Posted by Timothy Tonge on March 29, 2007 at 10:07 PM
Made a quick trip to the Sand Dunes Sunday, and was rewarded with snow on the dunes. Although about 60% of the dunes were bare, enough snow remained Sunday afternoon for me to watch snow boarders snow board down snow (not sand) on the sides of the dunes, and capture some nice images. Unfortunately, just before sunset, the skies rapidly clouded over.
Returned Monday morning for additional exporing. By later Monday, most of the snow had melted but again climbed to the top of High Dune to await sunset. Unfortunately, clouds rapidly built in, and even worse, the winds greatly increased. By 6pm I would estimate winds in the 25-30mph range, and further increased to 35+ by 630pm. I did capture some nice images, including the one posted, shortly before abandoning my position and descending from the fierce wind blown sands.
Stopped back again briefly Tuesday and shot some nice lenticular clouds over the peaks north of the dunes, before returning home.
As others have often noted, great place for images and I hope to return again and shoot more!
I like the concept, Tim. Very interesting comp and colors; the exposure is right on. It looks a little blurry and slightly pixelated to me, though. Regarding the blurriness, were you using a tripod? Regarding the pixelation, perhaps you have some resizing/saving issues?
Can't do much about the blurriness if that's caused by no tripod, but regarding the pixelated edges visible on some of the dunes, you can post images up to 200kb. Yours is about 84kb, so you've got room to save a higher quality .jpg.
Also, max posting size is 720 pixels, yours is 800 pixels. I think if you resize smaller to 720px (from the original), and save at a higher quality, you may eliminate most or all of the .jpg quality issues.
Posted by Timothy Tonge on March 30, 2007 at 4:17 PM
I beleive that the blurriness your seeing is caused by the .jpg conversion, as the 12.2 meg raw file looks quite sharp. This was shot with tripod. Shot a number of images, and was happy with the results as a rule...pretty easy to get good shots, though I didnt feel I got the really great shots. Still had a kick doing it, and was a personal accomplishment to climb the dunes both days in a timely manner (about 45 minutes parking lot to top which a year ago doubt I ever would have made it...been losing lots of weight and hiking daily).
Not sure how I remove the old image and replace it with new one but happy to do that, if you have advice...
Posted by Timothy Tonge on March 31, 2007 at 10:18 AM
Well Darren I did have some help on the climb(s) with recent snow, it certainly helped make the sand firmer than the middle of summer!
Discussion
3 repliesReturned Monday morning for additional exporing. By later Monday, most of the snow had melted but again climbed to the top of High Dune to await sunset. Unfortunately, clouds rapidly built in, and even worse, the winds greatly increased. By 6pm I would estimate winds in the 25-30mph range, and further increased to 35+ by 630pm. I did capture some nice images, including the one posted, shortly before abandoning my position and descending from the fierce wind blown sands.
Stopped back again briefly Tuesday and shot some nice lenticular clouds over the peaks north of the dunes, before returning home.
As others have often noted, great place for images and I hope to return again and shoot more!
Can't do much about the blurriness if that's caused by no tripod, but regarding the pixelated edges visible on some of the dunes, you can post images up to 200kb. Yours is about 84kb, so you've got room to save a higher quality .jpg.
Also, max posting size is 720 pixels, yours is 800 pixels. I think if you resize smaller to 720px (from the original), and save at a higher quality, you may eliminate most or all of the .jpg quality issues.
Not sure how I remove the old image and replace it with new one but happy to do that, if you have advice...