2014

Like all of the images you submitted, Adrian. I've not skied at Whistler and need to experience the scenery having seen your images. Reading your info, I forget to stack ND filters. Thanks for the reminder. I really appreciate your sharing the settings, etc. you used.

Sounds very complicated to me. Thanks for the explanation - beautiful place and I love the ghostly effect too.

An A for effort and another for the explanation. I like the ghost-y image -- very creative. Good explanation of stops. In my Photo I class we spent several sessions reviewing charts and discussing stop as it relates to aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Adrian - well don for the intense effort to capture - and for the bonus effort of giving such a good explanation of your settings. I like that this feels like a ghost from the past - I might have futzed with shadows/highlights (shadows only) to bring out some detail in the foreground. way to go!

After seeing Jude's questions about settings I realize it might be helpful / useful to reveal the technical trickery used for my images.

I used a B&W Neutral Density (ND) filter. I actually used two of them - a 10-stop and a 3-stop (for a total of 13 stops). I did a test exposure with no filter which I think gave a decent exposure at 1/125th second at f13. The idea is then to keep the aperture the same, add ND filters to reduce the light coming into the lens, and then increase the exposure time to compensate for having added the ND filters. Since I then put on 13 stops in total of ND filter that changed my exposure time from 1/125th of a second to 1 minute. But I only wanted 30 seconds exposure, so I increased the ISO from 100 to 200. The key in all of this math is to know how much a "stop" is for both your shutter speed & you aperture. On my Canon 5d each "click" of the wheel is 1/3 of a stop - so if I start at f9 and turn my wheel three times I will go to f10, then f11, then f13. So f9 is one "stop" brighter than f13. Likewise, if I start at 1/125th second shutter speed and turn my wheel three clicks I will go to 1/100, 1/80, then 1/60th. So 1/60th second is one stop brighter than 1/125th. I is all pretty math-sie. And quite a bit more complex than that. Sometimes I use an iPhone app (LongTime exposure) but it's not that great. Sometimes I use a chart such as http://www.vassilistangoulis.com/gr/?p=4958

I hope that was helpful - probably it wasn't really though.

Another week with three pics - sorry. But such a beautiful place.

I thought this week was going to be "easy" - I love long-exposure and after last week's star trails I was in the mood for cloudy skies and windy days. Unfortunately I got nothing but clear blue skies all week. what a drag ;-)

With Sunday not available for photography, today (Saturday) was my last hope. So I lugged my camera, tripod, and ND filters up the really tough Wedge Lake trail (just 7km long, but over 1,200m climbing!!)

At the top still nothing but blue skies. bummer. Nothing was moving at all. So I decided I was going to have to throw rocks around to get some movement for the Long Exposure shot. This is me juggling three rocks standing in front of Wedge Lake with Wedgemont Glacier behind me.