The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: sunsets

Showing posts with label sunsets. Show all posts

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Zion Arrival

We're on vacation visiting Zion National Park!

Our lodge has some wonderful views and is situated in Springdale, just outside the park entrance.
We literally just arrived. I thought I'd share these photos taken from our lodge, or just nearby.

On the Road to Zion

Back View from the Lodge

Front View from the Lodge

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Arizona Encore

I still have some photos from my December Arizona trip that I'd like to share, and that is the purpose of this blog entry.

This first picture was taken at Sabino Canyon, and reflects classic Arizona scenery.

Sabino View

These next two shots are of a hummingbird at Tucson's Desert Museum. They are cropped considerably and thus have lost a bit of detail relative to what I'd prefer. This is what happens when one goes to the zoo with the wrong lens:) I shot these with my 12-40mm; next time I go zoo visiting I'll bring my longest lens!

Hummingbird Side View

Hummingbird Front View

This next picture is blurry and taken through the glass side window of the car while moving. Despite that, I still wanted to share the look of those nice Arizona sun rays.

Sun Rays

This next photo is kind of an experiment dealing with a relatively tight crop on some grasses, and adjusting the colors a bit.

Grasses Alit

Bird Down Under

American Coots are unusual looking birds that appeal to me for some reason that I can not explain. In these photos I enjoy the colors and patterns in their surrounding water as well.

American Coot in Water Circles

Horizontal Coot Flow

American Coot Pushing Water

Monday, January 18, 2016

Patterns in Nature

Still doing some catchup blogging here. This collection reflects a few different photo outings.

This is a miniature horse I passed during a walk in a neighborhood with which I was not familiar. The horse was a welcome surprise. I had not anticipated passing any farm animals on this particular stroll.
This is taken with my Nexus 5x cell camera.

Miniature Horse

These next three sunset shots were taken - you will not believe this - from the parking lot at Trader Joe's. I stepped out from grocery shopping and was greeted with this amazing orange sky. These are taken w/my Nexus 5x. Need I mention it was even better in person? At least you get an idea from the photos.

Memorable Sunset 1

Memorable Sunset 2

Memorable Sunset 3

While also a sunset, the following is taken on a different day with my Olympus and 12-40mm lens. The sky's purple color felt soothing.

Late Light

These next two are different crops of the same photo.

Against the Sky 1

Against the Sky 2

Leaf Texture and Color

This is Ranger. He's my sister-in-law and husband's dog. He's a Catahoula. He's looking at something important.

Eye of Ranger

Eye of Gargoyle at Ranger's House

Afternoon Buds

Wood Grain 1

Wood Grain 2

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Nexus 5X Camera Takes Great Pictures

The battery in my non-smart flip mobile phone is the original one, and since that means it's *many* years old, it can't keep a charge for very long. After a "full recharge", talk time is about 30 seconds before the battery dies! Not good!

Alas, it was time for me to join the modern generation and get a new mobile phone. I thought I'd try the new Nexus 5X direct from Google (made by LG). So far, I'm very pleased with that decision. The phone sports an excellent camera, one of the best in any cell phone to date. Dxomark rates it very highly (it's the same camera as in the Nexus 6P) only bested by a few phones that cost twice as much: see the dxomark website. Notably, it is rated higher than the current best iPhone models.

Google/LG put a new Sony sensor in the camera that has larger 1.55μm pixels, giving the phone excellent photo capturing performance in terms of signal-to-noise and lower light photography. It is easy to doubt such claims, but from what I can tell, this phone indeed takes very nice pictures. See for yourself below.

Hmmm, I wonder what I should take pictures of with my new phone?... How about more foliage pictures? One can never get enough of these, right?

Reflections Across the Road

Shadows on Needles

I (currently) resize all photos to a maximum of 1000 pixels in the longest dimension for this photo blog. Since the originals for these photos are 4032x3024px, considerable detail is lost as you view my photos in your browser. For example, the pine needles in the above photo don't appear particularly sharp. Here is a 100% crop of a portion of the same photo:

Pine Needles

And here is another 100% crop of a different portion of the scene:

100% Crop

While these samples are hardly "super sharp", they fair pretty well as 100% crops go, where one pixel is one pixel in your browser. All I'm trying to say is that the 4032px version looks a lot better than the 1000px version, so don't use my blog as a definitive reference for the underlying photo quality.

Enough tech talk. Back to some photos:

Orange You Glad You Saw This

End of the Res

It is interesting to compare the above photo, taken with the Nexus 5X, with another similar photo taken with my Olympus gear, two weeks earlier:

End of the Res Olympus

You can see how the trees have lost most of their color, but despite that, and despite the first photo being from a "lowly" cell phone, the Nexus 5X image could easily be considered the better image.

Res Blue on Blue

Autumn Clouds

Sunset Over Gravestones

Birch Protector

Red Lock

Friday, July 3, 2015

Evening Grocery Trip Side Benefit

An after dinner grocery shopping trip had an unexpected benefit: I happened to be traveling past a picturesque spot at sunset. Thankfully, I had my "backup" Panasonic ZS-40 camera in the car. So I pulled over and took some photos. There were two other photographers and one fisherman at the site. The fisherman informed me the previous night's sunset was equally enjoyable.

Not only was the sunset wonderful, but the first photo shows a Great Blue Heron appreciating the nearby waterfall. I was amused that the two other photographers, who were also photographing the Great Blue Heron, were using gigantic heavy lenses on their "full frame" and APS-C gear. One had a 500mm lens that must have been three feet long; I never got a proper answer on the focal length of other one, which was also a few feet in length. Little did they realize my travel zoom (with its smaller sensor) has a 720mm lens on it, and the entire camera fits in my pocket.

Enjoy the photos!

Foot Massage

Sunset View 1

Sunset View 2

Sunset View 3

Sunset View 4

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Afternoon Variety

After walking around the Res. and frustratingly taking no pictures because nothing seemed photo worthy, I returned home and took all these pictures from afternoon through late late afternoon.

All pictures in this post taken with my Olympus 75-300mm lens. For non-photographers, this is a telephoto zoom lens, not a macro lens; so I had to stand a short distance away to take the closeups. All handheld. All pictures are uploaded with a max dimension of 1000px.