Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies

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Went back to White lake a few weeks ago to attempt a sunset time lapse but I forgot my intervalometer. So I decided to just take some of the usual shots. I got this pano in while I was there and it turned out better then I thought it would. This pano is roughly 100 degrees.

Did you know that...

   The colors of the sunset result from a phenomenon called scattering, molecules and small particles in the atmosphere change the direction of light rays, causing them to scatter. Scattering affects the color of light coming from the sky, but the details are determined by the wavelength of the light and the size of the particle. The short-wavelength blue and violet are scattered by molecules in the air much more than other colors of the spectrum. This is why blue and violet light reaches our eyes from all directions on a clear day. But because we can’t see violet very well, the sky appears blue.
   Scattering also explains the colors of the sunrise and sunset. Because the sun is low on the horizon, sunlight passes through more air at sunset and sunrise than during the day, when the sun is higher in the sky. More atmosphere means more molecules to scatter the violet and blue light away from your eyes. If the path is long enough, all of the blue and violet light scatters out of your line of sight. The other colors continue on their way to your eyes. This is why sunsets are often yellow, orange, and red. And because red has the longest wavelength of any visible light, the sun is red when it’s on the horizon, where its extremely long path through the atmosphere blocks all other colors.

Now you know...


The title quote is from "The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

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This beautiful place is conveniently located just down the road from my home. I wanted to photograph it for some time but I thought they didn't allow photography on the premises. Turns out they're fine with it out side of the temple its self. 

This is the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a mandir, or Hindu temple, in Stafford, Texas. It was the first traditional mandir of stone and marble to be constructed in the United States.

The mandir was created entirely according to ancient Hindu architectural manuscripts known as the Shilpa Shastras, but also meets all modern regulations. Opened on July 25, 2004, by Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the present spiritual guru of Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), it was constructed in 16 months starting from the day its first stone was laid.

The 25,620 sq ft mandir is constructed entirely of marble from Italy and limestone from Turkey. There is no iron or steel anywhere in the structure. The stone that makes up the temple was shipped to India where it was hand-carved with traditional Vedic deities and motifs. Approximately 33,000 individually marked pieces were then shipped to Houston and assembled like a giant three-dimensional jigsaw.

The mandir was created by BAPS, an international Hindu organisation belonging to the Swaminarayan faith of Hinduism.

Title quote from The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. x, p. 360, on the Bhagavat Geeta

Let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven...

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I took this the same night I took the Houston Panorama. I was fascinated by the orange glow of the  JPMorgan Chase Building, so I stowed my 24-105mm and whipped out the 70-300mm for a close-up shot before I left.

JPMorgan Chase Building is a 37-story 130 m (430 ft) Art Deco skyscraper in downtown Houston, Texas. Completed in 1929, it remained the tallest building in Houston until 1963, when the Exxon Building surpassed it in height. The building is the Houston headquarters of JPMorgan Chase Bank, and was formerly the headquarters of Texas Commerce Bank.

The title quote is from the Book of Genesis, 11 verse 4, concerning the tower of Babel.

Water drops

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These are a couple of my first attempts at reverse lens macro photography. Just some droplets of water on a CD surface.

The object of Art is to give life a shape

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Bryan wraps up the street art that him and Wiley worked on that day at an old gas station across from Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Downtown Houston, Texas.

This is in preparation for a street art exhibit at the museum on May the 25th, 2013.

This photo may look like it was taken with a extreme wide angle lens but it was in fact taken with my usual 24-105mm set at 24.

It is another stitch made up of 12 or so portraits. I panned across the top for about 6 shots and then across the bottom for the same.

I had intended to straighten out the distortion but when I did, the photo took on a bow-tie shape so I left it in. I don't generally like the fish-eye look but for this scene I think it looks pretty good.

I finally learned a good sharpening technique using a duplicate layer with a high-pass filter in use which I learned with the help of a fellow photographer's blog: http://hdrphotographer.blogspot.com/

Title quote from "The Rehearsal" by Jean Anouilh.

Night on the town

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Here we have a panoramic photo of Down town Houston. It's roughly 180 degrees. Made up of 12 portrait HDR shots. To see it in all its glory click here: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/128389.

I got lucky that the Astros were playing that night, adds something to the scene I think. I had mad this trip to get some sunset shots with the Houston skyline but I didn't leave the house early enough.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile

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This was my first attempt at photo stacking and layer masks in Photoshop. The light trails and road is 17 long exposure photos stacked. The sky and everything else is a single photo that I layered in after the stacking. 

I was up there attempting to get a shot of Comet PANSTARRS, but nothing turned up. But it turned into a pretty decent sunset while I was up there.

Shot from the top parking deck at Town Center in Sugar Land, Texas.

The title quote is from "Love's Labor's Lost", Act 1. scene 1, 72–79 
By William Shakespeare 

Baby False-Map Turtle

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I've been playing around with the reversed lens technique. To accomplish this I hold a lens backwards up to the camera body. There are adapters that will free up a hand for for focusing, I plan to buy one one of these days.

