I finally made it out to High Island to visit the Audubon bird sanctuaries. I drove to Galveston and took the Bolivar Ferry over to the peninsula. Had fun watching the seagulls get fed by the willing tourists and the shrimpers.
Once on the peninsula I found my way to High Island and the world famous Rookery. Hundreds of Roseate Spoonbills and Snowy Egrets building nests. Used the Sony A99 and my Minolta 300mm lens combined with a 1.4 teleconverter.
Went chasing bluebonnets with Cynthia this weekend
The Bishop’s Palace, also known as Gresham’s Castle, an ornate Victorian-style house in the East End Historic District of Galveston, Texas.
he house was built between 1887 and 1893 by Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton
Reportedly listed by The American Institute of Architects as one of the 100 most significant buildings in the United States, and the Library of Congress has classified it as one of the fourteen most representative Victorian structures in the nation.
This technique involves setting the camera to keep the shutter open while manually zooming out with a medium telephoto lens. Each of these were done with a 10-15 second exposure with a 24-70mm lens. I started by zooming all the way in and then zooming out.
The effect can be quite astonishing.
These are 360×360 panoramic shots I created using stereographic projections to make what is known as a “little planet”
Driving around Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula offered some unique opportunities to continue my experimentation with long exposure photography using the NDX400 filter
One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was experiment with long, daytime exposures using ND filters. These photos of The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland were taken during the day and each exposure is approximately 30 seconds. The NDX 400 filter allows for this without overexposing the shot. The long exposure causes the crashing waves to appear as fog or smoke while the rock formations remain clear and detailed. I would have preferred a more sunny day, but the overcast skies actually aided in the final look and feel of these images.
The Conor Pass is said to be the highest mountain pass in Ireland. The road is quite narrow in places and passing oncoming traffic can be harrowing. I wanted to drive over the pass on the way to Dingle rather than taking the easier route down the main highway from Tralee. Cynthia was nervous, but agreed to cross if the weather was good. As it turned out, the weather was good and so we crossed. It should also be noted that we crossed on Friday the 13th. Cynthia is a little superstitious, so this was significant.
We were fortunate that there was not a lot of traffic on this road on the day we went over.
Here is a video I shot of our crossing using a GoPro Hero 3 Black mounted to the outside of the rental car. You can see the truly narrow point about midway through the video.
This drive offers one of the most dramatic and scenic ways of entering or leaving Dingle.
