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Grand Prix Fire Burn Area - Near Lytle Creek, CA These 4 pictures were taken near Lytle Creek in late January, 2004, near the town of Lytle Creek - one of many towns ravaged by the 2003 California wildfires. The Grand Prix fire - as it came to be known - burned nearly 70,000 acres and destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. These shots were taken two months after the fire - and several miles apart - and are a reminder of how destructive wildfires can be and how little control humans actually have over this world when a natural disaster of this magnitude strikes. In the end, more than 800,000 acres burned (from all wildfires combined), more than 3600 homes were destroyed, and more than 20 people died. All pictures taken with Ilford Delta 3200 ISO black and white film and the Nikon FM10 SLR camera. Exposures were from 1/250 to 1/2000 second at f/16. The 4x6 photos were then scanned, resized, and adjusted for contrast in Photoshop7. |
| Mt. Laguna - April 1, 2006 These simple images above show the natural beauty of my favorite observing location just past the spring thaw. |
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| Roses Outside a Window Fairly self-explanatory. This is the same window where I shot the "Solitary Yellow Rose" picture (on the Random Pictures page), only this time I used 3200 ISO film instead of Kodak 125 px, so this one is much grainier. Exposure was 1/60 second at f/4. |
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| Lunar Halo On the night of Feb 25, 2004, thin, high clouds rolled in to cover the entire sky and refract the light of the nearly full moon into a circular colored spectrum almost 50 degrees across. Unfortunately, I only had black and white film at the time to record the event. 1 minute at f/8, Kodak 125 px. |
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Culp Valley Photography - Anza Borrego State Park, CA These pictures were all taken the morning of May 23, 2004 in Culp Valley - the morning after an only somewhat successful trip out to dark skies. The clouds were thick and the winds were unrelenting the night before, and additional failures with the scope's electronics forced me to scrap most of my imaging plans for that night. Nothing stopped me from taking a few desert shots in the morning with the Digital Rebel, though. The best of the bunch - either from raw composition or through processing - are shown here. |
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Digital Landscapes - October 2004 These four images are, in my opinion, some of the best images of my early work. All were taken as part of various projects for my Fall '04 Digital Photography class at Orange Coast College, although I feel that they can all stand alone as good images in their own right. The original images were taken with the Canon Digital Rebel and Sigma 28-200mm lens. I used a heavy duty photo tripod and cable shutter release for images 1,3, and 4. The Photoshop processing in this series ranges from a simple grayscale conversion for the image with the birds in flight, color inversion in the top image with the bridge, rocks and trees, to full scale image warping, layering, color manipulation, and paint brush texturing in the second image. Digital imaging with Photoshop has given me a real sense of freedom with my photography that I never felt with film. |
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| Lake Elsinore at Night 12-12-04 Canon 300D and tripod, 28mm at f/3.5 8, 15, and 30 seconds at ISO 200 Stacking and Curves done in Photoshop 7. |
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| The Road to Joshua Tree - May 27, 2006 Here are some shots taken near sunset while I was driving out to Joshua Tree for a night of Astrohotography. |
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| The Steve Here's The Steve being generally awesome! |
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| Red Cloud Road 01-21-07 Canon 300D, 17-50 f/2.8 Tamron lens at 17mm, f/4.5 1/2000 sec at ISO 100 for both shots These are some daytime shots of one of my favorite dark sky sites. The railroad is from a now defunct mine some miles to the southeast |
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| Laguna Niguel Wilderness Above is a series of four shots taken in the fairly sizeable section of open land out behind my housing complex. It's a great place to go to get away from the hectic pace of suburbia for a little while. |
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| SaddleBack Panorama 05-06-07 Laguna Niguel, CA Canon 300D, Tamron 17-50, f/4 3 x 15 sec at ISO 100 top at 17mm 15 sec at ISO 100 bottom at 50mm This is what the view looks like at night on the hill behind my house facing east. The lights to the left are from Mission Viejo, while the dimmer lights to the right are from the more distant city of San Juan Capistrano. |
| Mount Laguna Sunrise 08-19-07 This is a series of shots taken from the top of Stephenson Peak at Mt. Laguna, CA. The land drops 3000 feet of elevation into the Anza Borego desert just to the east of this spot. |
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| Older Photography - 2003-2007 |
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