Uploads from Xindaan, tagged f8, with geodata

Annapurna Sanctuary in Moonlight

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:01:45 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

This picture shows part of the Annapurna Sanctuary in moonlight. The destination of a wonderful trekking tour, I arrived there early November. Hiking up the last part to Annapurna Basecamp (4,130 m/13,500 ft) proved frustrating, as it was snowing heavily (20 cm/8 in) with virtually no visibility at all. I still set my alarm to midnight, removing the ice from the window - and saw mountains. So, out of the sleeping bag, and out into the freezing cold. I went through the fresh snow a bit uphill towards a frequently visiting viewing area. The moon was shining nicely (though ocasionally blocked by the clouds), and chose my composition to use it as my lighting source. I was out there for about two hours (luckily, with warm clothes). I took long exposures up to 16 minutes, short exposures, and this is the one I like best. The clouds were causing shadows that add texture to the area, and the clouds were not covering too much, but still being there.

The view is towards the east, around the prayer flags, you can see the Annapurna Baseamp. The prayer flags point towards Machhapuchhre (Mt. Fish Tail), a wonderfully photogenic peak with 6,993 m/22,900ft. Also visible are Annapurna III (7,555 m/24,800 ft) and Gangapurna (7,455 m/24500 ft). Behind me is Annapurna I, with 8,091 m/26,500 ft the world's 10th highest peak. I took this picture with a 16 mm framing and a panoramic crop, to make use of the scenery.

And that's what I've been up to the past time, causing some absence here.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas 2011!

Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:53:21 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

Definitely a calmer picture, I guess. I like this due to the wonderful quality of the light, showing in the morning mist, giving everything a nice, golden glow.

The place is Canyonlands National Park in Utah, in Winter 2010. One of the rare occasions where everything was in the clouds - and you wouldn't get a sunrise at Mesa Arch (which we got a day later). Still, this is an opportunity for unusual situations you don't normally get, so I tried to take advantage of that. The fog blocks out irritating backgrounds, allowing you to focus on interesting foregrounds, like that Juniper tree growing in this really barren world. Specks of snow do their best to add to the normally hot and dry scenery.

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Calm Morning, Zingst, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:39:27 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

This is a picture I took last fall. I actually keep returning to this picture quite often. I like the calmness projected by it. A major part of this calmness was to choose the exposure to be at 30 seconds, making the Baltic Sea completely flat by averaging out any waves, and softening the completely clouded sky even further. It took quite a long time to position the camera exactly in the center, to use all the symmetries available, as well as choosing the right camera height (and keeping the camera completely level), keeping the railing below the horizon level (and all the lines straight). Maximum ultra wide angle, the 11mm of the Tokina, was necessary to capture everything.

An important question during processing was "black&white or colour?" Not much colour tonality there to begin with, so it all settles to the question of whether or not that red point of interest should be there. In the end, I decided to keep it in colour, to have a little irritating thing that disturbs the symmetry the eye gets drawn to.

What do you think?

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Patriarch Court, Zion National Park, Utah, USA

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:57:44 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

large on black, white, stream on black, white, interestingness, white (generated by [darckr])
What a difference a day makes. Compare this with the picture I took two days earlier. Roughly the same spot, just different light.

Anyway, it was our last day in Zion National Park, all the time, the weather was bad, but at that last morning, starting with clouds, me always staying in bed frustrated, but eventually decided not to, the sun broke through. Great. Timing was critical. I have shots of the same spot just a bit later, when everything was in the sun, including the trees right in front of me. You lose lots of information about the depth in that version. So, I much prefer this one. Cloud rests still clinging to the three single rocks, blue sky coming through, it was a wonderful morning.

Oh, and this is the first time I tried out the new "upload to flickr" feature of Lightroom 3, to which I upgraded last week. Love that program.

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White Mountains, California, USA

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:55:55 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

large on black, white, stream on black, white, interestingness, white (generated by [darckr])
This is one of the rare pictures I took during a sunny day during my recent US vacation. In fact, I was cruising dirt roads in order to find sunrise locations (ending up with that spot). Then I saw this. The clouds amassing on the White Mountains, moving. So, parking the car, and waiting, while looking for a composition I liked.

