Monthly Archives: November 2014

Olmsted Point

wpid11238-AU0E8002.jpgA previous trip across the Tioga Pass had taken me to Olmsted Point and I did post about that here. Nancy hadn’t been before so it was fun showing her the spot for the first time. Like me, she was amazed how many people never left the parking area and discovered the better views after only a short stroll (or what counts as a stroll at that sort of altitude). Even when people are there, you still feel like you have the place to yourself.

wpid11242-AU0E8118.jpgLast time I was there, it had been a bit hazy. This time it was a bit clearer which was good. The nice thing about Olmsted Point is that, despite the lengthy road journey from the valley, you are actually very close to the same place and you have a nice perspective on Half Dome. Being there earlier would help from a lighting perspective because things are starting to be a bit backlit but it is still a lovely view.

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Tuolumne Grove

wpid11252-AU0E8175.jpgA trip into Yosemite means a chance to see some big trees. I had originally thought about a trip to Mariposa Grove like the one I posted about here. However, coming in over the Tioga Pass makes for a long trip to get to Mariposa so, instead, we decided to head to the Tuolumne Grove instead. While perhaps not as extensive, it is still a nice spot and, courtesy of being a bit more out of the way and involving a walk of about a mile, it is a lot less busy.

wpid11246-AU0E8152-Edit.jpgThe trees are always cool to see.   I always find it funny how the large firs start to make you wonder whether they are the big trees until you do see a sequoia at which point you realize just how big the big guys are. One other feature of Tuolumne Grove is the tree with the road cut through it. I should point out that this sort of vandalism is appalling. The idea of hacking out the bottom of a huge tree so people can go through it is really nuts. However, now that it is done, you do see something quite unusual. I hope lessons have been learned though.

wpid11248-AU0E8165.jpgThe view as you look up is one of the fun things about trees that are tall and very straight. They converge above you in a way that is quite dramatic.

wpid11254-AU0E8242.jpgScale is something that is always hard to portray in photos. People are a good way of getting some perspective on this. Most of the time you try and get the shots with no one there. Best to try both and then go with which one works best. Of course, you can include your wife and just get a shot that you like anyway!

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Traversing the Sierras

wpid11379-AU0E7969.jpgThe trip to Mammoth meant a drive across Route 108 across the Sierras. This was a road I hadn’t used before. The climb was significant reaching almost 10,000′ at the high point of Senora Pass.   Most of the time we were just driving along. However, we did come across a sign for Donnell Lake and thought that might be worth a look and stretching the legs is always welcome on a long driving day.

wpid11381-AU0E0719.jpgThe lake itself is set down a long way in the valley and the road led to an overlook area. This was just fine. The lake is a really intense color which I guess I would describe as a combination of sky blue and green. It certainly catches the eye. In fact, it had recently caught my eye when I was flying east. I had looked down from a flight at another dammed lake. Just below us at the time I had seen the dam and this greenish lake so it was quite a surprise to find ourselves right by it.

wpid11383-AU0E0725.jpgA couple of people were leaving just as we arrived and they were the only souls we saw. The place was ours after that. The location meant you could see where the dam was but couldn’t really get a sense of it. However, the rest of the view was lovely and well worth a stop if you are heading across this way.

Oakland Airport BART Connector

wpid11984-AU0E3142.jpgUntil this weekend, the connection between BART’s Coliseum Station and Oakland Airport was a bus service called AirBART.  It was $3 and was reasonably frequent and didn’t take too long provided you times it well.  However, it wasn’t the easiest connection.  Consequently, a rail connection has been built.  I won’t get into the doubling of price for the ride.  That can wait to another day.  However, Friday 21st was the day in which the commissioning ended and the first public access was given.  There were free rides for the public before formal service opened on the following day.

wpid11990-AU0E3196.jpgI went along to check out the system.  It is a cable operated vehicle which runs automatically.  There is a station connected by escalators to the existing BART station at one end and the other end is in the parking lot at the airport.  Halfway along the track (which is elevated for a large portion of the journey and at ground level or underground for a section) is the maintenance facility and power source.  Here the train briefly stops as it changes from the cable for one half to the cable for the other.  The stop is quite brief.

wpid11982-AU0E3093.jpgI filmed the operation during the demonstration runs and you can see how the system looks below.  Now we shall see how much use it gets!

