, stay safe out there folks.

Lots more images from this shoot, and others, on my website here - updating regularly

• Tennessee Williams

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This was taken after a very peaceful and memorable afternoon we spend at Bonsai Rock. As I was planning my trip to Lake Tahoe, I did a bit of reading and a lot of the photographers advices on spending time at the Bonsai Rock location and I decided to take their advice into consideration. When I looked up the location on google maps, it looked innocent enough and pretty close to the road. But when we reached the location we realized that even though the rock is pretty close to the road there is almost a sheer drop of about a 60-70 ft from the road to the lake shore. Add to the fact that the shoulder is made up of crumbling sand and rocks with no marked trails.

I was more worried about getting back from the shore to the rock in the dark so we decided to maybe avoid this location for this trip and comeback here maybe another time when we are better prepared. But at the hotel I stayed up late and researched the interwebs to figure out a better path to the shore and I finally found one and the next day we made it there around 5pm and spend some wonderful time enjoying this secluded location all to ourselves.

SCOTLAND 2014 - Skye

Had a few days on the Isle of Skye with a group of photography friends. This was sunset at Elgol and instead of shooting towards the other side of the bay and the Cuillins I decided to go for the burst of colour from the setting sun. This isfirst time in 3 visits I've actually witnessed the sun at Elgol!

• Jean Anouilh.

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Today's post is one f those images that slipped through from our last trip to Lake Tahoe. I made this one at the Bonsai rock location just as the sky cleared for a brief moment when the lake reflected back the blue skies with a crystal clear reflection.

Thanks for visiting, Have a nice day..

• George Eliot.

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Another shot of the stunningly beautiful cathedral rocks of Sedona, AZ. This was taken at the same park from where I took the previously posted shot but this is the more classical location. A local photographer who was there told me that we missed out on fall colors by a week and that the trees framing the rocks still had some color till about 3 days ago.

News like this used to depress me not so long time ago and I usually go on a tirade blaming everyone in the universe for my bad luck, but thankfully these days I just resolve to visit the place again and I am sure my wife is thankful for that change. She used to have to endure my rants. Anyways this is one of my favorite shots from the trip. Hope you all enjoy it.

This rock at the beach Source D'Argent just rocks :-) Here photographed before sunset. I used a lee 0.6 soft + hard GND to cope with dyn range but also used bracketing to be more flexibel. The processing was some blending and then contrast and color optimization as I show in my Start2Finish Post Processing Tutorial

cheers

• Kin Hubbard.

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While living in LA, we were spoiled by the abundance of stunning locations nearby. There were tons of national and state parks a short drive away and some location that could easily be national parks as well. So, when someone mentioned about a little town called Sedona near the Grand Canyon national park, it didn’t immediately climb to the top of the list. But it piqued our interest enough to be added into our next trip to the Grand Canyon’s south rim. I only did cursory research about the place, and most of it resulted in the image of cathedral rocks and the sliding rock state park which provides some stunning vistas of these beautiful rock formations. We only had an afternoon allocated for the park and had to leave immediately after sunset to get to our hotel near Grand Canyon NP.

As soon we got near Sedona, we knew that we made a mistake, the place was just beautiful with stunning rock formations everywhere we looked. Fall had passed, but there were still some remnants of fall colors lingered on some of the more stubborn trees. We explored the small park on foot till the sunset. And as soon as the light started to warm up, we headed to our sunset spot. I picked this spot for the sunset shot due to the rather sill pool of water on the slick rock, but during sunset, the whole stream was rather calm providing a spectacular reflection of the rock formation with some nice trees on both sides completing the composition.

• Edna St. Vincent Millay.

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Beautiful Smith Rock State Park located at Bend, Oregon. This picture is a panorama stitch combining about 4 shots in portrait mode stitched together as a landscape shot. This is such a stunning location personally I don’t feel like I have done justice to the beauty of this place. I would love to visit here again when the sunlight hits the rocks directly, hopefully sometime other than summer.

Thanks for visiting have a nice day..

• Hugh Leonard.

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The stunning smith rock state park, the day we visited the park we had a stunning sunrise with beautiful light and wonderful clouds. The only problem was that it was directly opposite this scene. But after the brilliant display of light behind us was over the whole park was basked in a pink glow for about 5 minutes. Summer is usually not a great time to take sunrise shots here as the rocks remain in the shadows.

I hope to return here again and hopefully the clouds will be in front of the rocks :)

The view from Elgol across Loch Scavaig towards the Black Cuillins, although the sky is pretty featureless I kept this shot in colour due to the little bit of colour from the sunset creeping in on the left handside.

