View allAll Photos Tagged lowangle
A good friend and former baseball teammate of mine (who's a diehard Boston Red Sox fan) texted me from Baltimore Monday night with the message "first row behind home. Camden". For the better part of my life, baseball was my passion and obsession, both as a fan and a player. My dad and I had 2 tickets about 15 rows behind home plate for the Baltimore Orioles even for a couple seasons after he retired and moved 1,200 miles away. They had a losing record for 14 straight seasons until 2012 and during that time, I often ended up going alone--unable to convince anyone to devote 5 hours to see a lousy team play--but I really didn't mind. The sounds of the game always relaxed me and for a long time, I didn't think there was much better than a evening of baseball with nice weather.
When I got into photography a couple years ago, my interests began to shift a bit. I started to spend more and more evenings away from baseball, often in the middle of the Maryland countryside shooting the sunset with the game broadcast playing on my phone and Scotch by my side.I've been in California for nearly the entire baseball season now and I went to just 1 Dodgers game all summer though I've spent probably 40 nights standing by the ocean's edge with my camera and tripod.
The sounds of the ocean have now supplanted the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat though I always seem to have a radio broadcast of the Orioles playing on my phone or if it's sundown, Vin Scully telling his amazing stories during the Dodgers games. This shot was right after arriving when it was just beginning to get dark but well before the rich colors of the sunset appeared. There wasn't much wind at all which is another reason I mostly skipped long exposures until after sunset. I would've wasted a ton of time to get very little cloud blur. These cloud formations barely moved at all it seemed until it was too dark to tell otherwise. I'm angled more South here than West which accounts for the color of the sky. Once I turned and saw the sunset, my direction of focus changed immediately.
I texted him back tuesday with yesterday's sunset panorama post and the message that while he was at the game, I was at Venice Beach shooting this sky. I think we both were probably a little jealous of how the other got to spend their Monday night :)
Venice Beach
Venice, California
September 19th, 2016
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@18mm
ISO 100
f/8
1/5th second
CPL
This is what you see when you eat the wrong kind of mushrooms. A fanciful take on this week's Looking Close... On Friday Challenge, Mushrooms.
Mallard hen in the first few rays of morning sunlight. I really cant get enough of this lens at low angle.
Here's another 2 shot panorama from my last visit to Venice Beach when huge gray and blue clouds smothered most of the skyline over the Pacific. I've written a lot about the day I had there and will try not to repeat too many things but there's always that chance haha. I took about 360 shots on the day covering the hour before sunset until about an hour after and so far I've tried to mix up the posts to show all the different aspects I saw while there. There's been some examples of the waves, the reflections, the dark sky with patches of incredibly bright sunlight pouring through, a few 2-4 shot panoramas and some color in the opposite directions but I guess this is the first post that shows the tiny strip of sunset I've described briefly.
When I was driving there, I fully expected cloudy conditions since the view outside the windshield is the same I'd eventually see at Venice. When I leave the apartment, I can see bits of sky in all directions from around Sunset Blvd and in the event I have time to choose my destination, I'll pull up the street view GPS and see if any locations I've visited head in the direction of the most interesting clouds or color. On this day however, I made up my mind to go to Venice. The only question would be whether the sky would allow any color to come through. For the most part, the answer was no and generally, all the photos I shot are primarily blue or gray from the heavy cloud cover.
The reflections were pretty amazing even though I expected the tide to be higher from some of the rain the few days prior and the waves were fairly impressive. It seems that when I'm here on the flat, straight shore, my default is becoming panoramas even though there's less margin for error and more work to get them to fit. I can get so close to the water and the view between the pier and the the rocks by the lifeguard headquarters is completely unobstructed, so it always feels like even 18mm from that close doesn't get the full feel of what I'm seeing with my own eyes. I think I prefer 2 frames at 18mm since it's easier to get the perspective right but I can pull off 3 frames if I crop a bit at the ends. There's always this weird optical illusion to me that the horizon is crooked mainly because the surf isn't always exactly parallel to it and this shot to some degree shows that. The horizon is straight and the angle of the breaking waves broke left to right leaving it slightly askew.