Inside Bodie Buildings

wpid11361-AU0E8823.jpgWhile you are not allowed inside most of the buildings at Bodie, you can walk right up to the windows to take a look inside. This is one of those times when photography can really help.   The windows are not cleaned so there is a layer of dust and grime on them. With bright sunlight above, it is hard to get a good view of the inside. However, a wide angle lens pressed right up against the glass, possibly including a spare hand to cover a particular reflection, means that you get a far clearer view.   A little tweaking of the contrast in Lightroom and the interior shots look far better than what you recall seeing.

wpid11346-AU0E8784.jpgConsequently, I was able to see a lot more of what was inside some of the buildings when we got home. Whether it was disused beds decaying, ceilings coming apart or the interior of a schoolroom, you could see a lot of what was left behind.   Some of the buildings showed a great deal of what had been there before. The dining and pool tables in the hotel, the exercise equipment at the Oddfellows Hall or the shelves in the shop all told a story of a life long gone.

Retired Machinery

wpid11324-AU0E8696.jpgNot only buildings show the history of Bodie. There is plenty of machinery that gives some insight into what had gone before in this town. As soon as you leave the parking lot, a selection of machinery from one of the mines has been relocated to let you see how the mines got everything up and down.   The big steam pistons, cable reels and the lift cages the guys went down in are there to wander around.

wpid11365-AU0E8835.jpgThat isn’t all though.   There are quite a few bits and pieces scattered around the town where they were left. A couple of vehicles are on display in good condition. These are interesting but the ones that were unreserved interested me far more.   The metal parts of small trucks have survived while the wooden frames have rotted away. They leave the skeleton like parts slightly sunk into the ground giving the impression that the whole vehicle has sunk.   The missing bits leave scope for the imagination to wonder at how the whole thing looked.   It is also a detective task to work out exactly what some of the remaining parts are and what joined them together.

wpid11369-AU0E8841.jpgVehicles aren’t the only things to find. Some other machinery is scattered about and that involves even more thought as to what it was for and how it ended up dumped in its current location. The condition of the metalwork is remarkably good. I have no idea whether the park service has done anything to sustain the items but they seem to be petty resilient. I imagine the climate helps to keep things in good shape so hopefully they will be there for generations to come.

Bodie Buildings

wpid11342-AU0E8766.jpgPart of our schedule while staying at Mammoth Lakes was to visit Bodie. If you are not familiar with it, Bodie is a ghost town not far from the Nevada line. It was once a mining town and quite a booming (and hairy) place but the demise of the mining left the town devoid of a reason to be.   Much of the town was lost to fire but a significant number of buildings remain in pretty much the condition they were when their occupants left. This includes a fair number of interior fixtures and fittings in place.

wpid11340-AU0E8752.jpgThe Park Service is careful to protect what there is so most of the buildings are closed up. You can look through the windows and there is a tour of the stamping mill. Bar a few places, everything is constructed from wood. The environment has had some effect on them but they are still mostly in good shape. You can see which ones were better constructed at the time. They certainly hold their shape well while some are either collapsing or at least pretty askew.

wpid11326-AU0E8704.jpgA few brick structures are around. The bigger ones still seem to be hanging in there while some of the smaller ones have collapsed. Not sure whether this was a result of age or maybe the odd tremor has taken a toll. While the big brick buildings make some sense based on their usage, I was interested in the smaller ones.   Was this a status symbol in old Bodie to have a brick structure? I imagine shipping in the materials was a bit harder than for a lumber house and whether the skilled labor was around, I have no idea.

wpid11350-AU0E8800.jpgGetting to Bodie requires a trek of about 16 miles from the highway.   The last three are on a rough track which can be pretty rough in parts. If you have something suited to rough roads this will be no problem but a regular car takes a bit of a pounding. Fine if it is a rental but a bit more troublesome if it is your own! However, take it easy and it is worth the effort.

