DobsonCentral turned 15 years old yesterday. I know I haven’t been posting as much as I used to, however that should be changing later this year. I have tons of photos to go through and process, so stay tuned.
How quickly this past year has flown by. I never even got around to processing most of my photos from my 2012 annual photography trip to post in 2013. Well, in hindsight, I think that’s going to be a good thing, since our annual 2013 photography trip was a bust. Below, in no particular order, are my top 10 favorite photos that I shared during 2013. Which one is your favorite or did yours not make in in the list?
It was only a matter of time with GPS in cameras and people from all over the world posting photos on the internet before someone decided to come up with something way cool like this. Check out Sights Map, which shows off heat signatures of the places most photographed around the globe. Should be interesting to see if we can look and find new areas to photograph on this awesome planet of ours.
I thought this was pretty cool not to share. Click on the link below to get a 360 degree view from above the Eiffel Tower.
Another year gone in a blink of an eye. I tried to do better than last year and kept a little more active in the photography game. This coming year might even be better, as Google + seems to have sparked a new drive to capture newer and better photos. Below are the top 10 photos, in no particular order, that I published this year that I really like and are personal favorites. Click any one of these thumbnails to be taken to the larger version.
I’ve always been a fan of motocross, supercross and dirt bikes in general. Mix that with my love of photography and you get a cool stop motion picture like this.
I had no intention of losing sleep over this meteor shower, as I have in the past. Unfortunately, my bladder got me up at 3 am and curiosity got the better of me. As I stepped outside, I was shocked to see clear skies since it’s still monsoon season in Tucson. Upon looking up, I was impressed with seeing several shooting stars and it was unusually dark outside, with the exception of the moon. I could see all sorts of stars out. So, I grabbed my gear and quickly set up shop on my back porch, shooting away from the moon (I didn’t want to have each shot over exposed.) I started up my intervalometer and went back to bed. Of course, I couldn’t sleep and after an hour of laying there, I finally just got up and made the best of a very early morning.
I should have just went back to bed and forgot about looking outside. I didn’t capture a single meteor streak in the sky. I did manage to capture some star trails, but also failed at composing the shot and eliminating the power lines and part of my roof line. #FirstWorldProblems. 🙂 The black and white processing was simply to make the star trails stand out a little better against the light blue morning sky.
While I was sitting here waiting for a decent monsoon to come this weekend so I could go out and maybe capture some lightning, I decided to catch up on my Google+ feed. I never imagined I would see something this incredible. Who knew lightning goes back up, creating what looks like a new strike?
A positive cloud-to-ground lightning flash triggers upward positive lightning leaders to form from three television towers in Rapid City, South Dakota. Filmed at 9,000 images per second, the video shows positive leaders descending from the thunderstorm with one connecting to ground. The resulting return stroke creates a fast electric field change which causes three tall television towers to initiate upward positive lightning leaders. Fast, short duration, bidirectional/bipolar recoil leaders form on positive leader branches that become cutoff from their main channel.
I thought this was a neat video. It reminded me of my childhood with the pride that my dad, uncles and their friends had with their vehicles. The photography of vehicles was a bonus.