I still have a lot of interesting shots and views to show from here but I will try to mix in some other, less gloomy captures from elsewhere and also some new panoramas of downtown LA from different much different angles than I've done in the past. Oh, and of course I'll still be giving you the occasional Scotch portrait as he continues to mend from his surgery. Today started badly with us waiting at the vet for it to open but since getting back around 10AM, he's been feeling well, is happy and about as quiet as I can remember since he was 11 or so. I'm still really optimistic that the surgery will be a success and can't wait to remove the sutures in about 2 weeks and let him get back to the activities he used to love and that kept him young for so many years :)
WHEN & WHERE
Venice Beach
Venice, California
October 30th, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@18mm
2 shot panorama
ISO 100
f/9
1/13th second
CPL
my snowdrops are making their appearance just as the last of the recent snow is finally melting away.
iNaturalist link www.inaturalist.org/observations/263162346
Jenny Pansing photos
Found in the forest, when I was walking with my dog. It grew just by the path :)
The birch bolete (Leccinum scabrum), commonly known also as the rough-stemmed bolete or scaber stalk, is an edible mushroom in the family Boletaceae. The birch bolete is widespread in Europe, in the Himalayas in Asia, and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, occurring only in mycorrhizal association with birch trees. It fruits from June to October. This mushroom is also becoming increasingly common in Australia and New Zealand where it is likely introduced. Leccinum scabrum is found in mycorrhiza with birch trees. The birch bolete is edible and is especially enjoyable pickled in brine or vinegar. It is used also in mixed mushroom dishes, fried or steamed.
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Pierwszy grzybek znaleziony w tym roku, podczas spaceru z psicą po lesie. Rósł prawie na ścieżce, więc nie dało się go nie zauważyć :)
Koźlarz babka (Leccinum scabrum) – gatunek grzybów z rodziny borowikowatych. Występuje na całej półkuli północnej. Na Półwyspie Skandynawskim sięga po 66o szerokości geograficznej. Na półkuli południowej podano jego występowanie tylko w Australii i Nowej Zelandii. W Europie Środkowej jest pospolity. Również w Polsce występuje pospolicie od lata do jesieni. Rośnie na ziemi, w liściastych oraz mieszanych, często także poza lasem. Rośnie wyłącznie pod brzozami, tworzy bowiem z nimi mikoryzę.
Cape Bojeador Lighthouse, also known as Burgos Lighthouse, is a cultural heritage structure in Burgos, Ilocos Norte, that was established during the Spanish Colonial period in the Philippines. It was first lit on March 30, 1892, and is set high on Vigia de Nagpartian Hill overlooking the scenic Cape Bojeador where early galleons used to sail by. After over 100 years, it still functions as a welcoming beacon to the international ships that enter the Philippine Archipelago from the north and guide them safely away from the rocky coast of the town.
Anytime the weather called for clouds over the summer, I tried to make sure I was able to at least go somewhere with an open west facing view to snap some shots. I learned quickly that the [non-sunny] weather forecasts are almost always wrong around Los Angeles. When you look at a 10 day forecast and it's entirely sunny during that time, an occasional cloud will sneak in here and there but generally, summer in LA is dry, sunny and hazy or clear. On the rare chance the forecast calls for cloudy skies, at least 2/3 times ends in a disappointingly clear sky.
I've driven to Venice 6 times in the previous month, each time with the promise of clouds in the forecast. The skyline I see when driving the hour to Venice is basically the same skyline I should expect to see once there and yet only half of those 6 trips resulted in a cloudy sky. It almost feels like weather reports are taunting me because it might say cloudy with the only break being the hour surrounding sundown or the forecast will say cloudy and yet 45 minutes into the drive, I'll realize that the report is incorrect. I trust my eyes now more than any forecast and one of the biggest advantages of Venice for me is that it's the only place I visit that gives me a full preview of the sky from the start to end of my trip.
Of course the one aspect of weather that is easier to accurate report is tide and height of the waves. While it seems almost every day has some warning of larger than "normal" surf, I typically ignore it since my main focus is the sky. When I headed to Venice last Saturday, the forecast was calling for 10 straight days of clear and sunny beginning the following day so I decided to go, despite turning around the previous 2 trips due to blank skies. I was hoping for something colorful and another opportunity to shoot reflections on what I consider a perfect shoreline for them. Due to traffic and Saturday parking issues at Venice, I arrived on the beach about 5 minutes before the sun dipped below the clouds and horizon. Wind was relatively high compared to previous trips and the low tide I had almost come to expect was replaced with high surf and a hide tide. The normally reflective, flat shoreline was now a duller, kinda muddy version that was also maybe 60ft shorter than normal.
