Archive for the ‘16-35mm f/2.8L’ Category
Getting a unique shot of a subject like Half Dome in Yosemite is no easy task. Millions of tourists, many carrying good cameras and armed with a good grasp of photography, visit this location every year. The plethora of photographs taken from all angles at all times of day really does make this a challenge, but Andrew, Giacomo and I set out to do it anyway. In doing some night photography on the previous nights, we noticed that there was a window of about 10-15 minutes where the light “lingered” in the sky; the sun had officially set, but there was still a decent amount of light left, enough to provide depth in the foreground and a gradient of color above. Timing, however, was critical, as it wasn’t always obvious exactly when to start shooting, and we only had one shot as we knew we’d need close to a 30 minute exposure to achieve the star trails we wanted. The second we pressed the shutter, we were committed to that time window for that night. Too early and we’d have too much light in the sky and be unable to see the stars; too late and we’d have a normal star trail image which would lack any detail in the foreground. We knew we were going to be at Mirror Lake the next night, and the view of Half Dome from that spot is perhaps the most awe-inspiring and iconic, so we wanted to have the perfect shot lined up, which would require learning precisely when this window of light would occur. That final shot came out well, but it was thanks to our observation the night before that we were able to get that critical window of light. This shot, from Glacier Point, is another single shot HDR, and as such required a good bit of Photoshop to get it the way I wanted it. Other byproducts of these ultra-long exposures include sensor-level noise, as you can see in the lower left corner of the shot, as well as a distinct loss of detail in moving objects, which can be seen in the “clumpiness” or softness of the tree. Despite all of this, the final shot is just how I like it: surreal but not insane. It makes people stop and say “wait a minute…” and you get to explain to them why it’s not just a photograph. At that point they either write you off as a talentless hack or beg you to teach them how to use Photomatix…
The band of yellow light just above the horizon is what we were going for by waiting for that moment just a few minutes after the sun set directly behind us.
I know I make this point very often (indeed, as often as I can!) but here, yet again, is an example of why I value HDR as much as I do. Take a peek at the original shot… at best it is “eh, kinda cool.” Definitely not blog post material. But with a lot of tweaking, all that data in the 30MB+ RAW file can be turned into, well, my new desktop background anyway 
Those streaks in the sky that are clearly not stars are airplanes… unbelievably annoying to remove! Next time I do this I will set up AA guns next to my tripod…
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 5D Mark II, Landscape, Nature, Night, Outdoor, Single-Shot, Tucker, Tucker's Favorites, Yosemite | 2 Comments »
In a sudden burst of concentrated irresponsibility, my roommate and I decided to go have Easter dinner at The Buffet at the Bellagio. Now, there are several arguments to be had about why this was an unorthodox decision, but easily the most questionable was the fact that we were literally eating lunch at Bubba Gump’s at Universal CityWalk when the idea went from conversational joke to finalized plan in less than 10 seconds. On a whim we quickly looked into staying the night (since driving 4 hours in the ultimate food coma is simply not a good idea) and thanks to the Hotel Tonight app, we locked in a room at Caesar’s Palace for a paltry $69 less than 8 hours before check-in.
The Buffet itself did not disappoint: bottomless Kobe beef, lamb shank, sushi, king crab legs, manicotti, and beef Wellington were among my favorite items on the menu. We decided to eat until the moment when it actually becomes uncomfortable, put in an extra 20 minutes, and then headed around the corner to the Conservatory to decompress.
The Conservatory is a seasonal showcase but I have no idea what those tiny shoes are about. Stuff gets reused of course, I think the umbrellas on the ceiling actually hung above the Via Bellagio shops last year: Las Vegas, NV
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Indoor, Las Vegas, Night | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
Road trips are amazing things. You could jump on a plane and pay to check three duffels… or you could pile ten duffels into a sedan and enjoy the drive across the country. I’ve made the LA/ATL drive twice now and each time has been a complete adventure. Two very different adventures, but two nonetheless. Unlike our first marathon-style 3-day trek two Decembers ago, we opted to turn it into a more leisurely vacation. I’ve been to Yellowstone twice before, but each was well before I was anything much into photography. This time, though, I was able to appreciate it in a whole new way. One thing I’ll always remember is getting to do the Lake Yellowstone Hotel “photo safari” one morning with my mom. She had done it the first time we visited Yellowstone (back when I was nine, I think) and it was really special for her to get to do it again but this time with me tagging along.