Devil’s Postpile

wpid11276-AU0E8332-Edit.jpgA trip to Mammoth Lakes for a long weekend had us exploring some of the local areas of interest. One that our guidebook recommended was The Devil’s Postpile. This was described as an outcrop of basalt formed during the volcanic activity the area experienced quite a while back. We decided to give it a go. I like geologic features and having grown up with pictures of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, I knew what basalt could look like.

wpid11278-AU0E8371.jpgWe weren’t the only ones with this idea. The valley in which the Postpile is located is accessed by a steep, narrow, winding road. Consequently, traffic is very restricted and most visitors use the shuttle bus. This was a lot of people the day we were there and the line for the bus was long and slow. At one point we contemplated bagging the whole thing. We set some time thresholds to be on the bus and we were just inside these when we finally got on board.

wpid11272-AU0E8324.jpgIt is a short walk from the bus drop off point to the rocks. They are certainly very cool. It is always hard to believe that rocks should form in these hexagonal columns naturally. In this case they are not only vertical but some sections have distorted in different ways so it is a mix of patterns. The harsh shadows of the middle of the day actually helped to emphasize the interesting patterns.

wpid11274-AU0E8328.jpgThere was a lot of fallen rock in front of the hill which gave some interesting perspective on the size of the columns. When some of the pieces had been split, it was good to see how black the interior was unbleached by years of sun.

wpid11280-AU0E8374.jpgHowever, the best was yet to come. I was wandering behind the trees to see a view of the hills behind us and to get away from the crowds for a moment. I ended up on top of a ridge overlooking the San Joaquin River. The view was beautiful. It was quite funny to think that so many people were wandering along the trail a short distance away and had no idea that they were missing out on a beautiful location. Of course, if they had realized, a part of the beauty would have been gone.

wpid11282-AU0E8405.jpgOn the walk back to the bus, I made an effort to check out the side trails to see what was here too and got to share some of the lovely views with the others who had stepped off the main path. It always pays to poke around a bit.

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HDR for Snapshots

While you always want to produce great photographs, sometimes you are just getting snapshots to remind you of places that you have visited. This blog is full of such shots that will never go anywhere further. One of the shortcomings of those shots is that they are taken at a time of day that is not ideal.   If I am setting out on a photo trip, I can go at the time that suits the lighting. If we are visiting somewhere on our travels, I get the shots that are available at that time. That often means harsh lighting.

Here I have started to take a lesson from my friend Hayman. He was talking about using HDR to make something more interesting from an otherwise unflattering lighting situation. Consequently, I have been making a lot more use of HDR on my travels. While early processing techniques for HDR were focused more on the grungy style, the latest developments allow you to produce an image that is a lot more natural looking and is far closer to what you recall of the view when you were there.

When trying to provide a more interesting shot for sharing with someone who wasn’t there, this is a good option. The ability of raw processing to get a lot more out of a shot has certainly increased the potential of a single shot. However, as the contrast ratio gets larger, the limits of a single shot become apparent. An HDR image can cope with this situation a lot better.

I am now using the tone mapping in Adobe Camera Raw to work on the 32 bit file once Photoshop has created it.   Then, once it is back in Lightroom, I can use the same sliders to further work on it. (I am currently unsure about how well the edits in ACR show up in Lightroom as I seem to lose some of the effects but will figure that out in due course.). The resulting images are still a little less than real but part of the purpose is to show more of the shot than the light would naturally have given.

The examples below are a bit of a sample. One of the middle range image as it was without any significant work. Next comes an edit in Lightroom to bring out a lot of the shot. The last is the HDR effort. Hopefully it shows the various results possible for the same basic shot.  Interestingly, if the light is not totally harsh, the ability to get more out of a RAW file is not far short of what the HDR gives.  It has less flexibility and is more susceptible to halos but it is a close second.

Straight Down the Runway

wpid11233-C59F7309.jpgOne of the things I have been contemplating for a while is getting some shots at SFO from straight down the runway. I have been to other locations and blogged about them here and here. However, I wanted to try a view that included the runway itself. With a day free to play, I decided to explore the options.

wpid11229-C59F7034.jpgI ended up with a spot that was reasonable. It isn’t perfect with fences and lights in the way to some extent. A parking lot between me and the runway has the double effect of being visually intrusive and also providing lots of heat haze. In truth, heat haze was a big problem while I was there. This was something I had anticipated being an issue. However, I was more interested in understanding the possibilities there so I could come back at a different time of year when heat haze is less of an issue.

wpid11231-C59F7185.jpgEven so, as the sun got lower, the problem did reduce a lot and, of course, the lighting got a lot nicer. I am thinking a visit when the timing of the departure peak combines with the lighting is going to be in order.

wpid11235-C59F7372.jpgOne other thing that will change is that my visit occurred during the time in the summer when SFO was working on two runways and all operations were on the 28 runways. That meant I had a lot more departures coming my way than will be the case when the 01 runways are taking the majority of the departure traffic.