Brookings, Gold Beach - Oregon Coast

From 7/17/2013 to 8/2/2013, I took a road trip from the SF Bay Area to Vancouver, BC, Canada. Half of the trip was spent driving up the west coast. On my trip, I visited many famous places such as Seattle, Butchart Gardens, Mount Rainier, and much more. Obviously I got many coastal shots and many places that isn't as famous. The reason I am posting it now is because the high amount of photos I took equaled a high amount of processing time. I took a bit over 2000 photos on the trip. After stitching the panoramas, compositing the HDRs, and picking out photos from the repeats, I have a bit over 1000 photos to show you guys. The photos will be split into parts. I will link you to the previous and next parts on each post just like I did with my Death Valley National Park photos and my Yellowstone/Grand Teton National Park photos. Hope you enjoy viewing this chain of posts!

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 view my best Oregon photos from this trip, use this link. To view all of my day 2 photos, use this link. To view all of my day 3 photos, use this link.

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Today I start photos from my drive up Oregon's coast. I will include some sunset shots from Brookings, Oregon, and photos from Gold Beach, Oregon.

Message from the Photographer: Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday guys! Hope you guys all have a nice day. Being Black Friday, it means Amazon is running a lot of deals! When I checked this morning, they have over 200 pages worth of deals! Time to start shopping. 😊 If you wish to help me out with my photography, please use my link before you go shop on Amazon today. This way, you will be helping support my photography without having to spend extra.  What happens is, once you click the link, Amazon will pay me a small commission for everything (with some exclusions) you buy in the next 24 hours. I participate in Amazon's Amazon Affiliate Program. Thank you very much for your support.

I'm guessing this is one of the first shots EVERYONE takes of Oregon. I'm no better. :P Good thing they have a pull out right at the sign! Pretty sure this sign saved a lot of traffic headaches. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 41 59 55 N 124 12 29 W

A photo of Chetco River in Brookings, OR. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 42 03 15 N 124 16 16 W

Black and white process of the photo above.

I was a bit behind schedule so I knew I wasn't going to make it to Gold Beach for sunset. I decided to pull into another park on the road for sunset photos. This was shot in Harris Beach State Park in Brookings, Oregon. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 42 04 07 N 124 118 54 W

With all sunsets, you can't just take one photo and get over with it. Here are a few more. 

Another sunset photo. 

I thought the beach would look nice in black and white so I did a process of that too. 

Another sunset photo.

Now I get to my hotel in Gold Beach, Oregon. I shot this photo from my hotel room at Gold Beach Resort facing South Beach Park. The hotel rooms had a small deck facing outside. It was already dark out, but some how the sunset was still visible to the camera. 

I set up for a star trails that night. Photo consists of 30 exposures at around 2 minutes each. So total exposure time is around 1 hour and 3 minutes. To take this photo, I just went ahead and set up the camera to take the photos automatically with my intervalometer, and I went ahead and showered for the night. 

The next morning, I decided to get a better look of the park and get a panorama of the park from the deck. 

Here is an HDR composition.

I then proceeded to walk into the park for some shots. 

Black and white process of the photo above. 

A few more photos from the park.

Now I continue my drive up north taking a few photos at beaches in Gold Beach, Oregon. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 42 30 51 N 124 24 34 W

These are all the photos for today. I hope you have enjoyed viewing them. Next time I have more photos from Oregon's Coast. 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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Star Trails - Cook Bank Building - Rhyolite Ghost Town - Death Valley National Park (Part 36)

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 my best sunset and night photos of 2012, 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 have a star trails time lapse I did at the Cook Bank Building in Rhyolite Ghost Town in Rhyolite, NV. So pretty much, after Furnace Creek, my parents and I decided it was too late to drive home (original plan) and there were many places we didn't see yet, so we called up The Atomic Inn in Beatty, NV (the place we stayed at 2 nights before) and reserved a room for the night. On the way to Beatty, I decided to go into Rhyolite Ghost Town (was on the route from Death Valley National Park to Beatty) to do a star trails time lapse. I found the Cook Bank Building made a very good subject so I did it there.

