Mono Lake area Panoramic's

Here are a few panoramic shots from our week in the Mono Lake area.

First, is the far side of Yosemite off from Tioga pass.  The panoramic really makes half dome look small.  This shot and the one following where both created with Hugin in which I stitched together many images.  The top picture is 8 pictures and the second one is 12.

This panoramic is from the Northern vista point on Hwy 395 overlooking Mono Lake.  This was on our way back from visiting the ghost town of Bodie.

This last panoramic was taken from the vista point on the way to the Bristle Cone forest in Inyo.  This is almost 180 degrees from side to side and was taken with my iPhone 5s.  (I have a set of pictures to process via Hugin for this shot also but have not found the disk space to process them.  Laptops are fun that way.)

There where so many places where big vistas could be shot, I have a couple more sequences but would have loved to get more.  There where many areas on 395 between Mammoth Lakes and Bishop.  This is not counting the big views along some of the side roads trying to get to places like the Bodie ghost town or the Bristle Cone forest.

Christopher Creek Winery

Last weekend I decided to visit Christopher Creek Winery to pick up my wine club wines.  I just so happened to be the same weekend they where doing some bottling.  Since they are a smaller winery, they rent the bottling facility and the facility is a semi-truck with a couple of trailers.  One being the pump and the other being the bottling machine.  There is a crew of about 5 or 6 running the whole operation and since I always carry my camera, I decided to try and get a few pictures.  (Also they have opened up more of the grounds and I was able to get a few pictures from around the winery.)

First let's start with some pictures of the area.  This is the 'new' pool area that was just opened up.

And this is an attempt at doing a panoramic of the valley.  This was shot basically under the umbrella from the above picture.

They also had some live music playing this day and the drummer had a visitor.  He stayed even while he played.


Here are the two pictures I took of the winery itself, I wanted to get some pictures of the bottler.  (Ok, machines fascinate me.)

To start the empties are loaded in one side of the back of the trailer.  They travel along the back side and then into a rinser type machine.  Here the clean/sterile bottle are, I believe, filled with nitrogen and then emptied by flipping them.


Once it goes through this wheel, which is at the other end of the trailer.  It then goes to the bottle filler and corker.  These are two barrel systems that take the bottle around in two circles.

After that they get their foil top and crimp.  And then on to the labeler.


Once they get the label, it is out the back of the trailer to be boxed up.

Ok lastly, I did have to collect some video of this whole process.  Here are four short videos.  The first is the bottle flipper.

Fill and corking.

Then on to the foil and sealer.

Finally to the labeler.

I would like to thank Christopher Creek and their bottler for allowing me to take these pictures.

Horse Camp

Just spent an few days with my daughter while she was attending a mini horse camp.  She certainly learned a lot about caring for horses and not just riding.  All the kids had to share in the responsibility of feeding and watering the horse.  Anyway, I had a little time to play with the camera also.  Since I like panoramics, it is not surprising that I created one.  This time I did something a little different and used both my 28-300 and my 14-24.  This being a DX camera, the 28 is really 42 and the 14 is 28.  What surprised me was how different each turned out.  (I guess after looking and thinking about it, it is not that surprising.)

Here is the 28.

And here is the 14.

Both created with Hugin and shot from the same location.  I did like using the 14 better since it allowed me to capture more of the sky.  The 28 sometimes does not allow enough overlap to be included in the show.  (Also I tend not to have the 14 with me when I see something I was to do a panoramic of.)

The next is a couple of nice sunset shots from the second to the last night at camp.

And here is the parting shot as the kids ride off on one of the last rides.  (My daughter actually is the least experience of the group and this was an easier ride, but all the same she enjoyed it a lot.)

Sea Ranch Night

Had a nice trip up to Sea Ranch along the California coast and was fortunate enough to get a clear night to try some night photography.  Here is a shot off the balcony of the house pointing South of the Milky Way.  The glow is the San Francisco bay area about 100 miles away.

This next picture is an attempt at doing a night panorama.  This is mostly the Southern sky to about overhead.  There is some parallax bending from the 14mm lens.  There was approximately 10 of the 26 shots used to generate this portion.  The extreme edges tend to show more distortion.

All picture shot at 14mm on a DX sensor at 30 seconds, ISO 1000.

Here is actually a better panoramic build.  I tried fisheye thus giving a bit of vignetting in the upper corners.  I cropped most of it out but did not want to loose too much of the bottom track.

USS Iowa

Interesting day, found out that the USS Iowa was pulled out of the mothball fleet and is being restored at the Port of Richmond.  I guess they have been working on it for the past couple of months with unofficial tours of the ship happening on the weekends.  Well this weekend is the last weekend that it will be at the Port of Richmond since they will be moving it to San Pedro, CA.  Read more at: USS Iowa.

This was also the first time the public was able to go inside the ship.  There was very little open and there was still a lot of scaffolding up, but the one thing that I noticed is the head room was lower then even the carriers or submarines that I have visited.  Really strange.

So here it is.  This is a shot of 3 pictures combined together.  (See the panoramic post earlier.)

I also wanted to see how well the panoramic software worked.  Here I zoomed in a bit and took more pictures.  This is a composite of 46 photos.  I still have to work on how the software works to see how to fill in the sky since I did not actually take pictures of it.  (If I did take pictures of it, there where no features for the software to line up.  But there may have been tricks to deal with that too.)

This is from the other side.  Single shot.

Now for the on deck shots.  Only a portion of the deck was open and temporary boards where in place to help walking.
Now for the sizes.  Those turret are big.

The rooms are small.  This looked like a triage room or infirmary.  The room cluster here was a small head, office desk and a small room with this room off it.  My daughter can hardly stand in the room.

Overall it was fun.  It will really be neat when more of the ship gets refurbished.  Heck the turrets above still had 'wet paint' on them.  They where just finished earlier this week.