In the previous days, I had experimented with putting streets into my pictures (most notably in Death Valley, more on that later), which I kinda liked due to the additional guidance to the eye - there isn't always a river at hand. So, here, the road points the way, and behind it, when it takes the left curve, there's the middle layer, contrasting the colours of the White Mountains in the distance. So, now only to wait for the clouds, until I got this one, where I liked how the clouds emphasized the rising (from left to right) shape of the mountain ridge, getting even higher in the same visual direction.

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Birds over Fisher Towers, Utah, United States

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:14:05 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

Not located in the National Parks, but still very beautiful, are the Fisher Towers near Moab (and thus near Arches or Canyonlands National Park). In the evening, the sunlight tends to put everything into a wonderful red glow, while the Manti-La Sal mountains are in the background.

So, I set everything up. Using my telephoto (Sigma 70-200/2.8), I got a frame I liked, without too many disturbing details, and then I started waiting for the light. Doing that, I noticed a flock of birds flying this way. Watching where they went, I started to hope that they would do something nice to add to the composition, which they eventually did by (two dimensionally) flying over the Fisher Towers, at the same time the light almost getting perfect. And off the shots they went.

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Pillars of the Earth, Arches National Park, Utah, United States

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:45:13 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

Arches National Park has some great formation. Most of all, I became a fan of the Manti-La Sal Mountains. They look wonderful, tower over everything, you can see them from Arches National Park, from Canyonlands National Park, and they add so much to the scenery. Really great.

Anyway, for one evening, I looked for ways to use them photographically. Knowing that the red sandstone just glows with the setting sun, I came upon this composition.

Maximum focal length I had on this trip, being my Sigma 70-200 in combination with my 1.4x teleconverter, f8 for the optical quality, and using my shiny new Gitzo 3241LS together with the Really Right Stuff BH-40 ballhead - an amazing combination in terms of stability.

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Mesa Arch - Light, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, United States

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:46:05 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

Following up the previous picture, this shows Mesa Arch during the very next morning. Getting there quite early again, the previous composition in the fog did not work at all. Really at all.

So, swiftly moving around, looking for compositions. Kinda hard to find something original, if not impossible. Tried many different things, position and perspective, and varied focal lengths to change the relative sizes of the distant structures, like the Manti-La Sal Mountains and the Washer Woman Arch with respect to the size of the actual arch, and in the end went for ultra wide, which emphasizes the arch, because that is what makes this whole thing so amazing. Mesa arch, lit from the underside in the sun, just glowing there, opening this wonderful, wide vista. Yes, ultra wide was it for me. So, my Tokina 11-16 at f8, that was the way to go.

Doing all that stuff in winter was great. First, there is the snow, which makes it at least somewhat non-standard, and then, we were quite alone, there was only one other fellow photographer there, which gave me flexibility to walk around and try different things. Can't do that in summer for sure...

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Mesa Arch - Fog, Canyonlands National Park, Utah, United States

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:58:19 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

Mesa Arch is an amazing thing, apparently made for photographers. Facing east, you get wonderful sunrises, illuminating the underside of the arch, while the whole thing is at the edge of a large cliff, giving you a wonderful view over the Canyonlands National Park, towards the Manti-La Sal Mountains, where the sun will rise.

Unless there is fog and you have no view whatsoever. This happens rarely enough, but it did when I was there. So, what to do? Looking for something different, of course. Waiting was a good decision. The fog was thinning, a bit of the morning sun eventually came through. No directional light, but enough to add some colours. At the same time, I was wandering around, looking at shapes rather than vistas, and ended up with this picture being my favorite one. It became that one because of the lone Utah Juniper in the distance. Curiously enough, when I was there the next morning (I did want to see the grand morning vista, and most likely that picture will be here next on my photostream), the entire scene looked differently. Especially with that lone Juniper, which you couldn't make out any longer like here, with the background suddenly visible. Quite amazing how the weather can influence the perception you get from places.

Getting technical: Tokina 11-16 on my Nikon D300, at f8, ISO 200 resulting in 1/160s exposure time.

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The simple things: backlit clover, Nationalpark Müritz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:56:43 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

I am getting somewhat tired of the winter here in Germany. It's not nice. No real snow, but not warm. No sun. Bad.

