Let's Get Explored!

If you're on Flickr, then you know that hitting Explore means a ton of views for the photo that "made it." Over the last year I've noticed that I am slowly getting more images that consistently get featured in Explore, so I guess I'm doing something right (just wish that translated to image sales, but that's another post)! Remember my new toy, the 9 stop ND filter? Well, my latest picture to hit Explore was the second image I posted that was taken with the filter, so that made me feel pretty good about the purchase and my first day shooting with it (which I personally thought was a bit of a dud of a day of shooting). Honestly, I kind of just put the picture up because I felt I needed to put something up, and that was the current photo I settled on. If you do any pixel peeping you'll see that it is far from a wonderful image, but I guess scaled down to typical Flickr viewing size its pretty impressive.

After I had made my attempts at getting a few monorail trail shots I moved over to the fountain to take some shots with Spaceship Earth with the fountain water all smoothed out. This is the one that turned out the best from that bunch, and really, the best one from that day. After this I headed up to the Imagination pavilion to play with the water features there, but none of those shots turned out well at all, so I'll be going back for those again sometime. In the meantime, I'm probably going to attempt to shoot the Star Wars Weekends fireworks for the first time tonight, and try a new location for DHS fireworks, right in front of Crossroads looking up Hollywood Blvd.

Until next time, thanks for looking and enjoy the photos!

Parkview Field

In 2009 Minor League Baseball got a new stadium and a renamed Low-A team in Fort Wayne, IN, and it is without a doubt one of my favorite baseball stadiums, including MLB stadiums. It is an absolutely beautiful facility from pretty much any angle, and the food is pretty darn good as well.  I'm kind of at a loss for words to describe the place at the moment without venturing off into a sports-focused stadium review, so I think I'll just go ahead and show you the picture for this post. 

I really like the design of the entrance, grand but still in scale for the size of the main entrance, but it also makes it feel like a larger stadium than it really is. It also brought some new life to downtown Fort Wayne, which is also home to some great food (816 Pint & Slice is delicious, love their calzones!). If you're ever in the area and the TinCaps have a home game, I would definitely suggest grabbing a ticket (if it isn't sold out) and checking out this great ballpark for yourself. Oh, and did I mention the ballpark food is pretty good, as well?

Thanks for looking, and have a great night! Don't forget to check out my pictures available for print on Fine Art America and Crated.

A New Toy for the Camera Bag!

Saturday is here, which means a non-picture, gear related post! Last time I gave a mini review of my new tripod and body from Christmas, and this week I have a much more timely piece of gear to talk about.

In looking around at pictures of Niagara Falls in anticipation of my upcoming trip back north in August I noticed several pictures taken with a high count neutral density filter that were gorgeous with the falls all smoothed out. This got me thinking about finally springing for a nice ND so that I could try my hand at similar shots in August, as well as several ideas I've formed since. After some consideration and deal hunting, I pulled the trigger on a 9-stop Hoya ND400 filter. I know, I know, I bought the 55mm filter instead of a larger 72 or 77mm filter with step-down rings; don't care and don't need them. When I can afford a lens with a large filter thread I'll be able to afford repurchasing the filter, and that time is definitely not now. Anyway, I was excited to get the thing on my camera to play with a few things I've seen done around Disney with ND filters, primarily monorail trails at EPCOT.

It finally arrived on Wednesday so of course as soon as I got the mail I wasted no time in taking it out of the package to put it on the camera but had to wait until Thursday to take it out and play with it. My first stop was Wilderness Lodge in hopes of testing it out on the lovely waterfall above the pool area, but I arrived to find the waterfall and its "spring" in the lobby dry and under refurbishment. So I begrudgingly walked down past the pool to the geyser to see if there was anything down there worth testing out the filter on. The little run-off stream from the geyser had some nice running water that I figured would work out nicely enough, so I took some photos of that and a few of Bay Lake from the beach and headed back to my car to go to EPCOT.

