Painting With The Baileys

Last week, my friend, Deb and her family stopped in for a visit on their trek across the country.  Deb had requested some light painting while they were here, so we headed out to the Sun Tunnels for a night of painting.  My kids have been painting with me before, but this was an entirely new experience for her girls.  It didn't take long for them to get the idea and they all jumped in, eager to do some painting.  Before we knew it, it was 4:00 am and way past bedtime.  Man we had a good time!

Apprentice Painter

The other night, I took some friends out to the Sun Tunnels for some light painting.  Between us, we had 6 kids with us.  Of course, all of the kids wanted to try their hand at painting.  I'm pretty sure this is one of my all time favorite light painting images.  This is me and my son, in his first time handling some roman candles.  These are both the same image, the second one is cropped tighter so you can see us better. 

Trip To The Zoo

Yesterday I took the day off and took my youngest daughter to the zoo.  We had a great time wandering and checking out the animals.  It was pretty hot, so most of the animals were pretty inactive.  I did manage to get a few good shots in.

Swirls

A couple of variations of an image from this week's light painting expedition.

Leading Lines

My contribution for this week's challenge over at Digital Photography School.

Sun Tunnels Sunset

Well, it wouldn't be right if I didn't post some sunset images at the Sun Tunnels.

More Lightning

This is one of the frames used to create the composite in my last post.  I really liked the mood of the images and did a little work to bring it out.  The black and white conversion really adds to the feel.

Lightning

Every summer, we get some pretty fantastic lightning storms around here.  While I've gotten some decent images in the past, It's been a while since I've gotten one I've really loved.  The other night, we had a good storm roll through and I was able to get out in it for a bit.  One of my challenges has been finding a decent spot to get an interesting foreground.  I live in a pretty flat area of the valley, with not a lot of interesting spots for a lightning shot.  Well, The storm was moving through quickly, so we picked a spot that looked okay and got set up for the show.  This is a composite image, created by stacking 12 separate images.  Individually, the images weren't too exciting.  Together, they are pretty fantastic.  I still need to find a better location, but I like how this one turned out.

Sun Tunnels and Star Trails

So, a couple of weeks ago, some friends and I spent the night out at the Lucin Sun Tunnels.  We spent a good amount of time doing some light painting and then set things up to catch some stars.  My intent was to capture enough frames for a couple of time lapse sequences.  The beauty of this method is that you can use them for time lapse and to stack for some star trail images.  We got started pretty late, or early, depending on how you look at it, so the last third of the frames were completely blown out.  I did manage to get enough for a couple of short sequences, with the sun rising and the stars fading.  Good stuff.  Added bonus: I was able to create these two images by stacking over 220 frames for each image.  I love the combination of the stars and the rich colors of the morning light.  Did I mention how fantastic these are?

Before & After

Sun Tunnel Sunrise

Painting Excursion

I mentioned in an earlier post that my good friend Dave is heading across the country with his family on a new adventure.  We decided that it would be appropriate to get in one last light painting session with him before he left.  So, on Saturday afternoon, we loaded up and headed out to the Sun Tunnels near Lucin, UT.    As we drove, we watched the storm brewing over the Salt Lake Valley, half hoping it would stay away, half hoping it would follow us so we could get some lightning shots.  Well, the storm stayed away and we ended up with beautiful, clear skies.  I love the extra dimension that the stars add to these images.  Good stuff.

Best of luck to you and your family, Dave!

All in a Row

I created this panoramic image the other day at the Sun Tunnels near Lucin, UT.  If you remember these tunnels from previous posts, they are placed in two sets of two, in an "X" pattern, lined up for the summer and winter solstice.  I created this image by standing directly in the center of the tunnels (it's marked), and then rotated around a full 360°, capturing a total of 24 images.  After combining the images in CS5, I actually ended up wit a good deal more than I needed for the 360° I was looking for.  In fact, I ended up with 5 tunnels in the image.  So, after some adjustments and a crop, this is a complete, 360° view from the center of the tunnels.  You're going to want to click on this image for a larger view.

Sunrise and Stars

My good friend, Dave is picking up his family and heading to New York to start a new adventure and a fantastic opportunity.  We decided that a final light painting expedition was in order, so yesterday afternoon, we headed out to the middle of nowhere, just past Lucin, UT to the Sun Tunnels.  We've been out here before, you've seen these tunnels in my images in previous posts.  This has become a favorite spot to paint, shoot some stars, and hang out with friends.  We had an amazing time, and came home with some great images.  You'll see them in the next few days.  As we wrapped up out painting, we set up our cameras to catch some stars.  There was no moon, and the few clouds we had seen had cleared, so we had great conditions for stars.  These shots came as sunrise was starting show.  I love the combination of the early morning light and the fading stars.  Good stuff.

This first image is from a set that was captured with a fisheye lens at 15mm on a full-frame camera.  I purposely placed the horizon low in the frame, causing the landscape to warp.  

This second image was captured using a 10-22mm lens on the cropped-sensor 7D.

A Few Fireworks

Well, it wouldn't be right if I didn't post a few fireworks shots.  These are actually frames from time lapse material that I shot during the show.  I think they actually look pretty cool in Black and White.