Recreation on Tomales Bay

We had a perfect view of Tomales Bay on our recent trip to Point Reyes National Seashore.  We watched the many was people made use of this gem.

In the morning, the bay was calm, perfect for these paddle boarders.

 In the afternoon the wind came up and the kite surfers came out.

 At Hearts Desire Beach some people enjoyed playing in the water.

 Others found it a good place for kayaking.

  As for us, we just enjoyed people watching and stayed out of the water.

Looks like fun but I think I'll pass.

For more views of our wonderful wold check out Our World, Tuesday

Belt of Venus

I'm sure I've seen this phenomenon many times but until I saw it in one of my photography books I didn't pay any attention.  It's called the "Belt of Venus" and it is the pink band above the horizon Just after sunset or just before sunrise.

With your back to the sunset (or sunrise) you see the light reflected off the atmosphere in the opposite direction of the setting or rising sun.  The blue band below the pink is the earths shadow.  

Tony Flanders at Sky and Telescope explains it much better than I can.  Look for it the next time you have a clear sky at sunset or sunrise.

Check our SkyWatch Friday for more views of the sky.

A Few Birds

Most of the birds we saw on our recent visit to Point Reyes were too far away to photograph but I did manage a couple of good shots.

I don't know how I spotted this guy, it is well camouflaged in the shadows.  I had to do a bit of tweaking to reduce the shadows and bring out some detail.  I think it is an immature barred owl but I am no expert and could be wrong.

   

I saw this flock of American White Pelicans from the deck where we were staying.  They were moving their beaks through the water and looked like they were rowing a boat.

If you don't mind getting seasick, here is a video I took of them.  Still cameras are not really made for taking movies no matter what they claim but they can come in handy.

See more birds at Wild Bird Wednesday.

Night Skies

I know, I've been among the missing for a while.  Truth is, I haven't had anything new to report and I don't like to keep repeating myself.  Lately I have been trying my hand at night photography.  This required getting to places with darker skies than what I find near home.  So here are some images of the night sky at our cabin in the Eastern Sierra and at Tomales Bay.

From the deck at the cabin I tried some sky trails.  I was fortunate that polaris was directly behind one of the trees.  This was a one hour exposure which puts a lot of "noise" in the image.  I compensated for this by using the camera's long exposure noise reduction feature.  This takes the same amount of time as the original exposure to complete so unless I want to be up all night, I had to get it right the first time.

I also wanted to get some images of the milky way.  This required a high iso (6400) which also creates a lot of noise.  Since I shot the image in raw I was able to greatly reduce the noise in Adobe Elements raw image processor.

At Tomales Bay I tried again to capture the Milky Way.  I'm not sure if the difference was due to my processing, the atmospheric conditions or the use of the high iso noise reduction in the camera.  I need more practice but it will have to wait until spring as the Milky Way will soon be too far to the west during the night time hours.

Find more sky views at SkyWatch Friday.