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Grizzly peak to the left, Pompadour Bluff in the center of this 11 photo, panorama photomerge
Spring and Autumn are interesting seasons in Ashland. You never know if it will be 30 degrees or 75 degrees. Sometimes in April things get mixed up and the green of Spring collides with the white of Winter.
Irene Barrantes diving catch
Most of my photomerges are in the three-to-five photo range. Sometimes they are just two photos. However, I like to try new things. So at last Saturday’s SOU softball game I set my D600 to “Ch” for continuous high speed shooting. The sky was overcast so I went with 1/4000, f/8, ISO-2000. If it was sunnier I would have went with something like 1/4000, f/11, ISO-800. Next time if it is overcast I think I will try something more along the lines of 1/1000, f/10, ISO-1600.
Anyway, I then focused on the batter at 70mm from behind first base. When she connected I immediately began firing as I turned my camera toward right field. Twenty eight photos (and about four seconds) later I was done shooting. The photomerged result can be seen above. After the photomerge my file size was almost 3 GB for what had become a single photo! I resized it and did a bit of editing to get it down to about the 1 MB image I uploaded. Click on the photo for the more detailed 1 MB version and to have it fill your screen.
Grizzly Peak photomerge
Grizzly Peak has been a frequent subject on this blog. I have taken photos from this spot on numerous occasions, but this is the first time that I photomerged nearly 180 degrees of scenery from this location including a bit of East Main Street. I stood so that both sets of power lines would run straight from my position once photomerged even though they actually are perpendicular to each other.
This one is a bit out of focus as I set the focus for just under infinity when I should have just turned it to infinity. With my AF lenses, just under infinity seems to work best for manual focusing, but with this lens, going to infinity for anything more than about 8-10 feet away yields best results.
SOU softball field with Grizzly Peak in the background
Major League Baseball begins regular season play in just over a week. Today’s photo is the view between games of a softball doubleheader last weekend in Ashland. The Lady Raiders won both games.
Normally I’d need to take three or four photos and photomerge them together for a shot like this. However, I used my new (to me, it’s a used lens actually) Nikon 20mm f/2.8 prime lens and was able to capture foul pole to foul pole in a single image. I love this lens for its optics, size, and weight, but I only purchased it because it was part of a package deal with a 50mm f/1.2 lens. I also have a 24mm f/2.8 (and a 14-24mm f/2.8) so I don’t really need both (or all three). Therefore, if you are interested in the 20mm f/2.8 manual focus lens, make me an offer I can’t refuse, and it will be yours. Oh yeah, and if you shoot with a Canon, it also came with a Fotodiox Lens Mount Adapter which allows you to use this, or any, Nikon lens on a Canon DSLR. I’ll toss this in at no extra charge.
Ashland has had some fantastic skies the past few days. I’m hoping these kind of skies and clouds follow me to Yosemite where I will be spending much of my spring break next week.
It may not look it from this panorama, but I nearly froze to death taking these eight photos (which were photomerged into one in CS6 later). These clouds were moving through quickly, the wind was howling, and the temperature was probably below freezing with the wind chill factor. I didn’t stick around for long to enjoy the view.
Robert Stout & Stephanie Jurs mosaic in the entrance rotunda of the Hannon Library – Southern Oregon University
I have taken quite a few photos of the Hannon Library on the SOU campus over the years, but somehow this is only the second one to make it on the blog. Grizzly Peak can be seen covered in snow in the distance of today’s photo. I took this picture a year ago, and Churchill Hall was undergoing renovations at the time.
Light snow covering Ashland, Oregon
Today’s photo is from this past Thursday. I took it from near the intersection of Clay Street and Ashland Street.
This past weekend, after feeling great after an hour-long workout at the Ashland YMCA, I decided to snowshoe up the backside of Grizzly Peak. Normally you can drive to the Grizzly Peak trail head but not this time of year. While there is no snow currently on the Ashland side of Grizzly Peak, there is plenty of snow on the other side.
I parked on Shale City Road near road number 38-2E-9.2. From there the snow was several feet deep so I had no choice but to start. I took today’s photo near that location. A mile later and there were no more human tracks in the snow. From the three-way junction it was just me on the snow, which felt great (like I was Ernest Shackleton or something) but at the same time it was a little scary. There were lots of animal tracks, and it was a Sunday afternoon so I figured it would be next weekend, at the earliest, before anyone found my carcass should I break a leg or should an animal decide I needed to be taken out.
On top of this, fatigue started to set in so I turned around once I got to the parking lot rather than go another 2+ miles to the top of Grizzly Peak. Next time I won’t do a workout before heading for the top, and I should be able to manage the nine-mile, round-trip hike. Nine miles in snow shoes, when you are sinking several inches with each step and gaining elevation half the time as well, is not nearly as easy as walking around town for nine miles.
This field on East Main Street in Ashland isn’t much to took at this time of year. However, in May and early June the grass grows long so someone cuts a path through it for the kids walking to school at Willow Wind.