At some point during our stay in Yellowstone, we found ourselves driving through the Lamar Valley at sunset. (Typing this now I realize I’d like to “find” myself there a little more often.) We pulled off for a minute to climb a foothill and had no choice but to enjoy the stunning view the valley’s still water offered.
Yellowstone is definitively NOT on the way from Atlanta to Los Angeles… but I'm so glad we made silly plans and came back to YNP anyways: Yellowstone National Park, WY
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Andrew's Favorites, Landscape, Nature, Outdoor, Sunset, Yellowstone NP | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
I went on a downtown field trip with my Art History class last semester. It’s a good thing we didn’t do anything that charged admission because 4-hour parking managed to rack up a healthy $20 charge… but I made the most of it and used the opportunity to scout locations for a 4×5 project in another class.
It's a maze in there. Later that week I took the 4×5 to shoot a similar angle. I got what I needed but got so lost in there the only exit I could find was on the opposite side of the building.
We met in the lobby of the Bradbury Building and it didn’t take long to realize why it was worth visiting! It’s been used in TONS of films over the years and, inspired by the recent scene in The Artist, I set to work on combining the set I’d taken.
The stacked stairs at the far end of the atrium should look familiar. You can't shoot something in this building and not include them: Los Angeles CA
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, Andrew, Architecture, Indoor, Los Angeles, Non-HDR | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
We usually start a post by admitting fault for how much time has passed since the previous post… I’m not about to change that. Since we’re dangerously close to not having a December entry, I think I ought to slip in something I nabbed at the LA Auto Show back around Thanksgiving (on Thanksgiving, actually). We kind of flew through the exhibition and I don’t quite remember the details of the Volvo pictured below — Audi had a blindingly legit display so the e-tron and R8 GT Spyders may have distracted me — but I saw this angle of the Volvo display and loved how the glass and other reflective surfaces played havoc with the sense of space in the Convention Center ballroom. We spotted six manufacturer logos in this image; at the risk of sounding campy… can you find them too?
If not for the glass separator between the frontmost windows, this would be a really cool concept image advertising the Volvo of tomorrow, today! Or something… Los Angeles CA
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Handheld HDR, Indoor, Los Angeles | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
This has to be one of my favorite shots that I’ve taken over the past few years. It was one of those times when “everything came together” as they say, and as Andrew mentioned it was in a large way a group effort between the three of us. Knowing we wanted to get a night shot of the iconic Half Dome with star trails behind it, we scoped out the location early on in the day, while there was still plenty of light. We spent hours taking test shots to get the framing we wanted, and as night fell we had all 3 of our cameras constantly taking images, comparing exposure times, apertures, every variable really, trying to do our best educated guesswork as to what the final settings should be. We knew we had about a 15-minute window to get the “perfect shot;” there is a very small period of time right as the first stars begin to show before the sun truly sets, leaving you some light in the sky that we knew would reflect off the mountain and give some detail to the foreground as well as give the sky a much bluer hue. As luck would have it, the setting sun cast a reddish orange hue directly on the face of Half Dome, which translated really well in the long exposure that I ended up finally taking. That exposure was 868 seconds long, at an aperture of F/4, ISO 200, and 16mm. Of course, it was just a single shot, and I had to process it out in Photoshop to create the light and the dark images needed to make the final HDR image. If I could go back and do it again, I’d bump the ISO to 400 and go for about 1000 seconds, but overall this came out pretty well! It took a huge amount of time to get right, as I had to remove a ton of pixel-level noise manually, especially in the foreground trees (if you zoom in on the full-rez image you can still see there’s a lot of it!) but needless to say, this one’s been my desktop background since I got back from Yosemite! Now we need a new banner image….
In addition to noise, I also had to Photoshop out about 5 different airplanes that cut across the entire image… Yosemite may be far from LA by car, but the planes never stop flying over!
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 5D Mark II, Landscape, Nature, Night, Outdoor, Single-Shot, Sunset, Tucker, Tucker's Favorites, Yosemite | 1 Comment »
My road trip earlier this summer ended in Disneyland, home of the iconic Alice in Wonderland Teacups. It’s a pretty cool attraction regardless, but at night, it’s quite a dazzling sight. Because the motion between and during exposures would have been just too much, this is a single-shot HDR of the ride in action at nighttime. I’ve never actually ridden the Teacups, but I have a feeling they’d make me sick: bring on all the crazy roller coasters you want, but as soon as a ride devolves down to concentrated spinning, I’m out.