And while I am still sorting to my all my pictures from the recent US trip, I have decided upon just posting a summer picture. Very simple composition wise, I still just like to look at it.

When taking it, I went for backlighting at sunrise, and chose the lens combination I have giving me the shortest depth of field to single out that single clover flower: my 70-200/2.8 plus the 1.4x teleconverter at the shortest possible distance. The choice for this specific flower was of course the spider web. It took me some time to get the right placement in order to have both (plus one) threads still being visible, not going out of focus too fast.

This is the result. Simple, warm. Summer.

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Patriarch Court, Zion National Park, Utah, USA

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 06:30:23 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

Currently, I am on holidays in the US, doing a National Parks tour in the southwest, starting from Arches NP, passing through Bryce (where I was just a month ago, amazing how much more snow there is now) and am currently at Zion National Park. Eventually, we will continue through Grand Canyon, Death Valley, the Eastenr Sierra and Yosemite (where I was just a month ago).

Weather so far has been mixed, we got good and bad luck, the bad luck in Zion was that we had only a very brief time with actual sunlight, but instead lots and lots of snow and clouds, but used that for other opportunities like hiking The Narrows today.

A very current picture, taken yesterday, shows the Court of Patriarchs, during the brief sun time yesterday. What I like is clouds hanging in mountains, for which the current weather is great. The additional sunlight gave it something special now. And due to the clouds, conrasts remained manageable. So, at 35 mm and f8, I framed the picture to get some sort of repetition with the tree line going from upper right to lower left, followed by the Patriarchs, the apparent tops dong the same, while the clouds separate them nicely.

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Morning Light, Mühlensee, Nationalpark Müritz, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:46:03 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

Almost exactly an hour after sunrise, light had changed dramatically. Still wonderful, but an entirely different light mood.

This picture was taken with my Nikkor 16-85 at 85mm and f8, resulting in 1/100s at ISO 200.

Feel free to use large black magic on this picture.

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Swampy Morning, Mühlensee, Nationalpark Müritz, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:52:18 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

I love the morning light. You get rapidly changing, wonderful light, without contrasts getting too high. Add to that less wind than in the evenings, and some things can be shot nicely.

This picture, showing the Mühlensee in National Park Müritz, was shot during the same session as this one, just a bit later, at about 7:15am on August 27.

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Sunset on the Müritz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:05:54 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

During my stay at the Nationalpark Müritz in August, I was not only there at the sunrises, but also at some sunsets. The most spectactular one was this one, with a great layer of clouds partially glowing, partially already shadowed, reflecting in the lake, the Müritz (Germany's largest lake, if you discount the Bodensee which is shared with Austria and Switzerland).

Using my Sigma 70-200/2.8, I focused on these things, brought in the sun very large, and focussing on the colours. Post processing is a minimum, using Lightroom, increasing gamma, contrast and just increasing vividness a tiny bit, but not in a mood-altering way.

I recommend to use large black magic.

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Brúnavík, Iceland

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:41:28 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

A wonderful hike you can make at northeastern Iceland leads you to the bay of Brúnavík. Starting at Bakkagerði, you pass the Geitfell mountain, and get into this beautiful valley with wonderful colours, the mountains getting theirs from ryholite. The colours, like in Landmannalaugar, are just beautiful. Looking at the mountains in the background, judging from their colour, one would guess they're in the sun, yet, as you can see, they're covered in clouds.

And you can see sheep and lambs there. :)

Lens of choice was my Nikkor 16-85 at 85mm and f8, leading to 1/250s exposure time.

Feel free towatch this picture using large black magic.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my whole Iceland set at my homepage, or rather the current state it is in. My favorites from there will get here onto flickr. Yes, I take proposals. :)

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Stockfish at Iceland

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:26:43 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

Fish on a line to dry - and later to eat. Necessary in a time when getting something to eat was an achievement in Iceland. Not that long ago...

This picture was done at Flatey island, where I also took the picture of the church. The island was given up in 1967, and nowadays, people live there only for the summer.

