Transit of Venus, 2012

June 5, 2012 By

Here’s a rare event, something that occurs only about once every 110 years. The transit of Venus, which I managed to capture a bit of this evening.

Technically, I was a bit limited by my equipment: I could have used a longer telephoto lens, and really could have used a darker neutral density filter. These were captured with my Canon 7D, using a 70-200 2.8L lens at 200mm, cropped frames, ISO 100, 1/8000 second at f32, with a 3-stop ND filter plus a polarizer, shot in RAW and darkened by about another 3 stops. So I’m teetering at the edge of getting the exposure down, which made sharpness and noise a little bit of an issue. But I got something, and I’m pleased I was able to get these as clear as they are. Didn’t think I could capture sunspots…but was lucky with clear skies.

I’ve compiled a little still to video capture here:

And I’ve also uploaded the still images used to create this to Flickr, here’s the slideshow.

Filed Under: Nature, Sample Images Tagged With: , , , ,

Frog in Sunshine

April 23, 2012 By

What wonderful sunny weather we’ve had the last few days. Seems like everyone is out in the sunshine, soaking it up. Here’s a macro photo I took today of a little frog who was no exception.

It’s about the size of a nickel, on a tulip leaf. That’s a dandelion blossom behind him, for scale. I made this with a 100mm macro, HDR, then combined focus planes in Photoshop. A final bit of tweaking using Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Simplify.

Anyone know what species he/she is?

Macro photo of a small green frog, resting on a tulip leaf, with a dandelion blossombehind

Filed Under: Animals, Fine Art, Nature, Sample Images Tagged With: , ,

Two new images, two new plays

April 21, 2012 By

Over the last few weeks I created publicity images for two plays performed by Willamette Stage Company in Corvallis.

This first image is for Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, now in its second and final weekend. I recommend it to all — it’s very funny along with a good dose of self-reflection. For information about this wonderful play, and tickets, while they last, can be found here.
Four actors performing in God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza, produced by Willamette Stage Company
The following image is for Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s boom, a very funny end-of-the-world play that will be performed in May and early June in Corvallis, also by Willamette Stage Company. You can read more about boom here.
three actors from the play boom, by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Filed Under: Marketing and Advertising, People, Performances, Sample Images Tagged With: , ,

Best of Photo-a-day, #3

February 2, 2012 By

Over the last two days I posted the first ten images of my fifteen favorite images from last month’s daily posts of new photos. Here are the last five.

The end of the month was marked by high water, and drying out after the flooding that we had around the 16th of January. And I like that the month ended (photographically) with a cheerful symbol — a rainbow arising from the falling waters.

Please let me know what you think of these, what you like, even what you don’t like!


 
 

Filed Under: Fine Art, Sample Images Tagged With: ,
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