You focus by moving closer to and further away from the subject, it's very tricky stuff. Since the depth of field is only about a millimeter, you have to maneuver around to get the photo just right.

About a week ago we had an incredible rain storm. I haven't had much time for photography lately and I thought I'd get out and check things out, see if there was some interesting scene. I nearly step on this little guy trying to escape the rain. I brought him in out of the mess. He obviously didn't like all the attention, because after this shot he wouldn't stay put, so I took him back outside.

This guy, I'm pretty sure, is a false-map turtle. His shell had a pronounced ridges down the middle and a serrated edge. His face and neck had bright orange stripes.

First Attempt at Star Photography

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Had a little free time after dark the other night so I decided to attempt my first star photo. I headed down I 59 South until I felt it might be dark enough, stopped in the little town of Beasley, Texas.

This one is processed with a tweaked Lightroom preset created by Dave Morrow, an experience star photographer.

I had hoped to get a shot of the milky way but it was still too bright. I referenced a light pollution map more recently and apparently west Texas is saturated with light pollution and I'm right in the middle of it.

My God, it's full of stars!

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At this abandoned rock crushing facility on the outskirts of Searcy, Arkansas.

I love the monolithic quality of this... thing.

It just occurs to me that this would be a great place for star photography, to bad it's eight hours away.

Huh, according to the map, this is in Gray, Ar.

...

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On our way back to Houston, I had to stop again at this old farm house, if only long enough to take a few pictures.

I decided to include the power plant in the background and I'm so glad I did. The new perspective hives it a completely different aspect.

Click here to see the same farm house taken about six months ago by my old CyberShot:

 Old Abandoned Farmhouse - When children’s voices called, Where grasses now stand still

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present

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Still in Austin, Texas.

I was just starting my walk back to the car from the South Congress Ave Bridge cutting through the back lot of the Hyatt and I saw this scene. The light from the Hyatt was reflecting off that window on the building to the right and it just kinda demanded my attention.

This photo is a composite HDR/fusion of two long exposures, it wasn't nearly this bright in the alley way. I'm not completely happy with it, I may play around with the original images in Lightroom later on when free time is a bit more free.

Title quote by Francis Bacon.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out

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This is a composite of 5 separate 30sec exposures taken as a cruise ship eased it's way down Lady Bird Lake in Austin Texas.

I was heading back to my car and I saw that a restaurant/cruise ship had left out of it's dock so I hurried down along the shore of the lake to see if maybe they were going to turn around and head back this way. And to my luck they did. So I sat there and waited patiently for them to make there way into my line of sight to take these shots.

Technically not the whole photo is a composite. The buildings and water are a composite of the last 4 of the 5 photos. I did this because after looking at the photos on the computer screen, I realized that the first photo was blurry, so I only used the light trail from that photo. Also the sky is a single photo, I used photomatix's natural/fusion to do the composting but I didn't like how gritty the sky looked so I selected the sky of one of the original photos. This is also how I took only the streak from the first photo, once I had an initial composite of the 4 photos, I used that composite and the blurry first photo in the photomatix process again and selected all but the streak and use the orirginal compsoite and
voila...

Title from "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

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Took a trip to Austin, Texas the other night. I had planned on getting some star photography from atop Mount Bonnel(great view of downtown Austin and it's pitch-black at night). But mother nature thought otherwise; it was thick with clouds all weekend.

But I persevered and after getting some decent long exposures at Mt. Bonnel I proceeded down to Auditorium Shores and walked along Lady Bird Lake up to the South Congress Ave Bridge and got the shot you see here.

At the end of the street, where the light trails seem to emanate from, is the Texas State Capitol Building.

Title quote is from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

This old house

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Out cruising around in Judsonia/Providence/Steprock Ar one day during this last winter break.

According to the map, I was in Guthrie, Ar.

Fly me to the moon, Let me play among the stars, Let me see what spring is like On, a Jupiter and Mars

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Here's another at White Lake from a few weeks ago. This one is also a single exposure the I played around with in Lightroom to bring out these colors and give it more contrast. You can barely see the moon at the top of the photo due to the wide angle shot, I should have brought my 70-300mm but I was feeling lazy.

The title is the first four lines of "Fly me to the moon", a Frank Sinatra classic.

Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters

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A single Raw edited in Lightroom, taken at the Imperial Sugar Factory in Sugar Land, Texas.

This just goes to show how much you can do with a single RAW in Lightroom or any other photo-editing software, there wasn't nearly this much color and depth in the original shot.

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

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Underneath the majestic Sam Houston Tollway(Beltway 8), and Interstate 10(not pictured).

I love light trails, I've been wanted to do this long before I got my first and current DSLR. Can't wait to do it again.

The layout of Houston's highways, specifically it's inner(Interstate 610) and outer(Beltway8) loops have become a popular metropolitan highway design for other large metro areas around the world.

Tittle quote by Pythagoras.

Expand your horizons

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As seen from one of the look-out towers at Brazos Bend State Park.

Once upon a time, there lived...

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While on my way back from Brazos Bend State Park, I saw this gem on the side of the road.