Light seeking light doth light of light beguile

Follow Highly Defined Reality on Facebook

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 

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

Follow Highly Defined Reality on Facebook

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.

Follow Highly Defined Reality on Facebook

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.

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.

Follow Highly Defined Reality on Facebook

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.

City Lights

Follow Highly Defined Reality on Facebook

Interstate 59 making it's way through Sugar Land, Texas from downtown Houston.
30sec exposure.