Whale Watching 2013

Just got back from a short trip to Monterey Bay to show friends and family the area.  While there we did a bit of whale watching.  Overall we have tried 3 different companies and have not had a bad experience with any of them but to provide some sort of ranking, this would be tied with the top.  (Monterey Bay Whale Watch is a faster boat but with a larger passenger load and more runs per day.  The trips can run to 4-5 hours if they are seeing things but they do have to get back for the next run.  The other company runs a very small boat but it is slower, thus longer travel time to get to the whales and they do one run a day and those trips can go 5+ hours if you find whales.  So it is all dependent upon who is with you and how long you want to be out.  Remember kids and those first-timers.)

On to the show.  It was a very calm day with good visibility thus perfect for pictures.  This time I was hoping that I got things figured out with my camera so more shot would come out.  So first off lets show some tail.  We've not seen a breaching yet, except for our first trip, and it was occurring on the horizon.


There was also a couple of pairings.  Here I caught twin blows.


But I think the fun one was the mother with calf.  When I first saw the calf tail, it looked very small and if the mother was not around, you may not think it was a whale.


I do like the last one where I was able to get both mother and calf going under.

On the same trip we came across these guys.  A small group of Risso Dolphins.


So on the way back, we swung by the pier to see the sea lions.  I swear these guys have no backbone.  :-)


I was curious about the number in this ones fur?

Also while the boat was getting ready to dock, a sea otter was having lunch.  Even with my poor hearing, I could hear the tap-tap-tap of him trying to break the mussel off.


And lastly, these last two pictures where taken on the dock.  Another boat had come in and the crew was cleaning the fish caught.  They where throwing the heads overboard and there was a waiting group of sea lions, pelicans and sea gulls.  Let's just say the sea gulls where loosing out.


So overall a very good trip and we will go back.  Oh and how could I forget I got a new toy for my camera, a GPS which via Aperture, provided a track of the trip.

The "lesser" bridge

When going to the SF bay area, everyone wants to see the Golden Gate bridge but few people actually take a second glance at the bay bridge.  This bridge spans from Oakland to SF via Treasure Island and is getting a new Eastern span.  This was the bridge that lost a few deck sections in the '89 earthquake and is arguably the main link to SF.

While taking the ferry to Angel Island, I was able to very this bridge in a new environment.  Here are a few pictures.

It does have a bit of the Golden Gate profile but a character all its own.

Here I like the backlit and marine layer, it just lends itself to a black and white.

This has been the old span running from Treasure Island to SF.  Now we should look at the new span from Oakland to Treasure Island.  Here was still have the unique opportunity to get a picture of both bridges together.

The first one highlights the new bridge over the old, while the second shows how the old looks against the new.  And lastly, the third picture displays the different architectures of the two bridges.

I like to through this last picture in which shows some of the Port of Oakland cranes in the picture.

This I think explains a lot about the bridge.  It is a work-horse and pretty in its own right.

Asian Art Museum

Here is a quick picture from the Terra-cotta soldiers display that was at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.  This was my first real double exposure shot.  Basically what that means is that I shot one picture and then repositioned and shot a second picture.  For a film camera, this would be accomplished by not advancing the film and adjusting your exposure settings.  For the digital camera, one has to make sure the camera can support it or use a different shuttering mechanism to limit the light getting into the camera.  For me, the D7000 does allow multiple exposure (2 or 3) shots and combines them together.  This is a 2 shot picture.  The colored soldier was a small picture hanging on the wall.  If you look closely, you will see the colored soldier twice.  The extreme right and small picture is from the first shot and is the plaque next to the terra-cotta soldier.

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.)

Pt Arena Lighthouse

Here are a couple of time lapse sequences that I shot at the Pt Arena Lighthouse.  I was hoping the sunset would do a little more than it did but I did learn that small changes in setup distance can mean a lot.

This first one I missed getting the sun directly through the top of the lighthouse by about 2 minutes and 5 feet.  I noticed that the sun could be positioned in the light house window and changed my setup to catch it.  The sun was still about above the lighthouse at the time, but in the 2 minutes it took to reposition and realign, it was just below the top of the window.

This next one is basically a continuation.  I noticed that the sun would actually set behind the brush in the foreground, thus I wanted to move quickly to a new location.  I moved about 20 feet to the left, a spot where I hoped put the sun on the horizon right between the lighthouse and brush.  As you will see, I just missed and the sun set right behind the corner of the brush.  (If I had moved just 3 more feet to the left, I would have had a clear shot.)  Again, timing and setup needed to be a lot more precise then I had thought.

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.

Timelapse

Here are some fun timelapses that I did over the weekend.  They are at the beach and mostly played back at 10 fps.  If I would play back at the more normal 24 or 30 fps, they where just too fast.  The sand one really needs more contrast but editing 1000 shots.  Each shot done at 1 sec intervals.

The first one has some camera movement because the tripod was sitting in the surf and when a wave washed back out, seaweed would wrap around leg and the sand would erode and I tried to compensate by steading the tripod with my hand.  (I needed to press the tripod deeper into the sand.)