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Dull, flat and smoky light on Saturday was not appealing. Yet Sunday offered perhaps the most spectacularly beautiful day I’ve ever experienced in Yosemite—out of perhaps twenty visits over two decades. I felt inadequate to the task of communicating that feeling, but I worked hard at it in-between Scharffenberger Milk Chocolate Nibby chocolate bars. (Click images below for larger versions).
A favorite canyon
I made dozens of appealing images, some of which shall emerge here in due time. But first, consider the “recent” events that shaped the Yosemite of today, the master artist’s massive hand, the result of which lingers today 10,000 years or so later: brutally hard granite sculpted smooth with “glacial polish”. I find such effects as impressive as the granite monoliths so often seen (yet not experienced) from fossil fuel-propelled cocoons.
Glacially polished granite and Half Dome
No one can imagine the crushing force that could produce such effects—a staggering weight of ice (along with rocks and grit) become nature’s rock polisher. Yet nature erases most such ephemeral handiwork quickly. Life struggles year after year to reproduce, failing 99.999% of the time, but succeeding often enough to win in the end—for a time.
Failed reproductive attempts by the tens of thousands
Ironically, ice destroys where it once sculpted, tearing, wearing, cracking, wedging. Granite is not so permanent in the scheme of things.
Slowly but surely
All of the images above were taken with the Zeiss ZF 25mm f/2.8 Distagon (prototype infrared lens for most, and the regular production version for the glacial polish/Half Dome image). I will be very sorry to have to return the prototype 25mm lens in the next day or two.
In the market for a point and shit camera?
If you’re considering buying a point and shoot digital camera, be sure to read my May 13 blog entry Why digital point and shoot cameras are “all shit”, and my article on the actual resolution you can expect from a point and shit (shoot) camera. The latest stupidity (that nonetheless makes for good marketing hype), is the advent of 12-megapixel digicams, leading to diffraction-limited resolution at f/5.6 or so.
Click to read about digicam resolution
Give me quality pixels, not millions upon millions of garbage-quality ones. I want a point and shoot camera with a relatively large 4-6 megapixel sensor using today’s sensor technology, and a high-quality 28mm f/2 lens. If Canon and Nikon can make digital SLRs for about $500-$600 with large sensors, why can’t they make a point and shoot compact with a sensor just half that size (which would still be “huge”).
This scene captured my attention as a literal subject, but the non-literal result pleases me even more. Does one need approval from others to consider a work splendid? Indeed I do not with this image. Click it to see it a bit larger.
Forest
When it looks good, but doesn’t quite work
The scene was compelling, but I was really tired, and some guy was jumping into the (rarely) mirror-still Tenaya Lake with his dog for a swim, so I shot what I could from my car window. Scenes like this frustrate, because years might pass before another chance presents itself—the balance I sought eluded me.
Tenaya Lake
Resuming work with stitched panoramas
After a several year hiatus, I’m resuming work with stitched panoramas. What a disappointment to find that what should have been a crisp 162 megapixel panorama was instead only a goof for 30 megapixels or so due to blur (using the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L).
Half Dome from Olmstead Point, clearing storm
At 1/10 second, the gremlin appears to be camera shake, with a double-image effect on fine detail. A two second countdown timer with mirror lockup is not enough, as I should have known from my careful research in The Sharpest Image—two seconds is right at the edge of acceptability, especially near 200mm, and particularly when shooting with a multi-row panorama contraption. More on stitching and panoramas another day.
I’ve had no trouble using my Zeiss ZF lenses on any of the stitched panos; they’re more compact and solid, but so far the longest available focal length is 100mm. The essentially zero distortion of the 100mm Makro-Planar is excellent for stitching.
Fortunately, I made dozens of panoramas from my last trip to Yosemite, probably some very nice ones, but I’ve not had the time to go through them, assembling a few of them more or less at random.
Zeiss ZF prototype lenses for infrared
Read about this exciting new development: lenses specially optimized for shooting infrared, the Zeiss ZF prototypes.
Hangin' out
There are masters of close-up and flower photography out there that I can’t hope to match— photographers with immense patience and great skill. But I still like my basic efforts anyway. These are images that work well enlarged to the whole screen, and less well at smaller sizes. I think that’s true of some images, and not the case with others. And sometimes I like images that don’t try so hard to be too beautiful or too technically perfect.
Orange on Green for Halloween
Helianthus Bluus
False color infrared. My diglloyd Guide to Digital Infrared Photography covers false color infrared and much, much more.
Fall color
If you’re short on time, take photos while biking—point and shoot somewhere, and see what results! Blur has a powerful visual effect. Just a little bit of blur is often way too much, but a lot of blur is sometimes just right!
If you’re short on time, take photos while biking—point and shoot somewhere, and see what results! Blur has a powerful visual effect. Just a little bit of blur is often way too much, but a lot of blur is sometimes just right!
Photography while biking, of biking
It takes me a few days to “settle in” to soak up the feel of a place. I’ll share my thoughts and photos of the Real Feel of Yosemite in a future article.
Have fun
Choose the right place
Take a break
Most of my photos taken on my recent Yosemite trip were made using the Zeiss ZF 25mm f/2.8 Distagon, a lens I initially thought I had little use for. I have changed my mind—it’s a great lens for hiking, it performs well into the sun, and it has unique imaging qualities. Read more in my forthcoming Zeiss ZF lens review (soon, I promise).
Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to ship Oct 26
Apple is slated to ship Mac OS X 10.5 aka “Leopard” on October 26th (version 10.4 is “Tiger”). My September 28 blog entry offers a few brief comments on its features.
I’ll be ordering the family pack. First I’ll install it on my kids eMacs and my wife’s older PowerMac G5. If all goes well, then next up (after a week or so) is my MacBook Pro for several weeks (at least). The MacBook Pro is my “test mule” which runs most of the applications that I also run on my Mac Pro workstation. Finally, and after researching reported issues with Photoshop CS3, DreamWeaver, Nikon Capture, Digital Photo Professional, Epson print drivers, etc, then I will upgrade my Mac Pro workstation, most likely some time in December or January.
If your livelihood depends on “production” machine(s), let the dust settle—wait 3 months!!! You’ve waited a few years, there is nothing in Leopard that demands upgrading immediately. If you’re really itchin' to try Leopard, install it on a separate hard disk, and boot from that hard disk to try it out without risking your existing boot disk.
Leopard can be pre-ordered at amazon.com, which offers a low price guarantee
and free shipping. Some people will want the single-machine
license
Climbing Mt Dana without a tripod, I tried some handheld panoramas, stitched together later in Photoshop. It’s darn hard to keep a level horizon. Still, this image isn’t half bad considering the challenges. After cropping off portions of sky and foreground (due to uneven leveling of the camera), I was left with a decent 35 megapixel image from my 10.1-megapixel Canon EOS 1D Mark III. Mt Conness (12,549') is visible at upper left, Saddlebag lake at middle right and Tioga Lake at lower center.
Looking North/Northwest from Mt Dana
An expressive idiom. And the way to tell grizzly bear shit from black bear shit is that grizzly bear shit has bells in it and smells like pepper spray! This sample is definitely black bear—no bells. Let’s just not talk about bokeh here, ok?
The finer points of photographic “composition” (not actual life size)
Well, this image ain’t gonna sell as fine-art, but heck I maintain an objective eye wherever I go! At least I think it’s bear shit, it ain’t dog, it ain’t feline and it ain’t deer. Then again, I’m not into the finer points of scatology. This fine nugget was the last but not least in a four-foot long “trail” and from a purely scientific standpoint, I believe, as with humans, a juvenile was responsible.
I’m planning on several more of my travel articles similar to my White Mountains and Death Valley pieces. One of them will feature Yosemite’s 13,061' Mt Dana, an easy 3000' non-technical “climb” (more of a hike) from the east entrance station of Yosemite National Park (see aerial map). I recommend this climb to anyone so “inclined”, and it’s a good starter climb for teenagers too. This particular ascent was my favorite (my 3rd, though not all the same day), with swirling clouds and a fresh layer of fine powder snow blowing in my face—one feels alive under such conditions. And once in a while a random stranger takes a decent shot of me. And then it cleared and warmed, making for a nice 3 hour sojourn.
At the summit of Mt. Dana (Mono Lake seen below)
How many people have really seen the stars, not just a dim approximation? Too-frequently in the past decade I’ve been frustrated by hazy night-time skies even at high elevations. But this time, at 11,000' (3350m), I was not disappointed and lucky too, with the wind not pushing the forest fire smoke overhead, and recent storms having cleansed the atmosphere of much particulate matter. With a clear sky, one sees not just individual stars, but the entire Milky Way stretching 180° across the sky, imparting insight into why it is so-named.
How to explain the sense of wonder at the brilliance of 10,000 times as many stars as in the
murky-aired San Francisco Bay Area? It is truly an experience, a palpable thrill. Try it someday.
Click for larger images
Mail server down Friday thru Sunday
If you tried sending me email from sometime Friday 10/12 through Sunday 10/14, the diglloyd.com
email server was down (crashed). It has been up and running since 18:00 or so on Sunday.
Plans interrupted by snow (then gorgeous fall weather), I saw and photographed much. Half Dome is a grossly over-photographed iconic subject, but perhaps photographing it in infrared through the smoke of a forest fire makes for an acceptable excuse (the fire was a controlled, planned burn, planned to blow right over my campsite!). Shown below, infrared does a decent job of penetrating the smoky haze, though later the smoke became too dense even for infrared.
Yosemite’s iconic Half Dome
A favorite and infrequently-satisfied pastime of mine is scrambling along granite slabs...the steepness of the slope shown below is such that anything loosed from one’s grasp stops only when it slams into the rubble a considerable distance below...I tested this theory with a rock of roughly the same size as my camera, not wishing to voluntarily try it on the camera itself. Still, rubber-soled shoes are quite sufficient to stay firmly planted.
Granite, to which life clings
I’ll be offline enjoying Yosemite’s high country soon, my last chance before the overnight parking prohibition kicks in October 15 (snowfall risk = no parking). With a little luck I’ll make a few interesting images too. This one was shot on good 'ol Velvia.
A favorite pool, Yosemite
Diglloyd.com cannot respond to emails that require filling out a form. Those using EarthLink as their ISP seem to be the culprits most of the time.
Shooting into the sun, even a reflection of it, presents a serious challenge to any lens. The Zeiss 50mm f/2 Makro-Planar handled this shot well, with only a few small flare spots, and no evidence of veiling flare.
Evening star
Want an in-depth review of the Zeiss 50/2 Makro-Planar? Look no further:
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