So I was able to get some time today to go shooting up in the Eastern Sierras for a bit Saturday morning with my good friend Kevin.  So we packed up the gear and headed for the hills.  We were headed for a spot where we shot late last year near Quaking Aspen.  But when we started toward the top we found that due to the recent storms the road was closed.  Consequently the road closed sign stopped us right on top of a fairly fast flowing creek that provided some great shots for the day.  So with all this water blistering by I decided to get some practice in on some long exposure shooting.  My main inspiration for this was my good buddy Jeff Lynch who is a master at this stuff.  Who by the way is going to have a Texas Landscape Safari coming up in April, that I would recommend checking out.

With all these, the motion was captured by just pushing the f-stop between f13 through f22 depending on how much blur I wanted out of the water.  I lucked out that the day was overcast with another storm getting ready to blow through, which made it possible for me to do this without additional filters.  However, if you want to learn the steps in doing this with all the goodies, I highly suggest you sign up for the Safari with Jeff through the link up above.

It was a great time out there and there will be a few more posts this week with other shots form this location.  So keep and eye out.

Images Captured with 1D Mark IIn 70-200f2.8 on Lexar digital media

While I was having a recovery day from running around all over New Mexico I saw a billboard sign that had a display for the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa New Mexico, and decided I needed to head over there and check it out. This place is inside a huge airplane hanger, and it didn’t just have amazing restored war planes it had a very nice car collection as well.

Main prop on an Avenger.  This was the isolated shot that I was looking for to control the background.

T-28 Trojan Prop

To give you an idea of what the inside of the hanger looked like, below is a wide shot of a P-38 engine and prop. Take a look at the background.

So the car collection at the War Eagles Air Museum is just as impressive as its War Plane Collection. And after playing around a bit with the planes my attention turned to the cars.

Front hood ornament off and Auburn. Once again thinking about background control. About 15 feet behind this car is a TF-51 Mustang, but you would never know it.

With the way the background and ceilings were staying tight and looking for details in the cars and planes paid off.  Had a great time at the Museum.  If you do find yourself there go and take some time to really take in the history, and some fun shots.

Planes Captured with 1 D Mark IIN 70-200f2.8

Cars Captured with 1 D Mark IIN 16-35f2.8 II on lexar digital media

One of the off the beaten path adventures that I took lead me to a quite little ghost with no tourists in it called Lake Valley.  When I rolled up the gates were getting ready to close, but the caretakers were incredibly nice and let me hang out for a while.   Lake Valley has an interesting history that goes back a long  time (1887) when there was a population in the town of 4000+ people.  It hit it off originally as a Silver mining town but then Manganese was discovered an they mined it there right up through WWII.  At this time it is in the process of being part of an archaeological study, so there were a lot of neat things just laying around that you might not often see.

First up the Cattle Rustler’s house.  Funny thing about this shot.  The brick work in the foreground was part of what was left of the town jailhouse.  Funny story behind it is this.  Even though cattle rustling was illegal in those times the rustler never saw the inside of the jailhouse, because he was the source of fresh meat in the town.  What’s that old saying “you don’t bite the hand that feeds you?”

Some of the old water storage tanks that supplied the town with water and supported the mines.

Back of the Cattle Rustler’s house with doors that have almost blending into the walls.

Ok, so this may not be the quintessential  ghost town shot with lazy-e-boy barcaloungers,  but for some reason I had to take this shot.  One of the care takers was telling me the story of this abandoned house and it was pretty amazing.  Not because of the house, but its former owner.  Not to go into a long story but the owner lived hear for close to 94 years is memory server me, and came to the camp when he was 2 and was a valuable source of information about the town and its going on.

Lake Valley is well off the path only getting about 1000 visitors a year.  So if you are in the area look it up and stop by.  The place is great and the caretakers are very nice and are fountains of information.

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 16-35 f2.8 II on Lexar digital media

Well,

I know I promised to blog more from New Mexico, but I ran into a few snags.  Some with the blog and some with the internet connection that I was using.  I personally blame the Arctic blast that turned the usually nice climate of New Mexico into a meat locker running at 20 degrees and bring just about everything not weather proofed to a stand still.   But that being said I am back in California and sitting behind my high speed internet and getting back in the saddle.

First up on the shot list was Abo, part of the Salinas Missions in Central New Mexico.  What was left of the mission is amazing and the size is incredible.  This was shot at sunset, with 3 inches of snow on the ground after a storm had dropped 8 inches the week before.  Lots of hard light was a pain to deal with lots of HDR shooting and use of split grad ND filters were used.  This shot was used a .9 soft split grad ND filter.

This was taken in the town of Hillsboro, NM.  The entire town basically shuts down when tourist season is over so the only thing left open was the post office across the street from this cafe that was Established in 1879.    Hillsboro is now a ghost town, but was once the hot seat of activity in the county when gold and silver were discovered.

This was is what was left of the original jail when the town was booming.  The walls were about 2.5 feet thick and the steps at the bottom of the image lead to the back door of the court house, of which there is not much left as you can see below.

The original courthouse of Hillsboro.  Not much else to it but this 2 walls and some old walkways are that is left of this symbol of justice in the old west.  Image was shot using a +2, 0, -2 EV HDR method and combined to deal with the vast range of light.

More to come so stay tuned

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 16-35 f2.8 II on Lexar digital media