Sarsha

Taken at a sled dog camp in Dyea (near Skagway), Alaska. When we passed through, Sarsha was about a year old, and was on a leash as the official tourist “greeter” for the camp.

Sarsha.jpg

Considering they’re basically mutts, it’s impressive just how intelligent and dignified sled dogs (a.k.a., “Alaskan Huskies”) are. I also discovered that try as I might, I could never get any of the sled dogs we met to make eye contact. Just as well, I suppose — it makes for good portrait poses! Originally posted to the old blog on June 17, 2008; on Flickr over here.

Riding the rails

The tracks (rails of the Denver metro light rail system) glide by as we head home…

Riding the rails.jpg

I’d seen images like this before — but via film. I wanted to see what it took to make an image like this with my digital gear. After some fiddling, I found that an exposure of 1/30 second or longer works just fine — so long as the train is up to full speed (about 60 miles/hour, or about 95 kilometers/hour).

If you look very closely, you can see some subtle reflections from the inside of the train (since there’s no way to get my camera outside the window for this image). I’ll have to spend a little more time in Photoshop cleaning them up. Still, I like how this turned out. The rail tops are nice and sharp, and the rail ties are blurred out, but don’t overlap.

I’ve noticed one odd thing, though — because the rails are at an angle to the image’s edges, the image always looks crooked to me. I *know* it’s rectangular, but it always looks skewed. This must be some sort of illusion, I’ll have to look it up…

Originally posted to the old blog on June 25, 2008; on Flickr over here.

Radiating shadows

On a trip back to New Mexico, we managed to stay a night and a day in Santa Fe. After the pup was in bed, Mrs. Argos wanted a little “me time,” so I grabbed my gear and headed downtown for some night shots. I thought this play of light and shadow was interesting:

Radiating shadows.jpg

The contrast in geometry between the shadow lines and the joints between the sidewalk pavers is kind of neat too. FWIW, I did very little to this shot other than crop it a bit and desaturate it (although not completely).

Originally posted to the old blog on October 23, 2009; on Flickr over here.