My grandkids Facetimed me in the middle of it…
Super Blood Lunar Eclipse
Posted in Astrophotography, Available Light, Canon 7D on January 21, 2019 by budbranch300mm 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!
Here is a catch-up post since November!
Posted in Astrophotography, cats, Macro, Wide Angle on January 7, 2019 by budbranch
At the inaugural ball with Michelle Lujan Grisham
Chief cat Lilly
Snowed in
Comet 46P/Wirtanen and the Pleiades
Sweet music jam
Taos Mountain
Goodnight Moon
Taos Canyon frost
Pre-election rally with Michelle Lujan Grisham
Taos Balloon Rally
Posted in 5DMII, Aerial, Available Light, DJI Phantom 3, Handheld on October 28, 2018 by budbranch
Cloud Time Lapse
Posted in Gopro Hero5, Time Lapse on September 9, 2018 by budbranch
At the end, Mars rises in the center…
July Update!
Posted in 5DMII, Available Light, Gopro Hero5, Long exposures, Wide Angle on July 15, 2018 by budbranchHere 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
Sardinas Canyon Fire Cloud
Posted in Gopro Hero5, Time Lapse on June 26, 2018 by budbranch15 miles to the south of Taos, the Sardinas Canyon fire inspires a sunset cumulus cloud…
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!
