The Photographer’s Ephemeris
This a screen shot from the The Photographer’s Ephemeris program. This is a great program to use when planning your next photography trip. Besides showing sunrise, sunset and all of that, it also shows the direction of sun rise and set. This helps you plan plan where and when to be in position.
The example above shows when sunrise will hit directly into the front of the Lincoln Memorial. The yellow line shows the angle of sunrise. If you have ever tried to shoot into the Lincoln Memorial you know that the sun is usually at an angle. Well, if you go to the Lincoln Memorial on 18 March (sunrise 7:14) or 24 September 2014 (sunrise 6:57) the sun will shine directly into the memorial. See you there!
Available for Macs, Windows, and mobile devices of all kinds. I have it on my iPhone so that I can always see when the sun rises wherever I am (with cell coverage).
Cactus Skeleton
This is what remains of a dead saguaro cactus in Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona. Originally a color image, I converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2 from Nik software. Very simple to do from Photoshop with lots of built in presets to achieve any desired effect.
This image took an honorable mention in a 2011 Northern Virginia Photographic Society monthly competition.
Location: N33 27 21.87 W111 56 45.30
Eggs-Ray
The first question I get when people see this image is “How in the heck did you cut the egg open that way?” Well, I cheated. This isn’t a real egg, it is an alabaster egg from the town of Volterra, Italy. Yes, this is the town of Twilight fame. Before that it was known as (and still is) a hotbed of alabaster sculptures. You can find these eggs in every size all over the town.
This image was done with a 30 second exposure while painting the back of the egg with a small penlight. It took several tries to get the right lighting. I shot it with my Nikon D300 tethered to my MacBook. That way I was able to review my images as soon as I took them and improve my light painting skills from shot to shot. I was able to decide how much to light each area and angles to shine the light. Fun little project.
This image took second place in a 2011 Northern Virginia Photography Club monthly competition.