Stay tuned for Tucker to post the full image of the current site banner from Yosemite. It may be the most planned shot on here and is certainly the most collaborative.
Just working on this image makes me want to go back… I've got the annual pass so I really have no excuse: Anaheim, CA
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Disney, Los Angeles, Night, Outdoor, Single-Shot | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
So I did as I promised! Fall is so unbelievably gorgeous up here in the Berkshires that I just had to go out with my camera to get some shots. I took a short hike up to the top of Stone Hill (by short I mean a 200 foot walk…) which is located behind the Clark Art Institute where I’m currently interning. It was an overcast day, and lacking interesting clouds I decided I’d focus on the amazing natural beauty up on top of the hill. It really speaks for itself, but every single tree goes through the fall season at slightly different time, and the staggered colors let you see the entire process at one time. It’s truly breathtaking and I’m certainly not used to it as we have nothing like this in Atlanta! This particular tree caught my eye, as it was essentially done shedding its leaves, while the others around it were in the various stages.
This one was very tricky to process, as Photomatix kept wanting to make the different areas of sky in between the branches vastly different tones.
I also took a quick shot of the Clark a few days later when the skies were clear. The building is iconic, and although they are about to begin an incredible construction project that will really transform the place internally and allow for even more incredible art to be displayed, the front will remain the same. I love spending time at the museum and the surrounding grounds and trails; I’ve taken to bringing my homework with me and sitting on a bench in the middle of the woods. It’s just a wonderful place to be.
The darker stone building that you can barely see to the left is the Manton Research Center, home to a vast library that will soon be even more accessible to the public.
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 5D Mark II, Handheld HDR, Landscape, Massachusetts, Nature, Outdoor, Tucker | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
Yellowstone is an oddity. The geysers and bizarre geothermal features are the big ticket attractions but you find yourself forgetting about the “tamer” brand of landscape features that one comes to associate with National Parks. Really awesome waterfalls and crazy big yellow canyons would be examples of such. The next day, I went back to this lookout with a longer lens and punched in to see a bit more of the brink in a *gasp* non-HDR shot of the falls and the start of the gorge. Frankly, I’m appalled that none of my stuff from Yellowstone has made it onto the site yet so I will be working in the coming weeks to get more National Park material out of my Aperture library and onto TAG. Also, I’m working on putting together a ghosting walkthrough that should hopefully help you make sense of how to solve movement-heavy scenes in HDR (or at least how I like to do it, I’m sure there’s half a dozen different ways that work). Until then, enjoy the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone National Park.
At the backend of the canyon lies the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, clocking in at a healthy 308-foot drop. If you view the image at full resolution, you can make out the specks of color just above and to the right of the brink — park visitors who have braved the treacherously steep switchbacks down the far side of the canyon wall: Yellowstone National Park, WY
A more traditional take on Lower Falls… this is by no means the first time this exact angle has been taken, I'm afraid.
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Andrew's Favorites, Landscape, Outdoor, Yellowstone NP | 3 Comments »
Admittedly, It’s been far too long since my last post, and for once I cannot attribute this to a lack of material, as I still have a lot from Hawaii and TONS from Yosemite to process. My problem now is time, as classes have started and I’ve got lots of work for those, in addition to beginning an internship at the Clark Art Institute here in Williamstown. I’m excited to continue working at a museum, as my experience at the High was incredible. Anyway, here’s a shot from Yosemite, from the first day we were there. We trekked out to Happy Isles, an easy walk, and spent hours composing shots and just generally taking HDRs. We waded out into the river after a while, and set up the tripod rather precariously on some rocks to get a neat vantage point. The HDR process really lets the color of the sunlight underwater shine through, something that is hard to see even with your own eye. I was afraid that this image would be a a pain to process because of the rapidly moving water, but I didn’t end up having to do anything with it and am pleased with the result. I will try my best to find time to process more images over the next few months, but for now, here’s this shot.
A series of fallen trees and well-placed rocks allowed us to walk above the river nearly endlessly, providing many cool places to shoot.
