I just got back from almost 10 days on the road. We went from Ashland to Utah and back by car. For the next couple of weeks I’ll share photos from the trip.

Today’s photo is of the sunset in the salt flats between Wendover, Nevada and Salt Lake City, Utah. Sorry the picture isn’t that great. The view was great, but taking a photo through a dirty window of a car going 70+ MPH doesn’t usually result in a very good product. I did gets some pretty decent ones from the car on the way back, but you’ll have to wait a couple weeks for those. 😉

Posted on December 29th, 2008 under places. Tags: night photography, sunset, utah. Comments: 1

After dark I decided to try my first ever night photography in the snow. The snow was just barely coming down. I was trying to set my camera to take multiple shots with different exposure lengths. The above and bottom photos are the results of one of those attempts–two identical photos taken in immediate succession. My settings were incorrect so both actually fired with the shutter open for 15 seconds each (I think, the bottom photo looks like it got a couple extra seconds but I’m not sure if that is really the case).

What happened in the above photo to render the wavy line of light that didn’t show up on the photograph below? I don’t know for sure.

My guess is that a snowflake wandered through the viewing area in the top photograph. That doesn’t explain why it begins at the light source though. Perhaps the wandering flake just happened to be in that position when the shutter initially opened. Or maybe the snowflake came off the tree and not the light. I don’t know. The light doesn’t really look like what I’d expect a snowflake to look like should one have stopped by to have its picture taken. Let me know if you have any theories.

Posted on December 16th, 2008 under nature. Tags: night photography, snow, trees, winter. Comments: 6

I took this picture of Starbucks before the Festival of Light parade on the last Friday in November. Above Starbucks you can see two bright lights. Those celestial bodies are Venus and Jupiter. A week later they made a very unique smiley face in the sky with the moon helping out.

Posted on December 9th, 2008 under only in ashland. Tags: buildings, festival of light, night photography, signs, winter. Comments: 4

Posted on December 7th, 2008 under only in ashland. Tags: festival of light, night photography, signs, winter. Comments: 1

The third of Ashland’s “Big Three” parades is the Festival of Light, held every year on the day after Thanksgiving. The other two are the 4th of July and Halloween parades. This one is the least popular, probably because it is the coldest. But there are still thousands of people in attendance.

After the parade Santa lights up the town (the “Grand Illumination”) from the balcony at Alex’s restaurant. Carols are sung and little kids get their picture taken with Santa at the Black Swan. Over a million lights go on.

The picture, above, is before most of the lights went on since it was taken before the parade. You can see the Varsity Theatre (home of the Ashland Film Festival), and the Ashland Springs Hotel.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Larks which is between the hotel and the theatre. It was the best Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had.

Posted on November 29th, 2008 under only in ashland, places. Tags: ashland springs hotel, buildings, festival of light, night photography, winter. Comments: 2