Tag Archives: outdoors

Just for fun, Macro, Travel

Lego hiker reaches the top

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If you’re new to my blog, you probably think all my photos are Lego related. I’ll admit that I have a few photos featuring Legos, but the past few days I’ve been sharing multiple photos of Legos from a trip to southern Utah. Since I’ve mentioned the trip a few times, I’ll just stick to sharing the photo in this blog post.

Lego hiker reaches top

Canon 60D | 100mm Macro Lens | 1/200 | f/9.0 | ISO 100 | Canon Speedlite 430EXII | RAW

I can’t forget to mention that even this photo was the brain child of my 10-year-old son. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, Macro, Travel

Lego Photography: Lost in an amazing book

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I can only claim credit for taking the photo. My son was the creative director. He came up with the idea, built the Lego tree and book, selected the character and packed them up for our weekend trip to St. George, Utah. Upon arrival at Snow Canyon State Park, he reassembled the tree (the trip had not been friendly to the fragile display) and set the photo up in the sand dunes. He even titled this blog post – Lost in an amazing book.

The sun was high in the sky and casting very harsh shadows on the world below. Since I didn’t have one of the portable light reflectors (or blockers), my creative director ran to the van to grab his brother’s pillow and held it strategically over the area so I could get the shot. I think we were both pleased with the final outcome, though a little shadow from the tree would have helped the photo (I think).

Lego photography: Lost in a good book

Canon 60D | 100mm Macro Lens | 1/320 | f/6.3 | ISO 800 | RAW

I don’t recall why I had the camera set to ISO 800. It definitely was bright enough. I think it was because I was using the flash on occasion to help light things up and reduce shadows, but when I found the shade (i.e., my son’s pillow), I forgot to bring the ISO back to 100. In Photoshop I made a few adjustments to exposure, blacks, saturation and levels, in an effort to bring the guy under the tree out more.

Anyway, I am very proud of my son for serving as my creative director, and I hope you’ll look forward to a few more of the Lego shots he arranged during our trip and asked me to photograph.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, Macro, Travel

Lego jeep captured on a sandy ledge

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Had a blast with my family and some friends this weekend while iN St. George. Before making the trek north, we stopped at Snow Canyon State Park’s sand dunes to photograph some Lego stuff. Here’s one I wanted to share quickly tonight, but stay tuned for some other ones that I am really looking forward to sharing over the next few days.

042813-Lego-Jeep-Sand-WEB

Canon 60D | 100mm Macro Lens | 1/400 | f/5.0 | ISO 100 | RAW

I used a 100 mm macro lens so I could have a narrow depth of field to help highlight the Lego jeep. I had a few shots where I used a flash, but this one worked without a flash.

Both of my sons set up some of the photos I’m planning to share, so stay tuned to see their works of art that I was privileged to capture.

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, Landscape

Mountain snow shouldn’t be yellow

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More than a year ago I was chatting with a colleague who has taken some amazing landscape photos. He mentioned that rather than using the circular screw on filters, he used the glass plate filters, namely the gradual neutral grey ones. I’ve been debating about picking some up since then, but hadn’t captured many landscape photos and wasn’t sure I would use the filters enough to make it worth my while.

I was wrong.

Lone Peak covered in snow

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/320 | f/9 | ISO 100 | Cokin Filter

Living in Utah, we have some gorgeous mountains just to the east of the Salt Lake Valley. One of those mountain tops – Lone Peak – can be seen rather clearly from my neighborhood, making it a perfect subject for some photographs. But I wanted the newer style of filters before I really felt like the photos would be what I was hoping they would be. So once I picked up a Cokin brand Gradual Neutral Grey G2 (ND8) – 0.9 the other day from Pictureline, I had to capture a few test shots.

Both shots seemed to look pretty good on the LCD screen of my Canon 60D, but the ones taken with the filter seemed to have a darker sky – which I really liked. It wasn’t until I brought a filter and non-filter image into photoshop and placed them side-by-side that I realized how much better the one with the filter looked.

030413-Wasatch-Mtns-Compare-WEB

The snow in the photo without the filter was almost yellow or orange (which is never a good color for snow). The crisp white color of the snowy mountain was much truer to the actual beauty of the mountain. So I think I am sold on using this type of filter for my landscape shots. Now I just need to get out to the sights of Utah and attempt to capture what the scenery has to offer.

I’ve also been toying with ideas in my head about other ways to experiment with this filter on various settings. So this will not be the last time I use this filter to capture a photo I feel is worth of sharing on my blog. Stay tuned….

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun

Wild Weekly Photo Challenge: Sunsets

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Although I have shared various sunset photos in previous posts, I figured I would share this post with a compilation of my favorite sunset photos in conjunction with the Wild Weekly Photo Challenge topic of Sunsets.

Enough said. Let’s get to sharing the photos.

Life on the Beach

050912 Waikiki Sunset Guy

050512 Maui Sunset

Setting sun

Utah has some of the most beautiful sunsets in the winter, as the sun illuminates the snow-covered mountains. I will have to capture some of those shots this winter, although I am not sure I can do justice to the true beauty of the moment.

~signed, Carltonaut

GoPro, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Free Spirit

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I must confess that the idea for this photo came from my wife. When I read the challenge on Friday, I wasn’t sure what I could do and thought I would end up spending a lot of time thinking, or even over-thinking, the challenge. But when I mentioned it to my lovely wife, she pointed out that we were going kayaking the next day, which could be a great representation of the Free Spirit photo challenge.

