Second trip to Frazier Park

Adjust monitor to show 16 distinct gray steps:

You are free to use these pictures in a non-commercial manner as long as you ask first and give proper attribution. I have 2K to 3K pixel scans on my hard drive if you want something larger.

I will admit to digitally working with most of these pictures; To say that my scanner sucks at accurately registering dark colors is an insult to bad scanners everywhere. For the landscapes, I played with levels and contrast to try and make the shadows look less awful.

I took all of these for our landscape assignment in photo (My trip yielded 5 1/2 pages of negatives), though not all of them are exactly 'landscapes.' Many of these were very difficult to print well, because they have very large continuous-tone areas that will make even the tiniest dust spot stand out.

Probably the highlight of my journey was trying out Delta 400 film. After I got back from the park and developed two rolls of it, I was amazed by how fine the grain was for a fast film. It also had an eminently pleasing tonality, and was far easier than Pan-F to print, largely due to its wide exposure latitude. This meant that I didn't have to mess around with contrast filters, dodging, and burning when I printed.

Boo-Ya! At last, I have taken a decent astrophoto. This was taken facing directly west with a 28mm lens at F/2.8 mounted on a static tripod, with the shutter open for 23 minutes. This picture and several others here were taken on Delta 400 (lower-speed version of Delta 3200), a new film that I decided to try. It has amazingly fine grain for a 400 speed film, and was very easy to print as well.

Taken as I was ascending Mt. Pinos around 1:30Pm. Mt. Pinos is part of the Los Padres National Forest, and also one of the best dark-sky sites in Southern California. In between the two background mountains there was a snow-capped peak with a cloud hugging it - It looked so much better in person.

Looking out, with the afternoon sun ALMOST in the lens, which you can see by the shadows. Those pine trees just keep going on forever...

Looking out over Cuddy Valley - farms, with beautiful homes nestled at the edge of the forest.

I think this may be one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever taken, which is why I scaled it to 1080 and not 720. Taken on Delta 400, the grain was just perfect for this shot. The sun was directly behind me, a few hours from setting. Taken with the 28mm lens closed down to F/16. To get a sense of scale, those two tree trunks are at least 6 feet wide.

I went through the scan and covered up a handful of miniscule dust spots. The original print has one dust spot - the others were dust that landed on the print. The real problem here is the sky - This really needs to be displayed in 16-bit grayscale, not 8.

Another wonderful picture taken on Delta 400. Save this one, open it in Photoshop, and play with curves and levels - Once you're done, the original will look boring by comparison.

I don't know - something about this picture is just... surreal. I can't say exactly why, but it doesn't look like something of Earth.

Taken on Delta 400, looking up the west slope of the Chula Vista parking lot. This was shortly before sunset, and there were no shadows at all.

Back -- Next to go to gallery 8.