I did get the clouds I wanted which was a plus, but I also wanted the reflections and a bit more time to shoot the setting sun. I basically had enough time to set up quickly, and get a few shots of the sun as it cut through that cloud in the middle. I normally adjust my focus on the reflective shoreline but with so little non moving surface area, I decided to follow this bird around and focus on him when he'd pause or wander into the frame. Generally, I never focus the lens on the sky anymore because there’s not much to latch focus on and I’d much rather have a detailed foreground that a marginally more detailed sky but no foreground definition. Skies like this at least offer me enough ambient light after the sun sets that I still can get some lower light shots in but I ended up driving more than an hour in traffic, with 15 minutes to find a semi legal parking space and an hour back for 10 minutes of nice shooting conditions of shooting which bummed me out a bit. I'm going to force myself next time the weather is favorable to arrive much earlier and perhaps the next time there's a high tide, I'll pick a location where the waves will work in my favor rather than against. I'll also be sure to check the surf forecast before taking Scotch here since the flat shoreline is the sole reason I want to bring him (well and lack of people after dark).
WHERE & WHEN
Venice Beach
Venice, California
October 15th, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF-S18-135mm IS STM
@62mm
ISO 100
f/8
1/25th second
CPL
For a few months now I’ve been engaged on a project in conjunction with a school to produce for them a series of images, and wall art, of their school grounds and building throughout the seasons. Amongst the ones I just delivered last week, from the winter season, is this multi-shot vertical panorama, taken as a series of four images and stitched together in Lightroom and finalised in Photoshop.
I wanted a very low view point to emphasise the building’s angles, and the logo painted on the drive. Knowing that there would be some distortion to deal with in post, due to the wide angle lens and low view, I decided to use the Hi Res Mode on my Olympus to get as many pixels as I could to cater for those that I would ultimately lose in the correction.
The final wall art image was 40 x 20 inches, which was more or less the final stitched image's native size.
Another example of getting more out of. small sensor!
Olympus EM1 Mk2 (Hi Res Mode)
Panasonic Leica 8-18
*** Featured in Explore 7th April 2021, many thanks to all 🙏 ***
Thank you, my friends, for all the views, faves and comments.
Great Blue heron (Ardea herodias).
Wildwood lake, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
American bullfrog. Wildwood Park, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Thank you for the visit!
Views nice full screen. L then F11
This photo is from last winter, but I’m posting it now because it just won an honorable mention in the Mobile Photography Awards! Actually, I got three honorable mentions in the contest - see if you can find the other two, which will give you an excuse to browse the rest of the winners and honorable mentions in all the categories.
Shot with iPhone 6s - and this shot took some real effort! I came by early in the morning when the snow was starting to fall to position the chairs the way I wanted them, and then I came back a few hours later when the snow had built up on them and took probably around a hundred shots of this scene both with my mirrorless camera and with my iPhone 6s, and then spent ages sorting them out and choosing my favorites. It was particularly hard to get the low angle lined up correctly with the iPhone since it doesn’t have an articulating screen. But the iPhone was also easier to use in the falling snow than the mirrorless camera, because snow rarely hits or sticks to the tiny iPhone lens, while with the bigger lens I was constantly having to wipe it off every few seconds and eventually it was just too wet to use. I wonder if anyone saw me crouching on the ground there for ages taking photos of these chairs in the heavy falling snow…
Also, this photo is currently hanging at the Center For Arts At The Armory in Somerville MA.
Panorama of the Eiffel Tower
This was quite an interesting idea of me. There are thousands of photos on the internet of the Eiffel tower taken frontally. So I had this idea to flip my camera 45° from its vertical position to create an interesting angle of the tower. But in order to fit in the whole construction from its foot to the top, there was no other way but to shoot it in 3 steps.
The 3 photos where then merged together in Photoshop.
Personally I believe it worked out well.
Please do not copy without my permission!
