One windy morning I went to a hiking trail near the Canyon Lake dam. The trail went down the hill to the river just beneath the dam. There were trees with gnarly roots sticking out of the water and a building and spillway in the distance. So I set about taking a few long exposures.… Read More The Enhanced Canyon Lake Dam
I have been wanting to practice shooting in the fog. The fog obstructs your visibility and mutes the colors, but it also allows you to conceal the background and simplify your composition. It can also give a dreamy look to photos. Early on Saturday morning the forecast called for thick fog and I had this… Read More Austin Fog
After being inspired by a YouTube video, I decided to go hiking with a longer lens and focus on shooting details instead of wide vistas. By longer lens I am talking about a 70-200mm telephoto zoom rather than the 16-35mm lens that I would usually walk around with. I also wanted to go hiking with… Read More Hiking for Details
There is a stone gazebo at an overlook at Bastrop State Park and I hurried to try to get there at sunset one evening and arrived just as the sun was hitting the horizon. I noticed that I could get the sun to be right through the openings in the gazebo and tried shooting that.… Read More Stone Gazebo at Sunset
As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently was given my father’s old film camera. It is a 35mm Nikomat that was purchased in 1968 as far as I can tell. I was excited to get this camera as I can remember my dad carrying this camera around at various times as far back… Read More The Old Camera
I enjoy hiking as well as photography. I usually carry my camera along on my hikes as I like to take photos of landscapes or other details that I see. But, my DSLR can get quite heavy after hiking for a while. So, I have had my eye on a smaller and lighter, but still… Read More Nikon Z50 for Hiking
I managed to get the US Air Force Thunderbirds to fly over my house on Wednesday afternoon so I could have something to shoot photos of. They were really nice about it waiting until the clouds began to break up. They were actually flying over hospitals in the Austin area to salute hospital workers. Their… Read More Photography From Home – Thunderbirds
Austin is not known for its Autumn color display, but there are some colors and I set about trying to capture them on Friday evening. My plan was to shoot from the pedestrian walkway along IH-35 across Lady Bird Lake. I had seen this view while driving the kids to Six Flags in San Antonio… Read More Autumn Color in Austin
Earlier this week I went to the beach at Galveston Island State Park on the Gulf of Mexico. I was mainly there for a mini family vacation, so I didn’t spend a lot of time shooting pictures. About halfway through the day, I did drag the camera and tripod down to the water to take… Read More The Beach!
My fourth and final portraiture class was about trying a bunch of seemingly weird techniques to shoot portraits. Mainly using the flash lighting in ways that went against the conventional rules of shooting portraits. First, we shot a model with a white background. The background was lit by its own flash so it wouldn’t be… Read More Portrait Class, Part 4
