Tag Archives: photography

Tampa in the Rearview Mirror


On Monday’s blog we took a rather cursory look at Tampa.  Today we’ll see a bit more of the skyline as viewed from one of the cruise ships.

You’ll have to tune in on Friday to discover the ship from which these photographs were taken.  For now, let’s just say that it’s a Holland America ship, and the view of Tampa and the Tampa Port Authority were exquisite.  The neat thing about the Tampa Port Authority is that, if you take a close look, you’ll see inside the giant green glass cube an immense glass globe.  And inside that globe appear to be individual office spaces.

That’s the Seddon Lighthouse you’ll see below, and I managed to capture both it and the Tampa skyline in the background behind it.

On the other side of the ship was a rather imposing grain elevator that verily cried out for the Ansel Adams touch, so I took a second shot of it in portrait orientation and did a little Picasa magic.  The sky was darkened by filtering with a virtual dark red filter.

But what’s a cruise without the ever-popular deck shot during the initial sail away from port?  The beautiful babe in the striped shirt is, of course, Ursula.

That night we witnessed an absolutely stunning ocean sunset.  But you’ll have to come back on Friday to see that, as well as some photographs of the interior of our mystery ship.

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Filed under Photography, travel

Winter’s Last Blast


Winter took one last shot (I hope) at El Paso on Sunday and Monday of last week.  On Sunday the 18th we were hit with one of the worst dust storms I’ve witnessed since moving to El Paso some thirty-one years ago.  I estimate that visibility dropped to less than half a mile, and the silt that accumulated at the bottom of our pool made it look more like a pond.  Then, on Monday, we got hit by an ice pellet storm at the airport.  Later, after I arrived home, the snow started.  Not a lot, but certainly extraordinary for El Paso on the last day of winter.

Extraordinary does not mean unprecedented, however.  In April of 1983 we were hit by a week-long snowstorm that, by the time it was over, had dumped nearly eighteen inches on our Southwestern Desert floor, and each morning that week the visibility dropped to near zero from ice fog.  In April!

But what a difference less than a week makes.  By Saturday I was cleaning the silt out of the pool, all while wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt.  The temperatures hit 85° Fahrenheit (29° Celsius), and Ursula and I even took to a relaxing evening in our heated spa beneath the glorious stars, crescent moon, and the shining beacons of Venus and Jupiter.  Then, on Sunday, El Paso had the record high for the nation at 90° (32 ° Celsius).

And here are the “during” and “after” shots separating those six days (and after some seven hours cleaning up the pool and spa just the day before, I might add):

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Another Sunset—March 14, 2012


Another spectacular sunset as seen from our backyard.  Sure hope you aren’t getting bored with these.  This one occurred last Wednesday.  The pictures were taken in raw format with a Canon EOS 5D using a 24-105mm f4.0L zoom lens.  The camera was set to daylight white balancing and using the “Standard” picture style modified for slightly increased saturation (+1).  Conversion was done using Canon’s Digital Photo Professional with corrections made for lens aberration.  I then straightened and cropped the resulting JPEG conversions in Google’s free Picasa photo editing program.

The short version of all that is that the colors and intensity you see are pretty much as they were to the naked eye with only a minor bump in color saturation, mostly in the reds.

This first shot was taken handheld at ISO 800, shutter speed 1/400th, aperture f9.0, exposure compensation -⅔:

Sunset as Casa Wicker—Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This next one was also taken handheld, but I rotated into the portrait position to capture the deep blues of the skies above the reddish hues.  The shot settings this time were ISO 250, shutter speed 1/200th, aperture f5.6, exposure compensation -⅔:

Framed to take in the dark blue skies above the reddish clouds and golden sunlight

If you like these sunset photographs that I post from time to time and would enjoy seeing more, leave a comment telling me so.  And if you really like them, share this link with your friends via your Facebook page.

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Filed under Photography