Nature & Wildlife
The sea lions have had their pups, and they are all over a popular section of the recreational trail in Monterey, California. People stop and enjoy their antics. I wonder though, how many who are in that area all the time enjoy this? Sea lions bark constantly, and are stinky. After an hour of photographing them, I was good! They certainly are entertaining though whether they know they are being so or not.
Read MoreFor a town on a peninsula surrounded by water, some of which faces west, Pacific Grove does not often have direct, to the horizon, sunsets. Various points make seeing west impossible over the water, and then of course there is the fog, especially in summer into early fall. So when the sun was shining an hour before actual sunset still, I grabbed my camera and headed to Asilomar Beach and was able to capture this rare to the horizon sunset! You never know when the next chance might come.
Read MoreBack out in the New Mexico desert for the first time in a while for rural land real estate photography. This time I was in McKinley County New Mexico somewhere west of Grants and east of Thoreau. The obvious highlight of this area were the many red rock mesas creating a dramatic view and landscape. I sent the drone up and over the mesas showing the view from atop, ground level, and in between. If you want to own these views, contact Hemingway Land Company.
Read MoreWanting to try out my new Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens on my new Sony a7R V camera, I went to the Bosque at sunset time to see what kind of shots I could create with a long lens, albeit it one with a large aperture capable of very shallow DoF. By the time I got there the light was indeed fading fast. I chose to focus on foreground objects and leave the sunset itself out of focus. This results in a kind of melting effect to how the sunset looks. I actually liked shooting at f/1.4 at 85mm and getting most of what was in the photo out of focus. This is most easily seen in the above photo of the very fine grass sticking out toward the sunset. This grass was so hard to see even with the a7R V’s AI based autofocus, I had to manually focus the lens!
Read MoreOn the drive to Alamogordo, New Mexico, a stop at the Valley of Fires is always a must for me, even if just for a few minutes. Any chance to behold lava as far as the eye can see is special. On this particular visit, for the first time, I walked the entire paved loop into the main lava field. What I saw from that view that I could not from high above, are all the fissures in the lava surface that conceal small lava caves below. Fascinating in another regard is how plants of all kinds grow in each crack, groove, and rupture in the lava surface. What an amazing place. Check out the map below to plan your trip to the Valley of Fires.
Read MoreThe best place to make photographs in New Mexico is unquestionably White Sands National Park. It is the Grand Canyon of New Mexico in that you could go to the park every day for a month, and still makes hours of photos without running out of subject matter. The topography of the park actually changes day to day with the wind! This is at least my fifth visit to the park. I brought just one lens, the Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM. I focused on finding angles. I wanted to include the flora of the park in each shot too. This was also the real world debut of using my new mirrorless camera. The results of the photo above are unlike any photo I made at White Sands before. That is the amazing thing about the park, visit after visit, there is no end to the photos one can make.
Read MoreLately I’ve been to both Valencia County and Torrence County in New Mexico several times on rural land real estate photography shoots. This is an opportunity to go to an area that is usually pretty remote and quiet and just listen to the desert as the daytime shift gives way to the nighttime shift. Plus, if the clouds are right, the big sky sunsets make for great views.
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