Vasco Caves

On Sunday I went to a place called Vasco Caves in northern California. These caves were used by native americans going back 10,000 years.

In the 5 hour guided tour, I filled 2 Eye Fi memory cards and took about 500 pictures.  A few of them came out really well and I will post a few of my own favorites below. It is hard to get a lot of "idea" shots when you are surrounded by 30 other people on the tour, but I got lucky with a few.

I am used to shooting landscape objects at a great distance with the Tamron Ultra Wide Angle lens, but on this trip, I was up close several times and I learned a lot about the limits of the lens.  For one thing, if people are standing at the edge of the frame, they gain a lot of distortion. Very much in a fisheye style.  It really wasn't something I typically see.  I tried to adjust for this in Lightroom 4 by selecting the profile for the lens and it really did not fix the strongest of the problems, so I just didn't use the problem shots.

Typically when I do shoot, I really avoid getting people in my shots so I can focus on the landscape itself, but the caves were just so massive, the addition of people really helped bring things into scale

A few more of the more interesting shots

HDR with 3 bracketed shots

150 images from the trip can be found over on my flickr page.

Marsh Creek

Historic John Marsh House

I found a side road today in Brentwood that went along Marsh Creek and the John Marsh house. All of which will be part of the new California State Park. The land around the house is being used to graze horses.

The walls at the end of the stream appear to belong to an old bridge.

Update: I shot the images using my Nikon 70-300mm lens. I typically shoot with my Tamron Ultra Wide but I was pretty far away and really needed to get a closer view of the water.  I also had a circular polarizer on the lens.

I ordered a 10Stop filter for the 70-300mm lens to try and capture a different look in the same place.

Marsh Creek hillside

I took this HDR image a few days ago while driving through Brentwood. I have probably past this location 20 or 30 times and had never even noticed the rocks on the hill let alone the trees.  But I had pulled into a small side road to take a photo of the nearby ranch and saw the perfect hill for a picture.

This photo was featured this week by The Digital Visual.

HDR image shot from a tripod and a Marumi Circular Polarizer. Tamron Ultra Wide angle lens. Edited and in Aperture on the Mac.