Last Tenth

looking for that last tenth

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Kauai

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Delta 2 Rocket Launch from Vandenberg AFB

This launch was originally supposed to happen on Thurs morning but there was no way I could make that due to work.  Then it was delayed to Friday.  Then Saturday, which made it a possibility.  The night before, I saw that the forecast called for clear skies, which is a rarity at Vandenberg.  This plus the fact the launch was during blue hour, I really wanted to go.  After searching google, I found a good vantage point for this particular launch pad.  

I woke up at 1:30a & saw the forecast still called for clear skies so I set off on a 4 hour drive.  It was cloudy/foggy the entire way there, which had me doubting my decision.  Once at the site though, there was no fog, just low clouds & clear overhead.  

This being my first launch, I was conservative in how I set up the shot.  I had the pad centered in landscape.  I really need a wider angle lens and to set it up in portrait mode but that'll be next time.  This was a 67 second exposure at f11, which was pretty much on the money for pre-sunrise skies.  Finally learning & retaining something after all this time.

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I’ve always wanted to go to the 24 Hour race at Daytona but never found the time. I still didn’t have time this year but made the commitment to go & let the chips fall where they may. That resulted in working on a laptop in the hotel room for 23 hours straight the Thurs-Fri before the race while finishing a project. I slept right up to the 2:10p Sat start of the race & cruised to the race track. This ended up paying off in the early morning when I was only halfway through my day while everyone was about to fall over. Some Steak & Shake and coffee from Krispy Kreme at 4am and I was good to go for the rest of the day.

An experiment at 1/3s. That’s a single scoring pylon w/ the red numbers that I could streak across the background. I tried a bunch of shots but could never get the car in sharp focus. Car is going maybe 140mph so this will be a miracle shot but I’m already planning for next year & am determined to get it.

A couple pics from the chicane on the backstretch at around 11pm. No one else was crazy/stupid enough to attempt to take pics from this location but I was determined to capture the glowing brake rotors of the prototype cars. This is from a 400mm lens, fully zoomed, panning at 1/13th of second. They’re a little grainy because even at 1/13s, there was so little light available I had to use ISO 1600.

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Las Vegas

A couple views from Vegas from our hotel room during SEMA show weekend.  Somehow our standard hotel room was upgraded to an absolutely insane sky villa, which had the balcony hot tub shown.  The overall view of The Strip was from my bathroom (!), which explains the slightly odd light reflections due to the glass. Really a once in a lifetime experience.

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Holidays in the Bay Area

Some views of the San Francisco w/ Christmas lights on the Embarcadero Center & the TransAmerica Pyramid.  Also a shot of the 4th St. shopping district in Berkeley, late at night after everyone has gone.

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Helicopter Light Trails

Police helicopter overhead again tonight as protestors blocked the freeway.  Stacked a dozen 30 second exposures to capture the light trails.

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Lunar Eclipse 

Lunar eclipse a few nights ago.  After carefully setting up the camera, futzing w/ the focus for a while, I couldn't figure out why these were turning out OK but not great.  The eclipsed moon seemed so dim, it was impossible to get the shutter speed high enough for a sharp pic w/o bumping the ISO to 3200, which made the image noisy.  

Today I realized I had left the 2-stop neutral density filter on the lens.  Basically I was shooting the moon w/ a dark pair of sunglasses on the camera.  

I am a fucking idiot.

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iPhone 6+ Video

Messing w/ iPhone time lapse feature.  Even the editing & addition of music was done on an app.  Unreal.  If time lapse wasn't such a huge time suck, I'd be addicted.

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Indycar @ Sears Point

#12 Will Power catching oversteer over the top of Turn 2 at Sears Point & a look into the eyes of #8 Ryan Briscoe.  This was on one of Power’s two hot laps during the final 6 qualifying session.  He put it on the pole w/ a track record, of course. 

This pic of Willy P is really why I bought all this photography equipment - to be able to catch someone at the top of their game, absolutely on the limit, flicking it sideways while cresting the hill at Sears.  Probably my most satisfying photography moment when I saw that image appear on the back of the camera.

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Downtown Los Angeles @ 2 AM

These are the views from the John Ferraro Building (formerly Los Angeles Department of Power & Water building) and from Mulholland Drive.  The Hollywood Bowl overlook was closed so this was from just down the hill.  

That’s how photography works for me.  Find/research a spot to shoot and by accident discover a new view.  Take crappy pics from the new view, during processing figure out all the mistakes I made, go out again, execute the shot I wanted and while doing so, discover another new place.  Rinse, repeat.

Next time in LA, I want to properly make it to the Hollywood Bowl overlook and the Griffith Observatory to get the classic shots of the entire LA basin.

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Monterey Historics - Laguna Seca

Panning shot at Turn 4 of the AAR-Toyota Eagle Mark III which dominated IMSA prototype racing in the early 90's.  800 hp from a 2.1 liter engine and incredible downforce.  Set the lap record at Laguna Seca in 1993, faster than the Indycar record at the time.  The fastest machine during an era of factory-supported (read expensive) prototype racing.

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Supermoon

Supermoon over Diablo Valley.  Unfortunately obscured when rising over the mountain, the full moon was later visible higher in the sky.  Using a fully zoomed 80-400mm lens w/ a 1.4x teleconverter.  Image cropped.

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Richmond - San Rafael Bridge

Inspired by a similar shot on 500px.  Had to scramble up a steep hill next to the freeway to get the right position for this shot.  There was an even better vantage point at the top of the hill but about 3/4 of the way up there was a fence which I had no desire to climb over. On the other side of the fence is San Quentin prison (maximum security state prison).  I thought I might be chased away from this spot but no one bothered me.  Took lots of pictures over 2 hours as the sun set but the images w/ the light trails right before full darkness were the winners.  

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San Francisco

View from bike overpass above Hwy 101.  Long exposure at blue hour.  Difficult to balance headlight exposure & the background.  Plus all those stupid & ugly power lines made this shot less than satisfying.

Drove up to the Twin Peaks lookout & was blown away by the view.  Have to visit this again & try to get a shot straight down Market St.

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Full Moon over San Francisco & Golden Gate

Did some research to figure out the position of the full moon relative to the city and ended up at Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands to take these shots.  There were hundreds of other photographers out there as I drove up the hill past their DSLRs mounted on tripods.  Didn't get the settings quite right.  Needed a faster shutter speed to have a sharper moon.  These are too grainy w/ the bumped up ISO settings.  Lessons learned.

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Star Trails

Inspired by the ISS image, this is my attempt at a star trail photo.  This photo is composed of 200 separate 30 second exposures taken consecutively.  The axis of rotation is centered on the North Star.  Yet another photo that surprised me. http://startrails.de is the software that stacks the images.  Simple to use & highly recommended.  It's free but I ended up making a donation to the software writer.  Need a stronger foreground to make a better photo but I was just happy 2 hours of waiting was not in vain.

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International Space Station

http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ provides text alerts when the ISS will fly over your location.  Got this 30 sec exposure of ISS flyby from a deserted county park parking lot at 2AM.