Sunset

Here are some photos I took of the sunset last night. Finally a nice one after several weeks of duds. We live on a hill looking west and it's great to just step out the back door and take a great picture!
This time of year I tend to turn the camera towards the sky-no flowers, no snow-just mud and dust.

Sunset Panorama

This image is actually two photos that I stitched together in Photoshop. I used the panorama setting on the camera to take the pictures, then used Panorama Merge to put them together.
If your camera came with a Panorama setting, and you have Photoshop or another editing program that has a Panorama stitching feature-try using that to make a panorama before you install the software that came with your camera. Photoshop (and I imagine Corel and other top of the line imaging software) seems to work better and is more versatile than software that comes bundled with cameras.
Another thing to remember with panoramas is lens focal length settings. Try to use the focal length that is as close to normal as possible. I used a very wide angle (14) for these pictures, which gives you a very wide angle, but is more difficult to work with. That's why the trees are a little tilted.

Panorama Sunset 2

Here is the last pair of pictures I took of the sunset and stitched together.

Taos Tree and Mailbox

This tree is about 20 miles south of Taos on the highway where you first see the valley and the gorge as you're headed to town. That's the gorge in the background.

This is a scan of an old picture I took on film in 2001. I'm finding that if you do the scan at a much higher resolution (800dpi +) you end up with a much higher quality image.

Duh, I guess. It doesn't work that way with printers though.

Lunar Eclipse

Here is the lunar eclipse, photographed from our bedroom this evening. I tried to be brave and went outside to photograph it, but the clouds were such a problem it didn't seem worth it.

I had the usual difficulty setting up the camera manually to take a picture when the eclipse was full-those pictures didn't come out. I like autofocus and auto exposure, but situations like this completely discombobulate them!

Does anyone out there know what those two stars/planets are?

So you have to manually focus the camera-hard enough at night when you know how to do it! The Olympus digital lens is a little squirrelly on manual focus-or I just haven't gotten the hang of it. I got it pretty focused-but the haze blurred it somewhat.

I tried to photograph that beautiful crescent moon at sunset a few weeks back, and never managed that one. I did a little better this time. I guess I'm getting the hang of it. That's one thing about a new camera-it can take a while to fully master it.

Cascades Lake

This is a lake somewhere in the Cascades in Washington State. I found some pictures I took on film in 1998 and scanned them today. Working with them in Photoshop I found that the more I tweaked the lighting, shadows and contrast the more they started to get a kind of "Kodachrome" look. I like it-the next picture has the same effect.

Cascades Forest

Here is another shot from about the same time-a bit further into the forest.

Chickadee

Here is the chickadee going after bugs on the pine tree. He/she looks like he/she is checking his/her feet!

Chickadee

Here is a chickadee that couldn't seem to make up it's mind between the thistle feeder and the bugs in the bark of our pine tree.
I'm so happy with the images I am getting with the Olympus E-510. If you are going to buy a new camera and are wondering if image stabilization is worth the extra money-I think the sharpness of these pictures speaks for themselves.
You just need to remember to turn it off when the camera is on a tripod.
It would be nice if it had some kind of a "dummy reminder" for that. It has lots of other settings for dummies.

Sunny afternoon?!

I told Heather the sun would come out today!! Here's my proof-10 minutes before we had another white out.

Icy Morning ctd.

Here is another shot from yesterday morning. It's one of our house finches balancing on the very top of a tree in our backyard.

Icy Morning

Here are a couple of shots I took this morning after that fog coated everything with ice. The pine tree is right outside our window-yes, Liz, I was sitting in the warm drinking coffee when I took this. The tree is outside the shop.

Mt Herman and Pine Tree

Just going through a few older pictures. I took this back in November with my Canon Digital Rebel and just got around to looking at it today. That was a good sunset.

White Breasted Nuthatch

Finally something at our feeders besides the boring house finches and pine siskins! I put a suet feeder up about a month ago and this white breasted nuthatch was the first customer.

I'm really liking the image stabilization of my new camera. It's definitely worth having as you get older and shakier.
You have to be careful to remind yourself to turn it off when you put the camera on the tripod though.

White Breasted Nuthatch

Here is another shot of him.

Summer.....

Does anyone out there remember summer? Or even warm weather? I took this last August on the way back from Santa Fe. Those are the cliffs overlooking Tierra Amarilla in NM near Chama.
I have a severe case of spring fever longing for some warm weather. Maybe in April.....

Desert Plants

Well, I thought I had one of circular patterns in the sand around desert plants, but this is about as close as I could find. This was taken in an arroyo near Espanola, NM.

Plant Circles

You sometimes see these arcs around plants in the desert. It's caused by the wind obviously, something that we have certainly been getting plenty of lately.
I had to get up in the middle of last night and take one of our bird feeders down. I thought it was going to come through the kitchen window!

Sorry I have neglected the blog for so long. I am going to try to find a photo of circles in the sand that I took in NM a while back and post that later.

Snowshoeing again

There have been so many comments about my "schlubby middle aged guy sitting in his living room in his bathrobe" entry that I feel obligated to point out that I occasionally do get out in the actual outdoors sometimes. Here are some pictures from a snowshoe trip I took yesterday. Witness the snowshoe tracks in front of this stump. Normally I would have cropped them out but....