The view from Elgol across Loch Scavaig towards the Black Cuillins, converted this shot to b&w as the sky was kind of featureless

• Isak Dinesen.

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Another shot from our trip to Morro Bay. I took it about an hour before sunset and used a telephoto lens for a tight crop. Previously my go to lens for vast landscapes was always a wide or standard lens but lately I have been forcing myself to use telephotos to see more details which are present in vast landscapes. The moment I saw that small haystack next to the giant Morro rock, I knew I wanted to get an intimate shot of that rock formation. Once I used the telephoto focal length I also noticed the tons of birds on them. I also wanted to include the gentle waves to give the scene some depth.

台灣 Taiwan 新北市 New Taipei City 台灣東北角海岸 Taiwan's northeast coast 莫蘭蒂 MERANTI 颱風即將來襲，願大家都平安!

• Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

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Enough with the woodland photographs, today lets talk about my bread and butter landscape location—the High deserts of the west coast. And today's shot comes from the Smith Rock State Park in Oregon. This is one location that we have visited on every trip to the beautiful beaver state. The rock formation is just absolutely stunning, and along with that, Smith Rock is a prime spot for spectacular sunset or sunrise shots.

The first time we visited the park was in 2013, and I had just updated my gear from a crop sensor D7000 to full-frame D800 along with a brand new 24-70 f2.8, and I was hoping for the image quality to take a jump. The expected increase in image quality did not happen. I had to discard a lot of the images because the 36 megapixels of the D800 demanded better technique than the 16 MP D7000. The 24-70 f2.8 was heavy, and the depth of field was shallower. This made sharp frames a challenge. So all in all, not a great first outing.

But I was ready when we returned the second time. I had time to get familiar with my camera gear, and my technique had improved quite a lot. I got way more keepers on this trip, but there we still a lot of photographs that I had to discard. Then I attended some post-processing & workflow classes and understood the importance of having a good workflow and sound post-processing. Now that I have some time on my hands, I revisited some of my old shots. By far, this has been the best skillset I have added as a photographer. Today's image was a stitched panorama of about five images taken in portrait orientation. The first time I post-processed the picture, it looked way too saturated and artificial that I decided not to post it anywhere. But I liked the composition too much and decided to re-process the image. I am much happier with the result. It is way closer to the actual sunrise we encountered that beautiful summer morning. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Eudaimonía es un término griego comúnmente traducido como felicidad, bienestar o buena vida.

Término sacado de la serie "Merlí: Sapere aude".

Creo que es de los últimos capítulos, donde la profesora 'Maria Bolaño' le pregunta a 'Pol Rubio': _ 'Hay gente que solo existe y gente que vive. ¿Tú que prefieres? ¿Existir o vivir?_

Pues eso, que preferís: vivir o existir?

Foto tomada en 'The Narrows', Zion National Park, Utah Estados Unidos Septiembre 2016

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E X P L O R E : Jun 7, 2021 #3

Cover Photo ~ Passage to Beauty ~ July 2021

One of the amazing places in the American Southwest! This is the vista from Oak Creek. Wading through the shallow water was required to capture this great view.

-Christian Nestell Bovee.

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One of the problems of living in beautiful southern California is the absolute lack of clouds in the sky. Other than the marine layer that happens during the summer, the sky is often blue with a good supply of smog. I have found this to be true even after a rain or in the morning. This also means that one of my favorite filters, the LEE 10-stop ND, almost never see any use when we are touring locations near Socal.

So, I relish my opportunities when I am at a location where there are clouds and their motion is creating some drama in the sky. This shot was taken at the smith rock state park near Bend, Oregon. The morning we visited, I noticed that the sky still had some cloud cover in the morning and the wind was whipping the clouds around creating some amazing motion in the sky. So finally I had a chance to get the 10 stop ND out and capture all the fun stuff happening in the sky.

This shot was taken using a 10 stop ND to capture the motion in the sky and a 1 stop ND grad to balance the light in the sky and the rocks. I metered the scene on the clouds and calculated the 11 stops that I had to compensate manually. Focusing was also set manually on the rock cliffs. Color correction done in photoshop included setting the white balance of the image to compensate for the blue tinge that often comes with Lee Big Stopper.

The "Narrows" are upstream from the main Zion Canyon, where the walls squeeze to slot canyon dimensions: 1,500 feet tall and as narrow as 30 feet wide in places. In these spots, the water flows from wall to wall so hiking it involves a lot of wading through the Virgin River

Zion National Park, Utah United States September 2016

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One of the most spectacular places I've visited during the Scotland Trip was Elgol. Again a much photographed place and as you drive down the road to the parking lot you instantly know why as the Cullins are revealed on the far shoreline.