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 5D Mark II, Landscape, Nature, Outdoor, Tucker, Yosemite | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
As our road trip came to a close this summer, Disneyland was our final stop before the family headed to LAX and made a break for the East Coast again. For us, Disneyland has a handful of very special places (not a super unique claim, no doubt you’ve got your own favorite nooks) and the Blue Bayou restaurant may just be at the top of that list. Situating its guests in a simulated New Orleans evening on a back patio, it is the end-all be-all of how to do dining atmosphere with style. I may have been here eight or nine times in my life and pretty much each time I’ve tried to take a picture of it that I liked… and I finally have one. Just after being seated, I spotted a freshly cleared table overlooking the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Knowing the table would be vacant for less than five minutes, I quickly built my tripod and framed up. I realize not everybody in the world is a 30 minute drive from the Happiest Place on Earth, but next time you plan on visiting, call ahead and make a reservation at the Blue Bayou for a classy lunch or dinner. Order the gumbo. Regarding some technicalities, the 16-35mm on the 7D is really a 26-56mm and though that means my wide angle lens is not being fully realized, it keeps me honest with my framing. Whereas a full frame body would have given me the easy option of including the entire seating area, this 26mm view allowed a “wide but not obnoxiously so” composition that I like very much.
The Blue Bayou restaurant is far and away my favorite dining experience at Disneyland (Disney World just wishes they had one): Anaheim CA
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Disney, Indoor, Los Angeles | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
Before Tucker and Giacomo came to visit LA a few weeks back, my family embarked on a classic road trip to get me and my car back across the country for the fall semester. As such, we saw it fit to stop by a few places “on the way” from Atlanta to LA: Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Las Vegas. Needless to say, Vegas was the only one of these stops that was even close to being “on the way.” I’d like to eventually make my way back up to Vegas when I get a chance, most of what I was shooting while we were there was a spur of the moment, “I wonder what this’ll look like” kind of deal. Now that I’ve got a better sense of the area, I feel like I would be able to get some better material with a more planned out return trip.
As it happens, there are some casinos in the town. And these casinos tend to go… overboard in the theming department. One of the most impressively themed properties I wandered around was The Venetian, complete with functional canals (outdoor and indoor), St. Marks-esque plazas and archways, and generally awesome Italian Renaissance imagery. A long time ago, I saw this image over at stuckincustoms and was stunned that a hotel lobby could ever be so ludicrous. Naturally I decided to take a crack at the same shot, albeit with a tighter framing to cut back on the Footceiling effect that wide angle images usually suffer from (in which the photographer’s feet and the room’s ceiling are able to simultaneously squeeze into frame). In all seriousness though, I am very pleased with how this turned out. The white balance certainly took some after-the-fact loving to coax it back into normalcy but hey, that’s why you shoot in RAW. In the spirit of Las Vegas showmanship and general extravagance, I let this one sit on the tone mapping burner a little longer than normal. It’s a jaw dropping room to experience firsthand and I’d prefer to remember it as the crazy, colorful, and extravagantly themed surprise that my mind first encountered.
This entrance atrium is circular and (as evidenced by the stuckincustoms image) is therefore very susceptible to glaring lens distortion that can make some of the room’s upper arches look twice as big as others despite their being the same size. Actually, it’s probably better that I don’t shoot on a full frame body right now because my 16-35mm is never truly any wider than 26mm, lessening that disconcerting distortion while making me put a little more consideration into composition. Super wide angle (true 14mm or thereabouts) naturally draws an initial “wow” reaction because it’s so shockingly wide… but if you’re not careful it can turn into a shallow “wow” crutch for an otherwise unremarkable shot, giving you an freshly distorted but still unremarkable shot. Just my two cents.
At any rate, there’s PLENTY more to come from the Yellowstone/Tetons/Vegas/Disneyland cornucopia — And that’s just me! I left 90% of the Yosemite stuff to Tucker and Giacomo so there’s lots more goodies around the corner…
Great hotel, great lobby. Unfortunately, the canals were drained and the gondolas were being serviced while we were there… an excuse to go back some other time: Las Vegas, NV
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Architecture, Indoor, Las Vegas | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
This will be the first of many posts from our recent trip to Yosemite! This was a particularly fun trip as it was the first excursion that all three members of TAG have ever undertaken together; all of our other content on this site has been generated individually or in twos as we capture images from our travels. It was very fun to be hiking around with Giacomo and Andrew, each with their own backpack full of lenses/tripods and camera slung around their neck, and to come to a great lookout site and say “Ok, lets post up here for some HDRs.” Normally whoever you’re traveling with will roll their eyes and say “ok, but just don’t take as long as you did LAST time…” but we must have spent hours just setting up and shooting wherever we felt like it. We spent a particularly long time at the outlook on Glacier Point (we were there from about 5pm to 11pm or so!) Andrew and Giacomo had done the Yosemite trip last year around this time, and you may recall some shots they posted from that trip, but the Glacier Point overlook was one spot that they hadn’t come to, so we decided to check it out. It was a bit of a drive, but once you’re there you have an incredible panoramic view of Yosemite Valley and all of the mountains surrounding it, including, of course, the iconic peak of Half Dome. We plunked down all our backpacks, tripods, and cameras in a little corner, and literally sat there eating sandwiches, photographing chipmunks, and taking the occasional HDR as the light changed. The point of the whole thing was to get star trails and night photography, but this shot I’m posting to kick off the Yosemite HDRs is actually one from minutes before sunset. This was taken in that 1 minute span of time where the sun has just a sliver remaining above the horizon, and it cast this amazing red glow that hit just the top of Half Dome and a few other mountains. I will post at least 2 or 3 more from Glacier Point in the coming weeks, but the star trail images take a lot longer to process, particularly if I want to make pseudo-HDRs out of them, which I intend to at least try. Anyway, here is the view of Half Dome right before sunset, from Glacier Point.
