A plethora of panoramas

We've gotten some much needed rain here the past few days. And as always, with the rain comes the clouds and the opportunity for some great stormy weather images. I went a bit pano crazy today, but that seemed the only way to capture the scale of what was happening. Under each image is a link to a much larger version for your viewing pleasure.

Larger version


Larger version


Larger version

These images brought my poor computer to it's knees. It took about an hour to get these stitched together and I had to keep restarting Photoshop to gain back memory. The middle one is made up of 17 vertical images, and the detail in the original size is pretty awesome. In the third image you can see the Pacific Ocean in the bottom right hand corner and Hollywood is just on the other side of the left hand hills.

Vintage sky

An AT-6 Texan from the Condor Squadron on approach to Van Nuys Airport.

By the way, the image that people liked from yesterday with the car and moon was two separate images. There's no way to have a foreground object (the car) in focus and have such a distant object (the moon) be in focus as well. I just took two shots, one right after the other. The first had the car in focus and the second, the moon. It was a simple matter then to drop the in focus moon into the in focus shot of the car. Voila, have you cake and eat it too.

Are you lookin' at my bum?

Yes I'm still in love with my new car. I even allow myself to keep thinking it has that new car smell. She is pretty, no?

Intimate

I love morning glories and this pair seemed to be locked in a warm embrace.

Desktop calendar

Well, you can't win if you don't try, right? I'm a big fan of the website Smashing Magazine. They're big on free stuff (icons, Wordpress themes and templates, wallpapers, etc.), but they also have a lot of good insight into design and style trends. For the five or six months I've been following them I've been really excited at the beginning of each month to see the new desktop calendars they put up. These are all user created images given away free of charge and, on the whole, are pretty rockin'. Anyway, I thought I'd have a go at making one for February. I put something together and sent it in at the end of December because I was so pumped about it. I didn't know if they told people whether they'd been chosen or not, so I anxiously awaited the beginning of February. Well, today was the day, and out of 70 wallpapers, mine was nowhere to be found. Sigh. The ones that were there were pretty fantastic though, so I contributed in good company.

All that to say this. Why should I let all that work go to waste? Why don't I offer them up on this here blog? So here ya go, in a multitude of resolutions and with or without the calendar. Enjoy.

With calendar:


1920 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1600 x 1200
1280 x 960

Without calendar:


1920 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1600 x 1200
1280 x 960

Trust

Marching on

Havin' some fun

Man, this Lightroom is addictive! These are some images I made outside of my work the other morning. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you, and my trusty G9 keeps rockin'.