090112 Free Spirit Kayaking

Although I would have loved to take my Canon 60D out on the kayak with me, my nightmare of losing the camera into the water got the better of me. But, I had my GoPro, dive housing and a 16 GB SD card, so I headed out on the lake.

After getting out into the water, I took a few shots from under the water – but worried that the green, murky water didn’t bode well for a great photo, so I took some shots from the surface, capturing the kayak on the water, with the stark contrast of the white clouds and blue sky above. I wish I had a floating contraption that would have allowed me to not stretch out my arm and have it be that awkward part of the photo, but I made do with what I had.

Once I got home and surveyed the photos, I found the one above and brought it into Photoshop. I made some minor adjustments to the levels, and thought I would also make some adjustments to the saturation – just to give it a slightly different look. I thought a lens flare would look good on the photo, but then my purist thoughts got the better of me. I didn’t want to doctor the photo and add elements I hadn’t captured in the shot.

As for the free spirit part of the photo… I love kayaking. I love paddling my way out onto a lake, setting the paddle across the cockpit and floating there on the water. It is a great way to escape from the hussle and bussle of life and simply enjoy nature. Regardless of how rough the lake water is, I enjoy getting away from shore.

With Labor Day marking the unofficial end of summer, I am not sure how many more kayaing trips my family and I will be able to get in before things start to get a little chilly and eventually ice over, but for a Labor Day weekend, it was a great end to the summer vacations!

~signed, Carltonaut

GoPro, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Movement

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I was vacationing with my family in Bear Lake when I saw the email on my iPhone about this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge. I went through my camera bag to survey my equipment and made a game plan for Saturday to capture movement.

GoPro? Check. Waterproof case? Check. Boat? Check. Tube? Check.

Let the photography adventure begin.

Once we got the troubled boat out of the harbor (long story), we loaded it up with life jackets and family (ages 3 to 65) and headed out on the water. When it was my turn to get into the tube, I grabbed my GoPro and jumped in. My sister got in the other tube and off we went.

I originally set my GoPro on video, but once my sister fell off, I switched over to a photo every 0.5 seconds and the boat floored it. My goal, as weird as it sounds, was to get a cool “biffing” shot, and so I was pretty excited when I went through my photos at the end of the day and found this photo mixed amidst a ton of other ones only half as cool.

070712 Water Impact

I found some other outtakes from the day’s events and shared them on my Facebook page. Check em out!

~signed, Carltonaut

Just for fun, WordPress Photo Challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

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One of the best ways to welcome summer is watching the air show at Hill Air Force Base from my home over the Memorial Day weekend. Although the air show doesn’t happen every Memorial Day weekend, it just so happened to work out that way this year.

052712 Thunderbirds 6up

Canon 60D | 55-200mm lens | 1/1250 | f/11 | ISO 100

Camping, hiking, swimming and sometimes skiing are other great ways of welcoming the summer season here in Utah, but the poor weather this year made many of those other tasks unlikely.

I will admit that actually going to Hill Air Force Base to watch the show from the grand stands is the best way to enjoy the show. But hours of getting on and off base made it unlikely this year. Luckily, our home is located close enough to the base to watch the planes flying overhead as they line up for their next flyby.

Check out some of the other photos I shot of the show on my Facebook page.

~signed, Carltonaut

People, Travel

Sunset Silhouette on Waikiki Beach

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My wife and I had plans to get our photos take along the North Shores of Oahu on Thursday morning, so when we arrived in Oahu on Wednesday afternoon, my wife decided to hit up the hotel’s salon to get her hair curled and ready for the morning’s photo shoot. I decided to head out along Waikiki, not knowing beforehand what I would shoot.

I walked down the shoreline looking for the “perfect shot”. After all, isn’t that what us amateur photographers try to capture every time we take a photo? After walking for about 15 minutes, and not really seeing anything, I headed back toward the hotel. The sun was getting lower in the sky, so I snapped a few shots of a sailboat out in the ocean with the sun in the sky, and I also shot some waves splashing up along the rock wall. Thinking that was the best I was going to get, I continued my walk to meet my wife for dinner.

Just before crossing the street to the hotel, I saw this shot. A guy was sitting between two palm trees, tired from what appeared to be a day of surfing (or paddle boarding) at Waikiki. I snapped a few shots, excited about how it looked, and then officially put my camera away and had dinner with my wife.

050912 Waikiki Sunset Guy

Canon 60D | 18-135mm lens | 1/800 | f/11 | ISO 100

I think I prefer Maui to Oahu – Oahu, especially the Waikiki area, is too crowded! North Shore was great and we got some beautiful shots.

~signed, Carltonaut

GoPro, Just for fun, Travel

Driving the road to Haleakala Crater in Maui

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My wife thought I was crazy when I pulled over and hooked a suction cup mount to the side of our rental car, just behind the driver’s side tire. After driving for about 10 minutes to test the $30 mount to assure it wouldn’t fall off, I attached the $300 GoPro to the mount, setting it to take a photo every 60 seconds, and climbed back into the car.

We started driving, and with every bump, my wife and I cringed, hoping the jolt didn’t knock the camera off the car. We drove anywhere from 10 MPH to 40 MPH, depending on traffic and the many turns encountered on the climb from sea level to 10,000 feet.

050612 Driving to Haleakala

GoPro | 1 photo every 60 seconds

I wish I would have set it to take a photo every 30 seconds. Even though I would have ended up with a ton of photos, there would have been more photos to choose from. But I do like this one, which proved that mount is strong enough to have attached to a moving vehicle. But if I plan to travel any faster, I might attach a string to the mount so if it does fall, it won’t end up smashed along the side of the road.

~signed, Carltonaut