Scotty's Castle - Death Valley National Park (Part 6)

At the end of November last year (2012), I took a trip to Death Valley National Park. This is the second trip there in my life. The 1st time I went, I was still a little kid, and I didn't start taking photos yet. This time, I have a pro camera and I am ready to shoot the scenery. Death Valley National Park is known for its "out of this world" scenery, UFO sightings, and many other things. The desert is a very mysterious and beautiful place. In this chain of blog posts, I will be showing you mainly photos of Death Valley National Park, but also photos from surrounding areas like The Mojave Desert, Alabama Hills, and Rhyolite Ghost Town. I have picked out over 400 photos from my trip to show you guys and I will be dividing them into many blog posts. Unlike blog  post chains before, I obviously can't put a link of ever blog post on every single blog post, so instead, I will do the same thing I did for my Yellowstone National Park photos before, by sticking a link of the Next and Previous post on each blog post instead.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best work from Death Valley National Park, use this link. To see all of the photos from my Death Valley National Park trip use this link.

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Today I will start on the photos I took on the tour of Scotty's Castle. Last time, the photos were taken before the tour, today I post the photos I took on the tour. Like yesterday, if you want to find out more about Scotty's Castle, you can read about it on Wikipedia. I will try my best to tell you a little bit about the castle, but I'll be honest here, I didn't pay much attention to what the tour guide was saying and mainly focused on not messing up my photos. XD I can't tell you too much.

The main walkway outside in Scotty's Castle. Where the entrances are.  

Cars driven at that time.  

 The car of the owner.

The real name of the place is Death Valley Ranch. It turned into Scotty's Castle when the owner Albert Mussey Johnson asked his friend Walter Scott to give tours of his house for him, and convince visitors that the castle actually belonged to "Scotty" instead of him. I know this all sounds awkward, but if you want to see the whole story, you can read about it on Wikipedia.

Interior Living Room 

See the hot spot at the top of the image? The room was too big for me to point my flash straight up so I pointed a bit forward. Disappointed it made a hot spot, but I managed to balance the area out a bit with the rest of the photo. 

The guy in the center was our tour guide. 

So this has been another 10 photos from Scotty's Castle! That means I got 50 more photos from Scotty's Castle in posts to come! I hope you have enjoyed viewing them. Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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Lake Tahoe/Reno 2012 (Part 10)

If you live in the SF Bay Area, you probably know it never snows here. Many people like me who live in the SF Bay Area love snow. The nearest place that does get snow is in Lake Tahoe and Reno. Many of us go there in the winter to go ski and snowboard, but for me, I don't like any of that. I enjoy taking photos of snow and playing in it. :) Here are photos of Lake Tahoe and Reno I took during my trip in Christmas of 2012. I will be splitting them into several parts as I took a lot of photos there. Hope you enjoy.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best Lake Tahoe/Reno/Donner Lake photos from 2012, use this link. To see all of my photos from this trip, use this link.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 

Before I get started on today's blog post, I would like to tell you about a rechargeable battery I own. The battery is called the Sanyo Eneloop XX 2500 mAh AA Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries. These are Sanyo's new line of batteries which holds up to 2500 mAh compared to the original ones which only hold 2000 mAh so it will last you longer per charge. The company claims the batteries do have a slow self-discharge rate with it still holding 75% of its charge even after 1 year in storage. The only downside to the new XX series is that the batteries can only be recharged 500 times compared to 1500 charges on the original Eneloops, but at its low price, easily replaceable. These batteries are the only batteries I use in my Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT. I have noticed they do great and I can get more flashes out of each recharge compared to my original Eneloops. I also found that these batteries do give out a bit more kick so my recycle times are a bit faster than with the originals. If you are a serious  photographer that use your flashes a lot, I would recommend you to get several pairs of the Sanyo Eneloop XX 2500 mAh AA Ni-MH Rechargeable Batteries.

Okay, now let's get started with today's photos. :) The photos for today are from the 4th and last day of my trip. These photos will be divided into 2 blog posts. I don't have the exact location of my images, but I can tell you the route I took. So I started off in Reno, NV driving over to Truckee. Then I took SR-89 to Lake Tahoe. Then I went east toward Incline Village traveling around the bigger half of Lake Tahoe. Afterwards I headed back home toward SF Bay Area via US Route 50.

View of Donner Lake from the Vista Point on I-80. 

I think this was on my trip from Truckee, CA to Lake Tahoe. Where exactly I don't know. I found a place on the road and turned out because it looked beautiful covered in snow. It seems to be some kind of hiking trail head. Not too sure because everything was drowned in snow. This is an HDR composition.

I shot a portrait panorama of the snow covered trees there. My fans really liked it on G+.

Then I went to the trail head and did an HDR composition there. Nice trail head. The only issue was after I took the shot and I tried to walk out of there, the snow was so high and loosely packed, I fell waist deep in it and had some trouble getting out! HAHA It was so cold and I got half of my camera wet. Gotta love Canon's weatherproofing, nothing broke, but I was like completely wet and cold. Managed to get out at the end after like a minute. 

So I arrived at Lake Tahoe. 

Another shot of Lake Tahoe.

Icicles! 

I forgot what city this was, but sure loved the look of the buildings.

Snow covered benches in a park. 

Snow covered beach at Lake Tahoe.

Snow covered beach at Lake Tahoe. 

Lake Tahoe's clean and clear water. 

Another shot of the snow covered beach. 

These are all the photos for today. Next time, I will post the rest of my photos from Lake Tahoe and on my way home. Next blog post will be the last one for this chain. After the next post, I will start on my Death Valley National Park photos. I hope you have enjoyed these shots! Please don't forget to share the blog post with your friends and family members! Also, if you want to get notifications when I post up more photos, "Like" us on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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