Thank you for visiting my page! Feel free to also fave and leave a comment on the photo to let me know what you think.
I spent most of the sunny, cloudless summer focusing more on portraits of my Scotch and spending time with him out of the heat. The few times I ventured out with the promise of clouds in the forecast left me mostly disappointed and confused by how weather works apparently. I often look up weather history when I post photos to help me both remember conditions a bit better and explain why I chose to shoot the way I did and often the conditions I see when I shoot are vastly different in the weather history for that exact location and time. It's odd to me that some of the most impressive skies I saw last winter say "clear" or "mostly clear" in the history. I'm equally confused when I go to a location listed as cloudy and see nothing but bright, clear skies overhead.
In any event, the forecast this past monday and tuesday called for overcast skies for the first time in about 2 months so I was deturmined to go somewhere to shoot what I hoped would be an interesting sunset and shake off the summer rust. I got a late start to Malibu Pier Monday due to my own poor time management and unpredictable traffic on my route, I arrived the Pier just after what would have been the sunset. I was able to follow the gray overcast skies as soon as I got onto the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica but there was absolutely no color and no sign of any potential sunset. The clouds were smothering the entire horizon.
The pier--like so many of my previous trips--was virtually empty with only a few people wandering down in while I was there. The gray skies turned blue with the night and it was extremely difficult to see beyond the pier. The only ambient light I could see were from the lamps that lit up the pier and I actually wasn't quite sure what the clouds looked like until I got home and bumped up the brightness a bit. This is also not the first time I've seen multi colored reflections from those lights even though they really don't seem all that different when you look at the source. I don't know if they adjust the bulbs to be like this but I've definitely taken shots that are a lot more consistent in the reflection colors as well as ones that look like this.
I'll admit I didn't stay long because of the extremely dark sky and what seemed like abnormal light saturation coming from the pier on most of my long exposures and went home pretty disappointed. I didn't even take quicker shutter shots as a base for color and once I got home and saw how the clouds looked, I was disappointed I didn't stay longer. I guess that's part of the process and learning experience but I'm glad that fall is finally here and the skies will be full and colorful again soon. If this had been back in June or so and I knew it would be weeks or months between cloudy days, I'd be much more annoyed by the short visit and long roundtrip.
The limited cloudy days--including this shoot and the following day--made it really difficult to choose a location since I really only had one shot at a good pick. I couldn't exactly head to Venice for the sunset and then get over to Malibu if the conditions weren't to my liking and I chose Malibu because of the ease of access, the familiarity and my love of this pier. If it was feasible, I'd love to create an app that uses drone footage to give live updates on crowds at touristy places. I'd love to know if Venice is less crowded than Huntington Beach for example at a particular time so i could factor that into my location choice. It's easy to find surf and tide information online, weather information on my phone and driving traffic from my car but how crowded these locations actually are is out of control it seems and a few times the extra 20 minutes to park and find a clean, open spot on the beach have been the difference between sunset and dusk.
Malibu Pier
Malibu, California
September 12th, 2016
SETTINGS:
Canon T4i
EF-S 18-135mm IS STM
@24mm
ISO 100
f/8
33 seconds
Fujifilm X-T20
XF 56mm/f1.2
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Sad to see Mexico go out despite that great second half performance
Siouxsie And The Banshees - Shadowtime
CP H62 holds at CN Robbins on the Stamford Sub, waiting for RTC to grant them a pass-stop to return to their train as daylight fades one day before the summer solstice.
I alluded to this day in my Stanpac post, having been my first attempt at documenting them being switched this summer. Prior to my recent epiphany that Stanpac is primarily worked by H61, I crossed the border on the Thursday immediately preceding the first day of summer on June 19th, or Juneteenth as it's come to be known in Buffalo and across the U.S. For Buffalo hockey fans, this is a day which lives in infamy however, as the famous Dallas Stars "no goal" happened on that day in 1999, securing a game six overtime Stanley Cup victory for Dallas over our hometown Buffalo Sabres. The 19th is also the birthday of someone whom I used to be very close with but fell out some years ago. So you could say I have some motivation to fill the 19th with better memories to offset all the negative ones associated with that day. This photo is one of my favorites I've snapped this year, so you could say I did alright on the memory front this year.
