More Yukon, Tombstone park in case you've forgotten

More from the September 2017 photo trip to the Yukon with Neil, Judy, Katie, and Dalia. I've been going back over photos, and while I'm not sure I'd class these as hidden gems, they were overlooked in the first round.

I've been doing a bit of research about renting a camper and driving all the way from Whitehorse to Tuk. At first the price is a bit of eek, but then I remember where it is. I'd love to take a month or two and roam around all over, taking a zillion photos of course. I'd love to be able to seek out a great vantage point, and have the time to wait for the light to be awesome.

Dark streets and Dawson

I've had a few people comment with their ideas for image of the year, thank you very much. Now that I've got all my images on one drive it's much more convenient to review, and so I've been doing. Who knows what's going to show up in the next while?

There's a lot of photos to go through, almost 28000 for 2017 alone, with just under 1800 actually edited. Of those, I've assigned 4 or 5 star ratings to 191 photos. That comes out to one photo every 150 or so that I think is a bit beyond my ordinary. About a dozen make me go wow and get 5 stars. I could go on a quest to take more photos, doing things just the way I do now. Every 150 or so should be a winner.

Or, I could get better at taking photos. That's the route I'm trying to take, thinking about all the photos I see. Why do I like them? Where are my eyes going, and why? What would I have shot if I was standing there, and why? When I'm out in a group I usually spend a bit of time watching the others, trying to see what is catching their eye and how they go about capturing it.

I especially like looking at work by pro photographers. Even without editing tricks, and discounting long daytime exposures via filters, the pros consistently get better shots. There's generic advice of course. It's not like there is some secret to all this. The trick is to do your research to be in the right place (inches matter sometimes) at the right time for the right light with the right camera settings for the shot you want, and apply everything you know to get it in camera. Then comes editing and that's a whole other game.

It's kind of fun to go back through old photos and see what I've done with them. Some are overlooked gems that were never edited for whatever reason. Some have star ratings that I no longer agree with. A few times I've winced at the edit job and know I could do better now.

These are from the evening photo ramble in Inglewood a week or so ago. I love the mystery of dark streets. My writer's imagination starts working, wondering if one of my characters is lurking just down the way. (And some of them are lurkers, all right.) Wondering if something or someone interesting is in the shadows. Wondering what could happen.

Here's a panorama of Dawson City. I'd always meant to put this together and never did. This is where we got those super aurora shots on the last night of our trip.

Same viewpoint, looking a little further along the river.

One of the evenings I was out doing some city night shots, and want to take another look at those. Plus the bazillion aurora shots I've been meaning to revisit.

I found a few other undeveloped Dempster photos and will be sharing them along the way. It's been 3 months, and I still get chills looking at some of the photos. That trip was certainly event of the year.

I found yet more Tombstone panoramas

At last I'm coming out of the Yukon overwhelm-ment, as I've been thinking of it. I've been feeling much more perky starting earlier this week. I was working on the aurora time lapse movies and found more panorama photos that I had somehow overlooked. These are in addition to the Yukon panoramas that included some Tombstone photos, and the dedicated Tombstone photos post. If you scroll back through the blog, or look for the Yukon label, you can see other photos from my trip.

Normally I take some photos, anything from a dozen to a few hundred photos, import them into the computer, process them, and get on with whatever else is going on. Some make it to the blog, some are just for me to enjoy, and lots have nothing at all happen to them.

I've had some weekend events where I've taken more than a thousand photos, but there is a slightly different process. The computer works hard doing some automated adjustments, all I have to do is look for obvious deletes. It doesn't really matter how many there are, they get treated as a block.

Yukon was different. I loved it, but a week and more than 6,000 photos overwhelmed me.  A week of staying up way past my usual bedtime on the aurora hunt. A week of being driven from place to place while trying to remain alert for photo possibilities. A week of thinking about what would be the best shot and trying to think beyond the obvious. A week of amazing scenery, and I still can't get Tombstone out of my mind.

Many of my photos have turned out better than expected, but I have to admit I'm not entirely satisfied with my aurora time lapse movies. I'll try to tweak the individual images and the overall movie settings and see if it's better. One of my learnings for next time is to have a camera chip(s) for the usual daytime photos, but have a dedicated chip for each aurora night. Then it's easier to put them in individual folders and treat them differently.

With one camera it's hard to get both a time lapse and individual shots of the aurora. A successful time lapse needs to be carefully set up keeping in mind how bright the aurora might get and then leave it alone, hoping you've aimed at the right part of the sky. The individual shots might be taken in a short sequence as the aurora appears, and there's no concern about moving the camera as the aurora moves, or changing the settings as required.

A couple of these panoramas might look familiar because you may have seen a portion of the shot in other photos, number 6 for example. You might remember that little tree. Keep in mind what you see here is essentially a low res web version that is less than 1MB. My screen version is usually between two and three hundred MB, and zooms in for detail you would not believe. The print version would be substantially larger yet. I fell into that first one, remembering how the shadows played across the mountainside.

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One of these might well be September image of the month. Tell me if you think so.

The long awaited Tombstone Park, Yukon photos

In some ways I'm still digesting the Yukon trip. Each photo I edit brings back memories and thoughts, these Tombstone ones in particular.

I still can't get over the light and how it reacts with the vegetation and stone. Sometimes everything is so dull because the shadows are so dark, and a few minutes later it will look entirely different because it's in strong sunlight. Plus I was taking photos with different lenses and focal lengths, so forgive me if it looks like I've repeated a photo.