Composition wise, I opted for the square format, letting the fishes fill the frame. What I liked about this were also the colour contrasts with blue(ish) to orange.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my whole Iceland set at my homepage, or rather the current state it is in. My favorites from there will get here onto flickr. Yes, I take proposals. :)

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Church at Flatey Island, Iceland

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:08:21 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

In the north of Iceland, there is a small island called Flatey. "Small" is relative, as it is the fifth largest island of Iceland, being 2.5 km long and 1.7 km wide. The highest point of the island is just 20 m above the water, hence the name "flat island". A large attraction for tourists on the island is the rich wildlife of birds, including puffins, seagulls, and so on.

In 1942, 120 people lived here, but the growth of the villages/towns nearby caused a steady decline, and in 1967, all inhabitants have left the island. Nowadays, people live there only the summer. On the island, there are very few buildings, the school was built in 1929, and old church was closed in 1884, in 1960, a new church was erected.

That church is the main point of this picture. For taking it, I went north, as I wanted the mountains of the mainland in the background. I chose the composition that the rising slope of the mountains mimicks that of the church. To get that, I used my Sigma 70-200/2.8 with a 1.4x teleconverter. The overall focal length was 160mm at f8, 1/800s.

A first for me is the treatment of the picture colour wise. Mirroring the island's history, void of permanent inhabitants since the sixties, I tried to get this "old" feeling by selectively desaturing colours, while saturating others, adding vignetting, and so on.

Feel free towatch this picture using large black magic.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my whole Iceland set at my homepage, or rather the current state it is in. My favorites from there will get here onto flickr. Yes, I take proposals. :)

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The Young and the Old Iceland

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:21:14 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

An a short hike at Námafjall in the Mývatn region, you walk among solfatara, fumaroles emitting sulfurous gasses. Yes, that smells. This is fairly recent volcanic activity, while in the distance, you can see older ones. The prominent one is a so-called flat-top volcano, whose form is characteristic for a sub-glacial eruption, where the ice sheet quickly cools the lava. Consequently, you only find such volcanoes in regions where glaciers are, or were, like antarctica (Brown Bluff), British Columbia (Pyramid Mountain, Tuya Butte, Caribou Tuya, South Tuya, The Table), Oregon (Hayrick Butte, Hogg Rock) and of course Iceland.

The picture was taken using my Nikkor 16-85 at 65mm focal length, f8 and 1/400s.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my whole Iceland set at my homepage, or rather the current state it is in. My favorites from there will get here onto flickr. Yes, I take proposals. :)

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Icelandic Rainbow

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:40:41 -0700

Xindaan posted a photo:

The thing with icelandic light, together with the icelandic weather, are rainbows. While near perfect ones like this one are not _that_ often, though, the proverbial "You don't like the weather in Iceland? Just wait 5 minutes" allows for ever changing sun and rain, all the ingredients you need. In this case, due to the low sun, even 11 mm focus length with my beloved Tokina 11-16/2.8 (f8, 1/640s at ISO200) could not quite catch the second one in one frame, that's how big it was. Really astonishing.

Of course, I recommend to watch this picture using large black magic.

If you are interested, feel free to check out my whole Iceland set at my homepage, or rather the current state it is in. My favorites from there will get here onto flickr. Yes, I take proposals. :)

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Half Dome in Winter, Yosemite National Park, California, USA

nobody@flickr.com (Xindaan) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:03:06 -0800

Xindaan posted a photo:

Choosing which flickr picture to post is getting tough. I have a set of wonderful sunrise and sunset pictures which for sure grant lots of favorites. I'm just not in the mood. More intimate. Less epic. That seems to be my current mindset.

So, what you see here is a picture I took in January when visiting Yosemite National Park. The weather was particularly interesting. Fresh snow, cloud cover.

And still, nothing can take away the grandeur of this landscape. I'm actually not sure if that weather, and the absence of people, emphasized it even. What amazes me at Yosemite is the massive scale of the rock formations, ever so clearly put in contrast to objects were are used to, like trees. At the same time, the rocks are so distinctive, you always recognize them.

It's funny, I actually only realize now, writing this description, that I took a very similar picture at the same day, just with El Capitan, and posted it to flickr a few months ago. It's all about putting things in perspective. You don't need to show the whole El Capitan, you don't need to show the whole Half Dome. With a landscape as famous as this, you can focus on the details.

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