Top 10 Travel Photos: 2010

Mono Lake Sunrise, June 4, 2010 

Continuing the retrospective look at my last decade of travel and landscape photography, 2006 - 2015.  Here are some of my favorites from 2010.

Part-way into the year I found a publisher for the California landscape photography site guide I had started, and scope expanded to include all of Southern California from Mono Lake and Yosemite south! In 2015 it became available as "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South".  Stay tuned for more guides in the near future!

Dawn at Thousand Island Lake, Sierra Nevada, still with a lot of snow in mid-July

Eastern Sierra Fall Colors, October 2010

Windy Day on the Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California

Valley View in Pink II, Yosemite National Park. Outdoor Photographer Magazine's calendar background image for July

Jet and Shadow on Eureka Dunes, Death Valley National Park

First light on Snow-capped Carson Peak, Eastern Sierra

Illuminating the "Sailing Stones" on The Racetrack, Death Valley

Weston Cove Sunset, California Coast

Early Morning Calm, High Sierra

This was a selection of a few favorites from an album of over 50 photos from 2010. To see more of them, as well as some of my road trip itineraries, click on the link or album photo below.

Over 50 of my favorite photos from 2010: 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/albums/72157650751721288





Semi-finalist Images/Moments/Experiences
Not being much of a fan of limits or rules, I'll show a couple of my favorite international travel photos, and also offer my favorite photos from family expeditions, including the growing photography interests of Nicole and Thomas Sullivan:

Thomas on a Death Valley Dune Hike

Nicole was filmed for the movie Timescapes (seen here in Big Meadow near Bridgeport, Mono County)

Thomas with his first digital camera, 2010

I won a couple of Samsung digital cameras in monthly +Samsung USA  (SOAphoto.com) contests in 2010, and those cameras helped my kids get into photography.

Thomas now has one of his Milky Way photos on the cover of a book of winners in the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, an international contest conducted by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (home of Greenwich Mean Time: GMT).

Nicole with her first digital camera, 2010

One of Nicole's night images won 2nd place in the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, an international contest conducted by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The Royal Observatory hired a film crew from Los Angeles to interview Nicole for 7 hours to produce this profile video: https://vimeo.com/28740663

Nicole later entered a photo in the California State Fair, entirely on her own initiative and effort from concept through execution and submission, and she won top honors in the Under-18 category.

Nicole currently has a part-time job as a photographer that helps her cover college expenses, and she volunteers at the local SPCA, including producing photographs of shelter animals, so they can be posted on Facebook for adoption.

Sultanahmet Mosque, AKA the Blue Mosque, at Sunset in Istanbul

Hagia Sophia, church turned mosque turned museum, can fit Notre Dame inside under its dome!

Blue Boat at Sunrise, Selimye Harbor, during a blue water cruise of  the (literally) Turquoise Coast

While my focus turned decidedly towards California from 2011-2014 as I researched sites for my upcoming book, I'm excited that its completion in 2015 leaves me with a world of opportunity for 2016!

Cut Light for Long Daylight Exposures

Garrapata Dawn light, originally uploaded by Jeff Sullivan.

We've all seen those nice one or two second exposures which make waterfalls look silky. Select your smallesta aperture, set your ISO sensitivity low, and perhaps add a circular polarizer to your lens to reduce light, and those exposures should be within range. But have you considered longer daylight exposures and similarly abstracting other moving subjects such as waves?

On a recent trip to California's Big Sur coast I was shooting long pre-dawn exposures and I decided to continue with long exposures for as long as I could. I started with my wide and midrange lenses closed to their smallest aperture f/22, I gradually reduced ISO sensitivity to Low (ISO 50) as the light increased, and I added a polarizing filter to cut light. As the sky lightened I added a 3 stop graduated neutral density filter to reduce light coming from the sky.

As the day continued to brighten I continued shooting but added a 3 stop neutral density filter and eventually I changed to a 70-200mm lens to further reduce aperture another stop to f/32. I had started with a Hoya Pro1 circular polarizer which only reduces light 1 1/4 stop, so I also used a darker polarizer which cut 2 stops of light. With the polarizer plus the ND and GND filters stacked I was cutting 8 stops of light in the sky and 5 elsewhere, on a camera shooting at f/32, ISO 50.

To continue in bright, direct sunlight you'll need to settle for shorter exposure times or go further to cut the light such as with a 10 stop ND filter. But a 10 stop filter is a pretty specialized tool that might not be on the top of your wish list, so in the meantime try shooting near dusk and dawn with your smallest aperture (most likely on your longest zoom lens), stacking the light-cutting filters you already have on hand.

A few things I should mention though... if you try long shots like this, it's critical to use a sturdy tripod, a remote shutter release or your camera's self timer, and don't forget to turn your camera's image stabilization off.

As always, click on any image to see a larger copy.