If I went through the file numbers and thought about it I could probably tell more closely where the photos were taken, but all you need to know is they were on the main road, with a minor detour up a road you can't drive on anymore. We drove all the way to the north end of the park, enjoyed the view of Chapman Lake, and drove back, with frequent stops along the way. I don't think we hit every scenic lookout, but if I were doing it again, I would, and probably lots of random spots along the road. Maybe renting one of those RV campers would be a good idea, since it would take me forever to get anywhere.

Especially since the view changes about every 10 feet, and the light changes everything just as quickly. The landscapes beg to be looked at through the prism of lines, shapes, forms, textures, but then your brain melts and you're overwhelmed all over again.

Every time I think I want to print one of these, another catches my eye and begs to be printed as well. That might turn into a problem really quickly. I'm suspecting one of the Tombstone photos will be image of the month, but lets wait a week or so and see.

I'd like to think these will need to be looked at on a desktop, even if they aren't panoramas like the other day. There are still some auroras to be made into time-lapse movies, but I need to make some space for that. Plus there are probably some lovely photos that have slipped through my editing process, and I'll just have to include them as I go along. I know that will damage the souls of my readers, but you'll just have to cope.

Enjoy.

Contemplative

Today was a quiet day, partly drinking mint tea and being a lap for cats, partly thinking about stuff. A cool rainy day is a good day for that. The most active thing I did was run 5K, 36:30, 7:17/K pace followed by editing a pair of contemplative photo. See below. Yes, Yukon, part of the large beaver pond in Tombstone.

I'm thinking about what my next photo project will be, now that I'm back from Yukon, though I'm still chewing through photos. I wanted to give myself a break today. I'm thinking of some art projects, but also of building a light box and learning to photograph small round shiny glass objects. Glass paperweights, if you must know. Plus macro stuff, of course. I have some ideas there. We are thinking of assembling a bunch of the 2017 garden photos into a large mural to get printed. There are several thousand shots to go through, and we need to think about how to design such a thing.

I'd also like to do some day trips with other photo people. I've some ideas there, including more winter Fish Creek walks/snowshoes, exploring more of the river pathways and pedestrian bridges. If you want to come along, or if you're looking for company on an expedition of your own, let me know.

Yesterday I finished the seasonal wine bottling, and I'm looking at the next batch of wine kits to buy. So far there are 5 or 6 kits that look like winners, but I don't think I've seen all the choices yet. Right now I've got 5 kit's worth of glass to fill. I've also got about 10 cases of glass I want to sell. It's clear, but the bottles have a dimple in the bottom I don't like, and are a touch narrower than the rest of my glass. I'll give you a good price on it if you come get it, and when the last of the wine in those kinds of bottles is done, you get first call on those bottles as well.

While up in Yukon I was hot to trot to buy a longer lens (150-600mm, still need to research the fine points of difference between Sigma and Tamron), and maybe a new camera body. Now that I'm home and reviewing my budget I'm less hot to trot. There's some storage space changes to be made first, I think, and my buddy Ken was really helpful in that regard.

I'm just coming up on 3 months without a day job, and I'm loving it so far. It seems like we've always got something on the go, and the weeks have gone by quickly. I guess the next few weeks are going to be putting the garden to bed for the winter, and tidying up the garage for winter. Linda has had a lovely summer in the garden, and is sad to see her plants bowing before the inevitable. She's started a Master Gardener course through the Calgary Hort society and the Zoo, and so far so good.

Yukon panorama day

Along the way I took various kinds of shots. Some documentary, such as signs about the places we were. That's an easy way to remember where and what the surrounding shots are. Some are tourist shots, because you can't help yourself. Some are HDR because of the lighting. Aurora and star shots, of course, that was the whole point of the trip. Some I've tried to be artistic in one way or another. A couple were macro shots. I'm a big fan of reflection shots and work those in wherever I can. Some are panoramas because, well, the scene is so huge. There was lots of huge scenery. Here you are. You'll probably want to embiggen these on your desktop, and play with your browser screen size to be as wide as it will go.

This is the Fox Lake Burn outlook. Loved the textures of the different trees and the hills. Just off to the right it's a long way down.

Pelly River outlook has a huge view. Here's the first shot you saw with the bridge. It's only a small fraction of what you can see. Just in front of us is a long way down.

Here's the panorama of it I was talking about. It's the widest I've ever done, and I'm not sure how successful it is on screen because it's 38437 x 5159 pixels, or just a hair under 7.5 units wide for every 1 tall. What you see here is just under a MB file size, while the actual image is about 900 GB. So much detail if you zoom in. Perfect for that really wide space you've been wondering how to fill.

This is above carcross desert, and is included here in case you missed it in the desert blog.

 
 Five Finger Rapids. There were stairs, but if you missed them, it was a long way down.

 Tintina trench overview through a wide lens.

Same view, through a 70 mm lens. This is 22794 x 5903 pixels, or about 3.8 units wide for every 1 unit tall. Say, 2 feet by 7.75 feet.

Tombstone day. I think was on the road to the park, not within it.

From the park interpretive centre. There will be more photos from Tombstone.

Technically, this isn't a panorama, but it feels like it, and plus, if you stepped forwards it was a long way down. This was the view on the last night, when we weren't looking up at the spectacular auroras.