About half an hour later all of the lights come on along the streets and in the houses on the valley floor.
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 5D Mark II, Landscape, Nature, Outdoor, Sunset, Tucker, Yosemite | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
Haven’t posted anything for a while! Now that my computer has caught up to me in LA I finally have some time to sit down and look back at the last month or so of my life: Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Las Vegas, Disneyland. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot to sift through. This first one I’ve chosen to share is easily one of my favorites and it comes bundled with plenty of neat historical relevance. In case there was any confusion out there, NO I was not the first person to take a picture of the Teton Range from this convenient little pull off. Most notably, perhaps, would be Ansel Adams’s work from the Snake River Overlook, though his most famous image from here was framed to only include the Grand Teton (the largest and most golden mountain in my picture below) and the strip of the Snake River right in front of it. Adams is a fun topic of discussion by himself – actually, I like to think of him as one of the pioneers of the HDR mindset. His Zone System allowed him to measure the range of exposure “zones” within his frame, useful for determining the number of stops between the darkest and the brightest parts of the image. Based on that, development times could be tweaked to stretch a fairly flat image (with a small zone range) into a more contrasty image via careful overdevelopment or to compress an image with unavoidable over/underexposure into a smaller and more manageable zone range via underdevelopment. I have no intention of judging myself against Adams but the mindset and final goals are similar: tweak an exposure after you’ve taken it in such a way that the greatest amount of detail can be simultaneously shown in the highlights and shadows. He used darkroom magic, we use software magic.
Enough about him though, let’s talk about me.
We left the Jackson Lake Lodge about 5:15am and sped up the road a few miles to get to the overlook. Over the next 45 minutes or so, the mountains began to glow as the sun cleared the eastern horizon directly behind us. Half an hour later we were all asleep at the lodge again. It was summer after all and I was determined to get unhealthy amounts of sleep.
So what does "Teton" even mean? The early French who explored this area named the range "les Trois Tétons," or "the three breasts." Surprised? Grand Teton NP, Wyoming
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Andrew, Andrew's Favorites, Grand Tetons NP, Landscape, Nature, Outdoor | Like our work? Be the first to comment! »
Finally.
The day after arriving in New Zealand (it feels like just a few days ago-it’s been over a month!) Andrew and I got up early to go on a boat ride, but first we went out to the beach in front of our hotel and I shot a panorama with his camera. The view from the east coast of the south island, from the Kaikoura peninsula where we were, was pretty much amazing, and I tried to capture it with this picture. I lack Andrew’s finesse in processing these HDR panoramas, so it took me a while to get it into good shape. Now that I know how, I want to do more!!! Argh. Unfortunately I’m on my way back to Atlanta now, so I may not have a huge amount of picture opportunities in the near future. Fortunately, Andrew, Tucker, and I just got done with a trip to Yosemite, and I have some pictures from my trip to Australia, and Andrew also has been around to several other national parks, so we should have some serious HDRs in the pipe.
The beach wasn't actually so curvy, the panorama just distorts perspective some.
Posted in 16-35mm f/2.8L, 7D, Giacomo, Giacomo's Favorites, Kaikoura, New Zealand, Outdoor, Sun in frame | 2 Comments »
Castello Ricasoli
Footpath near Mulholland Drive
Iron Man Balcony (Disney Concert Hall)
Embarrassment/Malibu #1