Red Eye Over Chicago

Red Eye Over Chicago, originally uploaded by Gamut's Edge.

Last night I worked the red eye from LAX to JFK. It was cloudy most of the way across, but the clouds broke over the Midwest and I was able to get this shot of Chicago from 37,000 feet. This view is from the right window looking towards the south. Out in the hazy distance on the left side of the plane we could see Madison and Milwaukee Wisconsin.

After much trial and error I've come up with some default camera settings for nighttime aerial city photos. I set the ISO to 3200, aperture to f/2.8, and shutter speed to 1/30 sec. With that combination the lights show up and the dark areas stay black. In photoshop I do a curves adjustment that turns the dark areas to complete black and slightly brighten the lighted areas. I then use unsharp mask with settings: amount 20, radius 50, threshold zero. The USM pops some of the lights out.

Cooling off in Her Private Pool

Cooling off in Her Private Pool, originally uploaded by Gamut's Edge.

Here's a picture I took a few days ago of our baby girl. This was shot in a shady corner of our back deck. The stripes of light in the background are from gaps in the fence separating our deck from the neighbors. I shot this with a +2/3 stop exposure compensation because a lot of this frame is brighter than neutral gray. In post process I had to take out the blue color cast that comes whenever taking a photo outdoors in shade. Once the blue was gone the background stripes had a nice warm tint -- just like they looked through my viewfinder.

Mojave's End

Mojave's End, originally uploaded by Gamut's Edge.

Ok, I am posting the first photo in this photography blog. I'm using flickr to host the photos. It was fairly easy to set up. Right now it is 3:09 in the morning and I am sitting in San Francisco International waiting for BART to start running again. We were running late and I missed the last BART to East Bay. One more hour and it starts to run again. If I figure out how to link photos from flikr with a fried brain it can't be too difficult.

About the photo. I took this about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. I'll copy and paste the flick description cuz I'm too tired to write "Mountains in south central California at the edge of the Mojave Desert. The hot desert air creates low pressure which draws in moist air from the Pacific Ocean, The moist air creates haze in the valleys and a small thunderhead over a ridge top"

I really like this shot. The little thunderhead, haze, and clear ridges above the haze.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Hello!

Welcome to the internet’s 10,000th photography blog!

Will this one be different than all the rest? I am not sure.

Will this blog be a platform for shameless self promotion of the authors photographic work? Probably

I am planning on writing a variety of articles that should be of interest to anyone that loves photos and photography. Anything is fair game: the photographic process, links to interesting portfolios, Photoshop tips, and of course I will keep you updated on my latest attempts at photographic artistry.

My goal is to get other photographers involved with this blog. I just joined Flickr and I plan on becoming active in that community. Hopefully I can persuade a few of the photogs at flcikr to display some of their work and insights here.

I’ve read that the key to a successful blog is regular posts. To that end I am setting a lofty goal -- 5 post per week! With a full time job and a 9 month old baby, two active dogs, and a girlfriend that needs some attention I am not sure if I’ll be able to keep that promise. Readers I promise to take you to Mars, but if we only make it to the moon don’t be surprised.