After picking up a couple friends in Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, we set off for Welland Yard with the hopes we'd hear the northbound unit on H62 calling for permission up to mile 39 on the Hamilton Sub. Instead we were greeted with the southbound unit calling for South Siding Switch Welland to Station Namesign Brookfield East, where the Hamilton Sub meets the CN Stamford Sub. This connection is used multiple times daily by CP and CN, mostly for CP road trains heading to and from the States, but also CN and CP locals interchanging on each other's railroads. Such was the case for H62 on this evening, handling an interchange run to CN's Southern Yard, where cars for/from some of CP's customers are obtained/passed off. Typically the other six days of the week, H61 will handle this run, but Thursdays seem to be a common exception to H61 covering that duty, instead passing it off to their second shift comrades who otherwise don't have any customers to serve on Thursday nights. This may be because H61 covers the Stanpac run to Smithville, and as a trade off H62 will venture over to CN in their place. Personally, I had never seen H62 make a Southern run. I heard them do it once way back in March this year, but I chalked it up as a one-off. Turns out this would become commonplace for them as a Thursday night activity throughout the summer. Intrigued by the different shot possibilities with the lighting, we stuck around in this day despite it not being what we were after. We set up our first spot at Yager on the Stamford Sub, a control point immediately south of Southern Yard, thinking we'd be shooting them pulling north. One of my friends has ATCS access for CN in the area, and we were surprised to find them lined past the west leg of the wye which they'd normally take up to Southern. Instead they were pulling past Robbins and shoving to the yard, resulting in a fake southbound shot at Yager.
While the crew worked, we couldn't help but speculate what they'd do coming back from Southern. Perhaps they'd shove back down to Robbins? Maybe they'd pull back south and run around? Was that leg of the wye actually out of service all night? Would they still run up to Smithville after getting back to Welland? (Spoiler: no.) The crew was friendly in this job since the departure of the old engineer who absolutely despised railfans, so we had that at least working in our favor, without fear of being called in anywhere we wanted to shoot them. The engineer that night even leaned out the cab window to yell hello at us when they first departed Welland. Huge improvement from past experiences with this job. Regardless of our speculation on the next move, the decision was to head to Robbins because we'd likely get something out of this job there if the wye was indeed out of service. Sure enough, the crew elected to pull back south, lined down the main on ATCS. In fact, at first it appeared they were lined all the way to Fort Erie without any opposing traffic, but that later turned out to be the routing for late night CN job L539, heading to CSX Frontier Yard from Port Robinson. By the time H62 was back down at Robbins, taking their sweet time to get there, sunset was approaching on the second longest daylight day of the year. They got their small train tied down on the south track not far past the eastern end of Robbins, cut away and ran light all the way to Robbins East, then back towards us up the north track to run around. The crew pulled up just past where we were set up and toned up RTC to obtain their pass-stop authorization with permission to return to their train. L530 was in Fort Erie at this point, returning from their interchange run to South Buffalo, and L539 was departing Port Robinson waiting for CP to get out of the way. With the crew stopped and blue hour setting in, we were firing off all the shots we could of them stopped at one of the Niagara region's iconic searchlight gantries. I caught a glimpse of the reflection on the rail and got down super low for this one, while listening to the crew repeating the pass-stop back to RTC three or four times, with a couple missed words here and there, radios cutting in and out. RTC takes their read-backs a lot more serious than the U.S. railroads it seems, with some flubbing of words and margin for error usually built in on NS and CSX. Not in Canada though. However many tries it takes to get something right word for word, they will make their crews repeat it until it's perfect. At last, H62 finally had their permission back against their train. They had to hold on the south track as L539 circumvented them on the north track, essentially running a through train into the siding to get around a stopped train on the main. We call that a River Line meet around here. After getting a couple short exposures of the signals and headlights of L539 passing, darkness had fallen for good across the region, and mosquitoes were becoming abundant. It was time to walk back to the car and call it a night. Not at all what I had hoped to see on this small trip, but some shots I'm no doubt thankful to have gotten that day in lieu of the one I came for. Now that I have both, I really can't complain at all. It's unique to say the least, and certainly something I don't expect to see again since the wye has been back in service. Gotta appreciate the little moments when you get the chance.