This was our 2nd day on Skye and our 6th day in Scotland. The weather was good again and the forecast even better. But by then we had already learned that this changes at least 2 times per day ;-) So when we started the one hour drive from our Cottage to Elgol I wasn't yet sure if the weather would hold. But it did!

When I arrived there already 6 or 7 other photogarphers were buisy setting up their cameras. As I said much photographed and at this evening I should experience the first time how it is to shoot with tripods nearly locked ;-) Good thing the other photographers where a friendly lot g

For above comp I had enough room. Good thing about Elgol is that on low tide the compositions are just around every corner and behind every rock. So no need to stand in each others way the whole time. We were all very lucky because the light was just awesome. A cloud formation was building up just above the main Cullin ridge and changed the color per minute.

The waves were not high that evening but later I learned that even small waves can lead to disaster if you're not carefull and watch your back. The back of my Camera and all the filters were sprayed with salt water later on during the shoot but since I had a camera cover over most of the cam nothing got into the camera. And after some cleanup I was ready to shoot again. Only the filters were useless since I didn't get them clean on spot and had to wait till back in the cottage.

So when shooting at the coast I'll from now on always use a full camera cover just in case :-)

Hope you like the shot. Used a lee 0.6 hard grad to keep the sky in check.

cheers

• Horace Mann.

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This is a shot of the beautiful bonsai rock location in Lake Tahoe. This was one of the hardest locations to reach but was well worth it as we were the only people at the location and I could take my pictures without anyone disturbing me and we got to watch a beautiful sunset. So all in all we had a productive day.

Thanks for visiting and have a nice day..

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• Josiah Gilbert Holland.

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Another shot I took from the bonsai rock location. This one is a panorama shot stitched together from about 6 shots at 35mm focal length. I took this shot after the sun has gone down behind the mountains. The water was a little choppy and there was only little light. But I like the way it turned out.

Thanks for visiting have a nice day..

• Emily Dickinson.

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Morro Bay has always been one of my absolute favorite places to visit along the California coastline. When you start your trip from Los Angeles, Morro Bay is the last major town before heading into the Big Sur coast. Due to this reason, I have always found ourselves at MorroBay for pitstops getting ready for our trip north. After I started taking an interest in bird/wildlife photography, I got to make a trip to MorroBay to visit this beautiful location. With its strategic location and beautiful beaches, it is an essential waypoint for migratory birds, and it was the first serious wildlife spot I have had the chance to explore as a birder.

While we were there to photograph birds, for the most part, I kept an eye out for the sunset light. I was not disappointed. Just as the golden hour started, beautiful sidelight began to pour in and light the sides of the giant volcanic plug. I had to wait a bit for the perfect wave, and eventually, one of them lined up just right. I would have liked the sun a little to the north and better lighting on the rock face, but the more I look at it, the more I think the golden light just on the edge of the rock formation works well.

• Gustav Mahler.

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Since the day I first saw it, the massive volcanic plug on the beach, Morro Rock has had a special place in my heart. Something about it always attracts me and I have dragged my wife and various members of my family enough times to see this amazing geological formation. But spring is here and when we had beautiful weather in SoCal we decided to head out to Montana de Oro State park and see if we could get a nice sunset shot of Morro Bay. Last time we went there, we took the southern vistas of the rock and this time decided to head north of the Rock to get the classic reflection shot.

My plan was to get a shot of Morro Rock with beach dunes as foreground interest but when we reached about an hour before sunset, we learned that the dunes were closed because of nesting season. So I decided to stick with the classic view of Morro Rock from the beach with the reflection of the sunset sky in the beach.

Sunset was pretty muted due to the thin veil of fog that was present that day and colors only turned vivid once the sun actually went down the horizon. This shot was made with the Nikon’s new D850 and my trusty 24-70, with a 2 stop ND grad used to balance the foreground and the sky.

• John Ruskin.

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When we decided to drive back from our trip to Washington, we knew that we needed a stopover in between to take a break and since we had couple of days thanks to inclement weather in the Southern Cascades, we decided to stop over at Bend, Oregon. I wanted to get to two of the iconic locations near Bend, Smith Rock state park and Sparks Lake.

We reached Smith Rock around 5am in the morning, well before the first climbers arrived and scopped out some of the hiking trails around to find some photo spots. This one is the most classic view of the rock formations and I took this shot just before the sunrise. The sliver of light was giving a nice glow to the storm clouds that were trapped by the mammoth rock formations. After this shot we pretty much sprinted with all our gear to get to the other locations we scopped out earlier while the light was still good. All in all, we had an amazing time in this park.