Clear Skies

Another view of Odell Lake, though in the day this time. The weather up there was so nice, and I’ve been missing it the last few days, which have been cloudy and occasionally rainy here in Eugene.

This week was a little rough, trying to catch up with grading and homework from the weekend, but I managed to get it all done in time. I also had a big midterm in my Differential Topology class today, which I think went surprisingly well. I’ll have to wait to see if I did as well as I think I did though. After all of that, it was nice to go out dancing tonight, and just kinda forget about all of the pressure from classes and everything else going on at the moment.  There were a couple of awesome performances from a group that came down from Corvallis.

Tomorrow should be a lot of fun as well. I’m heading to a “Microbrew Festival” with a couple of friends, then going out for another night of dancing

-Ben

Experimenting (Take 2)

In my last post, I talked about playing around with my new graduated neutral density filter, but I didn’t have a great example of what the effect really was. However, this weekend, I went with a large group from the math department up to Odell Lake, up in the cascades. It was a gorgeous place, and it was nice to get away from Eugene and work for a few days (though I’m making up for all that missed time tonight…). Saturday afternoon, I went down to the docks at the lake at sunset, and had a chance to play some more with the filter. Below are two roughly identical shots, the first without the filter, and the second with it

Notice that the surface of the lake is exposed about the same in both shots. The difference between the two is the exposure of the sky, especially on the left side of the shot (where the sun was going down). Overall, I’d say it was a fairly large improvement in the shot.

I’ll post more about the weekend adventures (and some more photos) next time. But for now, it’s back to work…

-Ben

Still Water

This is another shot from the trip to Acadia earlier this summer.  This is Eagle Lake, near the middle of the park.  Polaraizer came in handy here to get the reflection.

-Ben

Blue Skies

This was one of my photos for Colloquium this week.  The prompt was symmetry and reflection.  This was a shot off the roof of my car while I was out driving last weekend.  I know I’ve done pictures like this before, but it’s a technique I really like.  I had to clean a few spots up in photoshop, but I think it’s pretty hard to pick them out.

It’s been another busy week with classes, research, and dancing, but it’s almost the weekend now.  I’m heading up to Roanoke Friday afternoon to take the GRE general test.  I’m not too worried about this one, I’m much more concerned with the mathematics subject test coming up in a few weeks.

-Ben

On the Road

The three pictures above are from my current roadtrip, and all were taken today in Kansas.

The top one is an effect I’ve used before, taking a picture of the sky reflected in the roof of my car.  The colors came out nicely, and I like the way the slight curve to the roof of the car alters the picture.

The second shot is of a small cabin in a field that was visible from one of the rest stops along I-70 in Kansas.  I had originally stopped to take a picture of a few of the wind turbines that could be seen from the road, but they couldn’t be seen very well from the rest stop.

The third is from this evening, where I spent about half an hour trying to take pictures of the lightning in a distant storm.  This was probably my best shot from the night, but unfortunately, the storm was very far away, so most of the flashes were very small.  In addition, I had to shoot towards the highway, which resulted in the blob and streaks of light along the ground (this was a 64 second exposure shot through the ND filter).

The trip has been going really well so far.  I spent Wednesday night in Blacksburg and was able to go salsa dancing with some friends.  There was a group of about seven of us who all went out for dinner beforehand as well.  It was good to see a lot of familiar faces at the dance and around town.

On Thursday, I drove through West Virginia and Kentucky, spending the night with a couple of friends in Louisville.  They were kind enough to cook a really nice dinner and put me up in one of their guest rooms for the night.  We also had a chance to catch up and to play a couple of board games as well.

Friday was pretty uneventful.  I drove from Louisville through southern Indiana and Illinois, and eventually into Missouri.  I spent the night in Columbia, but I was too tired when I got there to really do anything.

I got up pretty early this morning and set out to the west along I-70.  I drove through the rest of Missouri and about half of Kansas, stopping for the night in Russell.

Tomorrow, I head out for Fort Morgan, Colorado, where hopefully the landscape will be a little more interesting.

-Ben