Mirror Refections of the Sky

Another beach image from my recent trip to Coronado, California.  This is the same beach with scattered rocks from yesterday's post but with a much different feel.  It took a little waiting to get a clear beach in order to take this long exposure.  In several other attempts people wondered into the image and caused several blurry streaks.  If you look closely you can see a blurred seagull lurking among the rocks nearer to the water.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

Purple Haze

I am a technologist. I thrive on understanding and using technology in the way it was intended to be used.  Why am I telling you this?  Because this image does not use a specific photographic technology known as white balance in the manor it was intended. The purple hues in this image did not actually exist when the image was created, but due to a missed reading of the ambient light by the Automatic White Balance (AWB) of the camera I ended up with something that was different from what I expected. I could have corrected the white balance of the image in Photoshop but I chose not to do that because I like the image just the way it is.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

Don't Blow the Horn

I recall as a kid driving through the Baytown tunnel and being told by a family friend driving the car that if you blew the cars horn while inside the tunnel the sound vibrations would cause the tunnel to collapse and kill all those inside. Just as the driver finished telling this horrific story she blew the horn scaring the hell out of us kids. Of course the tunnel didn't collapse.  

Well the old Baytown tunnel is no more and was replaced by the very modern Fred Hartman suspension bridge in 1995. Here the bridge can be seen at sunset with the lights of the many refineries that line the Houston ship channel.  What you can't see are the sunken sail boats (camera right) that still remain after hurricane Ike devastated this region in 2008.  You also can't see the millions of mosquitoes that where eating me alive as I waited for the sun to set in order to capture this image.

This image is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image composed of three exposures (0, -2 and +2 stops) using a Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens and a very sturdy tripod.  The properly exposed image was shot in Av mode using ISO 100, F/22 at 2 seconds.  The three RAW images where combined and tone mapped using Photomatix 3.0 and further cleaned up using Lightroom 3.0. 

Fred Hartman Bridge over the Houston ship channel between La Porte and Baytown, Texas

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.

One Fine Houston Evening

I'm reading the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson for the second time. It seems the first time I read it I didn't comprehend much of the information provided in the text.

Last evening I was feeling the call of the camera so I decided to put some of the knowledge I gained from reading the book to good use. So at about 7:00 PM I head out to see if I could capture a decent sunset and possibly some night photos.

I'm not thrilled with the sunset photos. Not because of the sky but because other than buildings and trees there isn't much else to in West Houston to use as the foreground subject in a sunset. Mountains are hard to find in these parts!

These two images are of a building near our house. I was actually driving back home after getting the sunset images and saw the sun reflecting off the building. So I pulled into a shopping center parking lot and setup my tripod and camera and snapped these two images all while a rent-a-cop sat in his/her truck and watched me the entire time.

All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.