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Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

At the end of the Salton View Road in Joshua Tree National Park is a lookout called Keys View. No it has nothing to do with the Florida Keys, they are clear across the country no where near here. In fact there is barely any water here as Joshua Tree National Park is desert. There are two types of desert actually: Mohave Desert in the northern, higher elevation part of the park and Colorado Desert, in the southern, lower elevation parts.

The only body of water in the neighborhood is the Salton Sea, which you can see in this pictures just beyond those mountains. Like Mono Lake, it has a high salinity level. The Salton Sea lies directly on the San Andreas Fault and, like Death Valley, lies below sea level.

Joshua Tree National Park is quite beautiful although hot. My son and I visited here to go do some hikes and take photos and went in May thinking we’d beat the real heat. Well no such luck, it turned out to be the hottest May in years and we got temperatures around 100F (37.8C). It is a dry heat which I find infinitely more bearable than humid heat, but one sure ends up drinking a lot of water!

This shot is my usual HDR shot with 3 bracketed shots and processed in Dynamic Photo HDR followed by some tweaking in Lightroom.

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Here is another shot taken at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands.

You can’t help but love this place with its 19 working windmills. It provides such a wonderful “Dutch” scene. What could be more stereo-typical than this? Perhaps a winter scene, when it’s all frozen over and people are out skating the canals.

On this occasion I visited with Linda who had never been to Holland before. The drive to Kinderdijk takes you past some glorious Dutch countryside. Parts of the road is right on top of the levees, which are called “dykes” in Holland and are built to keep the water out. This is also where the windmills come in as they were designed as pumps, pumping water out of the lower lying lands. They still work at Kinderdijk and it is quite normal to see some in action when you wander around here (although there is no real need for them as a pump, they turn mostly for the tourists these days.

This shot is not an HDR, but a single image treated with Topaz Adjust. I tend to apply the effect on one layer, then blend copies of the original image together to get the effect I want. This provides me with a lot of control and avoids that “grungy” look you can get so easily with Topaz.

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As promised, here is a shot with the wonderful fluffy clouds that were so abundant on this trip. As I said in my last post, previous trips to Mono Lake had all been cloudless so this was a real treat.

The reflections were SO intense they almost look fake, but I can assure you they are not. This shot was taken about 6pm, which was 2 1/2 hours before sunset. Linda and I actually went here to scope out where to be at sunset, but the conditions were so nice we pulled out our cameras and took a series of shots. There was no wind at all which is why the reflections are so intense, the water was like a mirror and because it was still quite light, the overall effect is quite spectacular.

Linda and I actually did come back at sunset, but there was nothing going on, wind had picked up and there was no color whatsoever. Conditions were so “blah” we didn’t even get out of the car, so were happy we got these shots a few hours earlier.

This shot is a single picture with some treatment in Topaz Adjust. I applied Topaz to one layer, then blended the other, original, layer to get the look I wanted. I find this lets me control noise pretty well.

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Linda and I managed a quick visit to the Lee Vining area and got to visit Bodie and Mono Lake.

My previous trips to Mono Lake always seemed to coincide with rather uninteresting weather and I never really got the shots I had imagined could be had in this wonderful location. This time however, the weather was much kinder. As you can see from the shot below, there was no wind and there were clouds. I’ll post another shot tomorrow where the clouds are more pronounced, but today’s shot is one of calmness.

The time was about 10 minutes before sunrise (which occurred at 5:37am that day). I have this cool little iPhone app that tells me when dawn starts and when sunrise (and sunset) occurs. So I knew exactly when the sun would appear and I was ready.

This is actually an HDR, comprised of 3 shots. Processed with Dynamic Photo HDR, which produces much more “natural” photos than, say, Photomatix. It also produces a heck of a lot less noise, one of the real problems with Photomatix I find.

While I would have liked to have seen a little more of the clouds, I am happy with this shot. Everything came together for me. The composition, the reflections, the colors and, perhaps most importantly, the overall “mood” of the scene.

