Available Light | Bud Branch

Archive for the Available Light Category

Catching up!

Posted in 5DMII, Aerial, Astrophotography, Available Light on May 6, 2019 by budbranch

I have been lazy about posting here – here is a little catchup… BTW: to anyone seeing this, you have an invitation to visit anytime!

New Mexico Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense: we successfully lobbied for expanded background checks in NM!

A La Cart (our favorite lunch spot…)

Hummer – we may have a nest nearby…

Hummer

Hummers

Jupiter and 3 of her moons

Friends from C-ville visited

El Salto Falls

Red Winged Blackbird

Nambe Falls (the first cascade)

Moonset in Taos Canyon

Virga sunset

The wind broke my old tripod – this is first shot off the new one!

Our upgraded mailbox

I have some metal prints hanging at The Coffee Spot in Taos

Artist Julie decorating our upgraded mailbox

I visited my grandkids…

The Carwash from Breaking Bad

My son and I are considering a new joint venture…

Roadside antler vendor

Lobbying in The NM Roundhouse

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Super Blood Lunar Eclipse

Posted in Astrophotography, Available Light, Canon 7D on January 21, 2019 by budbranch

300mm full manual off a tripod. Basic Moon photos are always tough, since the Moon is MOVING, and it is so bright compared to the background. Eclipse photos add the twist that the exposure changes drastically during the event, so you are constantly shooting brackets and evaluating. I used from ISO 100 to 3200, shutter from 1/125th to 2.25 second, and f/4.0 to f/5.6. I was interested in capturing some sharp stars and I found that with THIS lens on a non-tracking mount, *1* second was as long as I could go before the stars became little “-” marks… Also, by 10:15 MST, the darn moon was approximately 60 degrees above the horizon, so it was harder and harder to see the viewfinder and manage the camera. I ran out of head adjustment, and started shortening a tripod leg!

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Taos Balloon Rally

Posted in 5DMII, Aerial, Available Light, DJI Phantom 3, Handheld on October 28, 2018 by budbranch

2 Comments »

July Update!

Posted in 5DMII, Available Light, Gopro Hero5, Long exposures, Wide Angle on July 15, 2018 by budbranch

Here is what I have been up to for the last few weeks:

MOMentum is building…

Tattoo!

Hagerty Mandolins

Hagerty Mandolins

Hagerty Mandolins

Ground squirrel taunts us

This got published in Taos News

Eskes crowd watching the fireworks

Gun buy-back in Taos

Eskes Bluegrass Jam

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Revisiting the Sunflowers

Posted in 5DMII, Available Light, Wide Angle on June 20, 2018 by budbranch

These photos are hanging in a show in Taos. An admirer asked me to write a little bit about my process:

The photos were taken during sunflower season in Taos. I was shooting out the passenger window of our car with a 17-40mm Canon 5DMII – we were going about 40MPH. The camera was set for manual focus and the drive mode set to continuous, so I could capture about 4 frames every second. These are the specific settings:

Top photo: 1/125 sec at F/10 ISO 100 20mm

Bottom photo: 1/80 sec at F/7.1 ISO 100 17mm

The reason for the portrait orientation is that I was one-handing the camera, letting it dangle out the window, not sighting through the viewfinder. The blur in the foreground is due to car motion blur, but the background is nominally in focus, due to the small aperture and wide angle lens – the shutter speed was high enough to kill the camera shake, but slow enough to blur those sunflowers zipping by, close to the camera. I did a lot of experimenting with shutter speed to get these nice exposures.

Nice prints of these and others available here!

1 Comment »

May, 2018

Posted in Available Light, Gopro Hero5, Handheld, Wide Angle on June 3, 2018 by budbranch

Dear followers –

Here is a recap of May, all shot with the amazing GoPro Hero 5 Black…

And, regarding gun violence in America, consider coming off the sidelines

Roadrunner Jam

Roadrunner Jam

Family visit

Family visit

Family visit

Family visit

Family visit

Family visit

Paper artist Julie R.

The Spot…

Pot Creek

Fiddler Ed…

Great keyboardist

Party w/Denise

Nature bath with Julie

Julie w/Randy

Supporting the good one!

Got published in Taos News!!

Droning for Gun Violence Awareness

Startrails at the VLA

Posted in 5DMII, Astrophotography, Available Light, Composite, Long exposures, Wide Angle on April 12, 2018 by budbranch

This is a composite of about fifty 30-second exposures. A departing car painted the antenna red (I used considerable Photoshop layer masking to get this final effect). Also, that’s a meteor at top right…

2 Comments »

The VLA at Magdalena, NM

Posted in 5DMII, Astrophotography, Available Light, Long exposures, Wide Angle on April 12, 2018 by budbranch

1 Comment »

Lunar Eclipse 1/31/18

Posted in 5DMII, Astrophotography, Available Light on January 31, 2018 by budbranch

Tripod, 200mm, manual focus, mirror lockup, self timer. REAL COLD!

1 Comment »

Update: I Broke My Darn Leg One Year Ago!

Posted in Available Light, Cellphone camera, Handheld on October 20, 2017 by budbranch

Dear blog followers –

It’s been one year since I broke my femur – you can see the progress of my healing in this image:

xrays

I’m 95% healed, back on all my daily activities (including yoga!). The ortho doc said that if I have any trouble doing anything, I should just try harder!

Here is my original blog post, for your reading pleasure:
A friend offered a friendly ride on a borrowed mtn bike last week – the brakes failed on downhill, I bailed off and tumbled, and cleanly broke my right femur. It didn’t penetrate the skin, nor (most importantly) cut my femeral artery. Pure luck.

2:25PM We were by ourselves, out of cell coverage, 14 miles from the bottom. He bundled me up and headed downhill for help. 10 minutes later, two brothers on ATVs came down from above. One gave me his coat and stayed with me, the other went back uphill to find cell coverage and activate EMS. 3:10 The other brother returned, reporting that EMS was on the way. It took a couple more hours to get me IV-d, medicated, and transported two miles down the trail, where a medivac chopper could land in a meadow and fly me out.

I was in the ER in Santa Fe by 6:00PM – they did surgery ASAP: aligned the bones, drilled out the core, and installed an internal continuous rod, screwed everything together and stapled me up! I was in my room by 3AM.

Four days in hospital (St Vincent Med Center), now five days at home, healing nicely. Thanks for your interest – here are a few pics, enjoy the video too: