A long exposure of the Eiffel Tower’s sweeping light beams at night:
It’s likely not obvious, but I took this shot using Olympus’ “Live Composite” function — I love how it lets me make images like this without having to use a neutral density filter, or (diffraction-blurring) small apertures. The full settings with an Olympus OM-D E-M5II and M.Zuiko 40-150mm lens were f/3.5, 60mm, ISO 200, exposures of 0.8 seconds each.
This little figure is part of the decoration on the Temple of the Warriors in the Maya ruins of Chichén Itzá, Mexico:
I’m not sure how tall he is, since he’s mounted at a significant height off the ground, and can’t be seen from up close — you need a reasonably long lens and some perspective correction software to get a shot like this. Still, if you look closely, you can see that the figure is emerging from the jaws of a feathered serpent, with most of the serpent’s details carved in bas-relief into the building’s stones.
A road-side sign, seen along a highway just outside Cienfuegos, Cuba:
The caption translates to “Only socialism makes the impossible possible.” In case you don’t recognize the portrait, it’s of Hugo Chávez, the late president of Venezuela — a major benefactor of Cuba early in the 21st century.
A look down Paris’ Champs Elysées at night:
This is just one frame out of many in a time lapse video I’m putting together — just as soon as a replacement for my now-defunct main computer arrives (!?!). If you were curious, there are little sheltered “islands” for pedestrians at the center of crosswalks on this street — perfect locations for a little night photography.
Another view of the always-impressive Temple V in the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal, Guatemala:
This shot is from the northwest of the structure (unusual for a number of reasons, including its north-facing orientation). Temple V also has rounded corners, a feature unique to major structures in Tikal and its surroundings.
A quick slice-of-life shot; seen in Havana, Cuba; taken through a tour bus’ windows as we drove by:
This scene probably doesn’t look all that exceptional to you, but it’s got two interesting stories in it.
The Perseid meteor shower had its peak a few days ago (late August 12 / early August 13 in North America), and since I both live in an urban area (bright night skies) and had cloudy weather that night, missed out on what must have been a good show.
But as luck would have it, we own a small bit of land in southern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains — a dark sky sort of place — and I’d already planned on traveling down for the weekend to do some maintenance work. So, I thought I should try to capture some lagging Perseids the night of the 13th / 14th — here’s my first shot from the series:
For your weekend relaxation — a view of Montmorency Falls, near Quebec City, Quebec, Canada:
As waterfalls go, Montmorency is both photogenic and easy to get to, if you’re in the neighborhood (it’s a relatively short jaunt off a nearby highway). Some thoughts, though, should you be planning a trip to Quebec City: Continue reading
We recently took a family trip to Montreal and Boston — so along with other things, it gave me a chance to put Olympus’ (relatively recent) “Live Composite” mode to work on Boston’s Independence Day fireworks.
For those of you unfamiliar with this, “Live Composite” is a feature of their OM-D cameras that allows you to do something like a long exposure — but without the usual risk that brings of overexposing parts of the image. You set up your exposure settings, start “Live Comp,” then it only updates a part of the image if it has become brighter than before — so you wind up collecting sort of a “high water mark” for each pixel / color.
It’s easier to use than I’ve described it, as for the results, you can see for yourself:
This was my first real experience with Live Composite — I’ll definitely be writing more about it in the coming weeks…
So, some pictures and a few words about another interesting thing we got to see a bit of on our trip to Cuba last autumn — the school system.
We were able to see a few schools, either outside or inside or both. But mostly, we saw schoolkids — note the uniforms, they’re color-coded. Continue reading