|
||||
|
While I was in Austin, I took portraits of Terri and her daughter, Brittany. It was cold but pretty out so we headed to a park near their house for some outdoor pictures before going home to take pictures with their dogs in front of the Christmas tree. It’s always fun taking pictures with them and we had a blast!
One of the nice things about being back in Austin over Christmas was getting to see people I’ve been friends with for a long time but don’t get to see often. A few of them even let me take pictures of them. My friend Erin, who now lives in Oahu My parents, my brother Matthew, my grandma, my dog Crash, my two cats Kepler and Apollo, and I all gathered at my parents’ house for presents and brunch on Christmas morning. Poor Apollo was terrified of Crash (who was just as afraid of him) and spent most of the time upstairs. Kepler ventured into the action but quickly took refuge under the tree. A great time was had by all (with the possible exception of the cats…).
There was a total lunar eclipse in December that was visible (through the clouds) in Houston! A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth blocks the sun’s light from hitting the surface of the full Moon. Because the orbit of the Moon is slightly inclined, it doesn’t happen every month, so it’s a special event when we get to see one. I had gotten an adapter to connect my camera to the Celestron 8-inch telescope the LPI Education group has, but I didn’t take into account how long the adapter was and how high the moon would be in the sky during the eclipse. The adapter kept hitting the stand and I couldn’t even attach my camera, so I had to rig it where the tripod legs of the telescope were sticking out to the side of the telescope and my camera tripod was shoved underneath the telescope stand holding it up. This way the entire telescope was leaning and my camera was free of the telescope stand. Because it was rigged and leaning, I couldn’t use the tracking of the telescope, so I had to move it manually as the Moon traveled across the sky during the night, which made it much more of an interactive event than I had planned. Another issue was the cloud cover. We had spotty clouds that got thicker and thicker as the night went on. By the time the Moon was in totality and bright red, there were a few intermittent holes in the clouds to view it, and that was it. My field of view in the telescope was so small that it took four to six pictures to cover the entire surface of the Moon, and there just wasn’t enough time in the small holes in the clouds to get the shots during totality. So, I gave up using the telescope and just used the long end of my 70-300mm lens, so the red Moon pictures aren’t as high resolution, but they still came out nicely.
Traveling between Texas and San Francisco gave me some great views of gorgeous landscapes. On the way to San Francisco, I had clear skies for most of the way. It was downpouring when I left California and cloudy for almost the entire flight back to Houston, so I only got a couple of photos. My favorite is of a lake in the mountains that reflected the surrounding clouds.
Since AGU is such a widely-attended conference, I got to catch up with friends I rarely see. Below are some pictures I managed to snag of a couple of them.
We did a lot of walking around San Francisco at night, which gave me a lot of opportunities to get some long-exposure photos. I really liked the giant bow and arrow on the edge of the water near the Bay Bridge. Very cool!
Between walking around town and going to the farmers’ market, I got a bunch of pictures of plants in San Francisco. My favorites were the orchids at the market; they had some amazing textures. One reminded me of a humpback whale with its hairs and bumpiness!
I was in San Francisco for the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union a couple of weeks ago, so the next several sets of photos will be from that trip. My friend Cassie and I went out on a ferry ride to Sausalito in the fog at sunset the first night we were there. It was a spectacular sunset; the sky looked like it was on fire. It was freezing out on the deck of the ferry but I kept having to go back out there because the sunset kept getting better and better.
Continue reading Foggy ferry ride out of San Francisco at sunset A few weeks ago, my group at work had an advance (because we never retreat!) at the Armand Bayou Nature Center. I had a few spare minutes coming back from lunch and then when leaving for the day to grab a couple of pictures.
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Heather Dalton Photography | Blog - All Rights Reserved |
||||