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When walking through the back streets of the picturesque Dutch town of Gouda, I spotted this lonely bike, leaning up against the wall. It struck me that bike’s blue color complimented the colors of the cobblestone and the wicker basket sort of blends in as well.

I also knew that the textures of the sandstone wall and the cobble stone pavement would look great in HDR so I couldn’t resist snapping a series of shots. Here is the result.

Bikes are everywhere in Holland of course and Linda and I, not being used to so many of them on the street, had to be on a constant lookout (they are silent too by the way).

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At the end of the Champs Elysees stands the famous Arch de Triomphe. This triumphal arch honors those who fought for France, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. On the inside and the top of the arc there are all of the names of generals and wars fought. Underneath is the Tomb_of_the_unknown_soldier from World War I.

The Arc stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, also known as the Place l‘Etoile. It is a really large roundabout, with lots of traffic and no less than 12 major roads coming together. Trying to cross this roundabout would be madness so there are tunnels that take you from the sidewalks into the center of the roundabout.

It turned out that our Museum Pass provided entry into the Arc itself. This means you can climb this seemingly endless spiral staircase to the top (see below – hand held). I did not count the steps, but it took forever – believe me on this. The views are of course magnificent, but . . . . no tripods allowed! This makes it so much harder to get decent night shots.

The Arc is huge, so large in fact that in 1919, Charles Godefroy flew his bi-plane through it.

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Here is a shot of a typical street with a canal in Amsterdam. Not all streets have canals of course, but there is a lot of water (as is the case in much of the western part of Holland) in Amsterdam. It is of course famous for it many canals.

Linda and I walked and walked in this fabulous city. It is vibrant and very picturesque.

Sadly, there was a strike on by the workers of the city and there was garbage everywhere as it had not been collected. So sad to see such a wonderful city portrayed in such a way. On the train, a total stranger had heard us speak English and, as we entered Amsterdam, came up to us and, in very broken English, apologized for the garbage. At first we had no idea what he was talking about, but the moment we stepped out of the station, all became clear.

However, this did not spoil our appreciation of this wonderful city. We walked down little cobble-stoned streets, dodging the bicycles (which were EVERYWHERE) and stopping at every shoe shop and bakery we stumbled upon (and there are many of them, believe me). The bakeries were fun. I had told Linda of my favorite baked goodies so we had to try them all of course. We stocked up on things like Spekulaas, Gevulde Koek and Stroopwafels and munched our way through the streets of Amsterdam.

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Here are some windmills. Not from the Zaansche Schans as indicated in the previous post, but from a place called Kinderdijk.

Kinderdijk is famous for its collection of windmills. There are 19 of them clustered together, more than anywhere else in the Netherlands. While not all 19 are visible in the picture below, there are quite a few. I can count 13. How about you?

This shot is an HDR, but is only made from 2 exposures. One exposed for the grass and water, the other for the sky.

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So Linda and I visited Holland too, not just Paris. There is a lot of water in Holland. Not surprising really as 2/5 of Holland lies below sea level. It’s why there are windmills in Holland, many were built to pump water.

There is a region called De Zaansche Schans, where there are a bunch of windmills in working order. There is one setup as a saw mill and another for grinding wheat. Yes, wind power was put to good use in the old days, kind of ironic that wind is once again a power source that is popular.

The shot below is taken just around the corner of those windmills (don’ worry, I’ll be posting pictures of them too). I loved the sky and the wide angle view of the water and house, just seem to make the composition come together for me. The two ducks were a bonus.

This is an HDR, made from 3 exposures each two stops apart.

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The Château de Versailles is nothing less than magnificent.

The court of Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682, when Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789 after the beginning of the French Revolution.

The rooms are simply amazing, the most spectacular being the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), the setting for many of the ceremonies of the French Court.

One of the things that struck me in particular were the wonderful ceilings. Every room was different! Sometimes the ceilings were covered in spectacular paintings, others has wonderful architectural features, etc.

The one in the picture below is an example. Just one room of many. Amazing the work that must have gone into this. They certainly do not build them like that anymore!

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