Now a bit more on The Atomic Inn. The hotel is great, I would definitely recommend it but just remember to bring your own hair dryer as they don't have it. Other than that, they have shampoo and soap for you so you don't need to worry about that. The Wifi was a bit crappy, it kept disconnecting on me, so I just gave up, but it is free. There is a small LCD TV with lots of channels, and I ended up watching some National Geographic after the tiring day. Also, another thing I love about is that every unit (room) is separate from each other (kind of like cabins) so your neighbors can't really be a nuisance if you know what I mean. If you go to Death Valley National Park, definitely recommend you stay with them. :)

For the photo, I took 25 photos together with each photo at 2 minutes exposure so it took me a bit over 50 minutes as I let the camera pause a few seconds in between to save the shot. Then later, I combined them in Photoshop. If you want to read more on star trails time lapses, please view my tutorial here. Some of my fans on G+ was asking me if I purposely lined up the stars with the Cook Bank Building. The answer is no, this was completely a coincidence. I have no knowledge in astronomy what-so-ever except that the stars make a 360° rotation every 24 hours...

Here is the other photo data:
Camera: Canon EOS 7D
Lens/Focal Length: Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Lens @ 16mm
Exposure: 25 photos x 2 minutes = 50 minutes
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 100

This is the 3rd party intervalometer I used for this time lapse and long exposures I've done before. So far it has been great and has not failed me. You can program a lot of things with this including the exposure time, the number of exposures, and the delay between each exposure. It works well for time lapses and long exposure. They make the device for several brands of cameras. My only complaint is that there is no low battery warning or a power indicator, so it has died on me a few times when I forgot to turn it off. The good news is, I always carry extra AAA batteries so I'm good. I recommend you buy 3rd party because you can get them for way cheaper than what your camera manufacturer prices them. Also, since these run off of 2 AAA batteries instead of a button cell, they cost less to use, plus you get longer life per battery.

I always shoot my photos in RAW so there is more room to fix/edit in post processing, but I also shoot a smaller JPEG with each so I can preview them on the computer with out special software. Below are the individual exposures I made. Since I never processed those RAW files, I uploaded the JPEG previews. If you want to view them in a slide show to see the stars moving, just click on the first photo and use your arrow keys to navigate.

These are all the photos for today! I hope you have enjoyed viewing them. Next time I will have some photos up of my drive into Death Valley National Park from Beatty, NV and photos from Salt Creek. 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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Copyright Warning: These photos are some of my best and most popular works of art. Unauthorized usage and reproductions are strictly prohibited. Please contact me here to purchase prints and negotiate photo licenses.

Lake Tahoe/Reno 2012 (Part 6)

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 great product that I own. Let me ask you first: Do you have a device like the Canon EOS 7D that only takes Compact Flash cards? Hate the big prices on the Compact Flash Cards? What if I tell you that you can use your current SD cards lying around your house in these devices? Well you can with the SD-CF II: SD to CF Type II Adapter. This little adapter will adapt all your SD cards (SDHC and SDXC) into a CF card! Unlike other brands of adapters, I can shoot 1080p video on my camera with no breaks! Other cheaper adapters sometimes don't have the speed to support 1080p video, this adapter is not one of them. If you are tight on your photography budget and have a bunch of SD cards lying around, this adapter is definitely a must have for you!

Okay, now let's get started with today's photos. :) The photos for today are from my 3rd day. In the morning, I did time lapse from my hotel room of Downtown Reno. I also have a few shots of my trip down to Truckee, CA to go see Donner Lake. For the time lapse, you can click on the first photo and navigate the time lapse with your arrow keys. Hope you enjoy the photos for today.

The view of Downtown Reno from my hotel room.  

I begin my trip to Truckee, CA. Took a photo of the highway of people installing chains.  

 Truckee River. Photo taken at approximately +39° 23' 40.64", -120° 1' 31.91" at Exit 199 (Floriston) on I-80. Thank you Google Maps and Google Street View!

Another shot at around the same area as the above photo. 

Now heading back to I-80, I thought the snow covered trees looked nice so I took a few shots. 

Here is another photo of snow covered trees. 

This is all the photos I have for today. I hope you have enjoyed them and the time lapse. Next time I will have photos from Truckee, CA with photos from Donner Lake and more photos from my trip to Truckee, CA. 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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