2011 July

Yosemite Falls and Reflection In The Flooded Merced River

This is a great year for water in Yosemite Valley due to the huge amount of snow in the high country. The Merced River flows at flood stage throughout the park, making for great photography and dangerous water conditions, if you are not careful. My photo buddy, Graham and I stopped in the valley briefly before we headed over Tioga Pass just a couple of days after it opened. The number of cars and people was mind boggling, all trying to glimpse all this water. We made two loops through the valley before heading out over the pass. I did take a few photographs, when we could find a parking spot, as this flooding was a rare occurrence anytime in the park. Most of the traffic was traveling into the Bridalveil Falls parking lot. The back-up was a quarter of a mile for the right hand turn. If you wanted to go up to the tunnel view, you had to wait your turn. Every parking spot on either side of the road coming into the park or going out of the park was filled with tourists. As far as I know, this hasn’t changed since then. There is still a lot of water coming over the falls. It has been a great year for water, moonbows, rainbows, and that unforgetable roar that Yosemite Falls makes with all the water spilling over the falls.

I’m not much on dividing a picture in half, but it works for this image. I like the way the reflection came out of the falls. I didn’t get any blinkies in the actual falls. I was on the bank under some trees when photographing this image out of the sunlight shadowed by the tree top canopy. A few other photographers were there doing what I was doing, all having a great time I’m sure.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L at 40mm

ISO 200, 1/50 sec at f/11

Circular Polarizer

admin :: Jul.24.2011 :: Yosemite :: No Comments »

Bees A Swarming

Now for something different…a swarm of bees on our chimney. The way our fireplace is designed, after a fire you open a trap door in the floor and sweep all the ashes down into a collection area. Outside you have a door, as shown, to remove the ashes. Our family stopped having fires in the fireplace in the late 70′s or early 80′s, so the bees moved into the ash collection area. Now, periodically we have a bee hive in the ash collecting area under the fireplace. The bees never bother anyone, even when gardening up to the iron ash door. They enter through a crack in the masonry just to the right of the latch in the picture. We are always happy to see them as they insure pollination of the flowers, fruit, and vegetables year after year.

Our last bee colony three years go did not survive due to Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD). CCD is a little-understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear. CCD was originally found in Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006. Hopefully, this new bee colony will survive CCD. The swarming you see on the chimney is actually a new Queen about to take flight to a new hive leaving my colony intact to continue their bee activity. Actually, the Queen is waiting for instruction from a older worker bee that has located a suitable sight for a new hive. Once that is determined, off they go in a swarm to the new hive.

This swarm of bees did leave the property at 12:30pm July 16th, what a sight it was, bees everywhere for about 10 minutes. We didn’t want to leave the house until this subsided, but we didn’t think we would have been stung if we did venture out into the front yard.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm F4L at 67mm

ISO 200, 1/30 sec at f/14

Circular Polarizer

admin :: Jul.17.2011 :: General :: 2 Comments »

Old Bodie Gas Pumps

My photography buddy Graham and I celebrated the opening of Tioga Pass Road (Hwy 120) by going over a few days after the pass officially opened. Of course we had to stop in Yosemite Valley and shoot the flooded Merced River flowing through the park from all the melting snow in the high country. Next, over the pass we went to Mono Lake and Bodie, a mid 1800′s ghost town that was abondened after the gold mines panned out.

This photograph of the two old gas pumps in Bodie is a HDR shot. Did I need to shoot a HDR shot of the scene, no, I don’t think so. I metered very carefully and my middle shot had all the information I needed to develop a nice scene in post. I am still learning HDR and having success in the digital darkroom, but need to learn to see it out in the field when needed. I do like processing a single frame in HDR and shooting a scene using one frame HDR which requires good metering practice.

This is my umpteenth trip to Bodie, but the first in twenty years. I’m not sure I like the truck that was added in front of the gas pump, just to new looking for me. A lot has changed since I was there in the 80′s. When l go back in October, I have a few ideas to do more HDR in Bodie, California.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105 F4.0L at 55mm

ISO 200, 1/100 sec at f/11

Circular Polarizer

admin :: Jul.10.2011 :: Ghost Towns, Old Buildings :: 3 Comments »

OOPS!!! Everyone Walked Away

I went out to our local wildlife refuge with my photo buddy and noticed an upside down Cessna 172 right in the middle of the pickleweed. Come to find out the aircraft came down short of the runway to the Palo Alto airport. There were three people aboard and all walked away, with only a tweaked back for one of the passengers. No one knows why they landed short but am sure we will learn why in the coming weeks.

I included this story in my blog because everyone survived and it is a unusal and interesting story that happened right in the middle of a wildlife refuge. If the outcome had been different, I wouldn’t post this because it would be inappropriate.

To top the day off, I got some great shots of a Hummingbird family three days before the little ones fledged. My photo buddy got some great Barn Swallow shots along with some baby Avocets and Black-necked Stilts photographs.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright Ben Gundy and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Ben Gundy.