I just spent slightly less than a week on the road. I took my usual metric shitload of photos, a lot of which were just happy snaps and many were for stitching into panoramas if/when I have a chance.
I did get a few that didn't suck too badly. I drove down to LA on Sunday by way of Big Sur, the weather was beautiful, and the roads were clogged with tourists. In the future, I think that I'll do my best to avoid Big Sur on weekends. I managed to spend a few hours at Limekiln, which was one of my favorite places to go as a kid. Big Sur: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157639424720424/ We spent our first night in the desert in Mojave. That evening we tried to find the site of Nowak's opal mine, were we used to hunt for fire opal when I was a kid. We spent some time driving dirt roads in Lorry, my Dodge van. I had fun, Candace didn't really enjoy the off road experience. I tried to use my astrotracer and the tamron 300/2.8 to get some photos of Andromeda but failed miserably. I did play a bit with my Korean fisheye though. The next morning we had brunch at the Voyager Cafe at the Mojave spaceport. That evening we drove as far a Lone Pine, which turned out to be far more scenic than we expected and we ended up spending an extra day there. Desert: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157639424755274/ The following day we drove out Death Valley, getting in a little shooting before sunset. I had fun trying to catch the new moon setting. Didn't quite get the shot I wanted, but it was still fun. We spent the night in Beatty Nevada, about 45 minutes out of the park, and surprisingly picturesque. That night we did some night photography in the ghost town of Rhyolite. I played a bit with my astrotracer. Most of Friday was spent at Zabriskie Point, which is ridiculously scenic. We got there in the mid afternoon. I think that for a lot of the photos, the lighting would be best in the morning. The walk down to the valley floor is much easier than it looks, and well worth it, especially in the canyons to the left of the lookout, looking towards the desert. It's very easy to get beautiful shots of the gorgeous rock formations, but a bit more challenging to get shots that aren't monontonously beautiful, all looking pretty much alike. I did manage to get a little bit lost on my way back out of the canyon, and climbing out of canyons, in the dark (albeit with headlamp), up steep dirt cliffs, when overweight and out of shape was a special kind of fun. Death Valley: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157639424829284/ Candice has posted a couple of sets from her trip: Mojave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/sets/72157639413836205/ Red Rock Canyon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccmonty/sets/72157639412196866/ If I have some spare time, I may go back and process and post some more photos from the trip. -- Larry Colen [email protected] http://red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