Arriving at EPCOT, the "rule of shooting monorails" decided to happen right away. Yellow was sitting in the station when I got out of my car, was still there after getting on the tram, going through security, and still there as I went through the entrance and started to set up my gear. I waited, and waited...and then about 10 minutes after setting up, Yellow finally left the station. Shortly after, Gold came along and went past Spaceship Earth into Future World as I waited for it to come back around to the station since I had set up on that side of the entrance. As soon as I saw it through the trees I opened the shutter for a six second exposure and...yes! On initial review it looked great, although I didn't zoom in to double check focus or if the sudden burst of wind that managed to kick up right as I pressed the shutter had shaken the tripod enough to blur the entire image. Looking at it at home in Lightroom, my fears were confirmed, that pesky gust of wind created enough motion to ruin the entire image (my tripod is sturdy, wasn't in danger of falling down, just vibrated it enough to be trouble). After a few more test shots up front and back at Imagination I called it a day and headed home.

Looking at the images in Lightroom, this is definitely going to take some practice, especially with focusing. A few of the images ended up out of focus even though they seemed in focus through the viewfinder/on the LCD in live view. Still, I'm excited to have this new tool in my bag, and may actually go practice with it some more at Universal today.

As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to go check out my work. You can find me on Flickr and 500px, as well as purchase prints at Fine Art America as well as a new website, Crated.

Out to the Bay

Back in September I took another trip up to Massachusetts with my fiancé for a wedding in her family, but that only took a day and a half of our 4 days which meant plenty of time to visit things. I even managed to sneak in a quick stop in Providence to photograph something before heading back home one of the two nights we were in Rhode Island for wedding stuff. The highlight of this trip was a trip out to the Cape Cod area which was awesome for the history-minded side of me. I got to climb around the Mayflower II, walk around the old Plymouth cemetery, and see a bit of the Cape Cod Canal and Bay, which is where the photo for this post came from.

My fiancé's parents took us out to a place where they used to camp every now and then, right at the entrance to the canal on the bay side, Scusset Beach. It was a nice enough place at first sight, but then they pointed out that you can walk out on the jetty, and sure enough there were several people walking it, or fishing out at the end where the light is. This was a very long jetty, and not like a smooth, paved/shaped top, it was still just large rocks put together into a rough wall. This would definitely be the longest break I've walked out on, and it had also been several years since I took a walk out along a jetty and I wasn't sure how good my balance and rock jumping would be. Combined with my backpack of photo gear, I was just a little nervous the farther out I got. It took a good 5 or 10 minutes to reach the light towards the end, but I still wasn't getting the kind of shots I was seeing in my head with my kit lens. After thinking about it for a second, I decided to switch over to my fisheye, and I was thrilled with what I saw through my viewfinder. It didn't really look that "fishy," but rather natural with the expanse of the Cape Cod Bay as the focus of the scene.

Climbing down the rocks at the end of the jetty towards the waters edge was much more adventurous than the trip out to the end, because they had been worn much more and weren't as "fitted" as the main blocks that made up the jetty, but I made it down to this point without incident (much closer to the water than it looks). The light was fading pretty fast on the way out, and I was getting worried that I may not make it in time to get solid handheld shots off, but this ended up being perfect timing. With the sun setting off to the other side of me it gave the sky some more subdued colors along the horizon that were perfect with the clouds. This is definitely a time when I lucked out with weather, and the results were great.

You can purchase a print of this image by clicking on the photo (Fine Art America), or by going to Crated. If you just want to admire it, find it on Flickr.

Thanks for looking and have a great night!

May the Fourth Be With You: Fireworks Edition

Happy Star Wars day everybody! For this special day I have yet another fireworks shot for you, this one from last year's Limited Time Magic event for the day. Fireworks at DHS are something you don't want to miss, and the May the Fourth display didn't disappoint. So oooohh and aaahhh at the spectacle of it all in this photo!

Have a great evening, and may the Force be with you all!