The wind sculpts the Sahara Desert sand into infinite patterns.
Among the amazing things in the Sahara Desert are the sand dunes and the patterns sculpted into the sand by the winds. From day to day, these patterns shift position and change as a result of the winds from the previous day and night. This image was captured at sunset in the Moroccan Sahara Desert. The sculpture had changed by the following morning.
This Monday night we had a Super Moon that was also a Harvest Moon. I drove down to an area of Carmel Valley Ranch that had a good view of the mountains in the more distant valley over which the moon would rise. When the moon is closer to the horizon it has a yellow-orange glow to it which gradually disappears as the moon rises higher in the sky. There are 3 images of the moon below and then one image of my camera setup.
Harvest Super Moon Camera Setup
I’m shooting with a Canon 6D DSLR camera with built-in Wi-Fi so that I can wirelessly connect the camera to my iPad and control the camera from the iPad using the Canon EOS Remote App. Each image is transmitted back to the iPad so I can review it at a much larger size than on the camera. I’m also using a cable release to trigger the camera (even though I could do that from the iPad) because I have the iPad clamped to the tripod. Triggering the camera from the iPad causes a vibration in the tripod and blurs the shot, so I chose to also add the cable release. Here’s a link for the clamp that connects to the tripod and clamps on to the iPad (or to an Android tablet). The app can also be used from an iPhone or Android phone and here’s a link for the tripod clamp for smartphones. This photo was taken with a Canon EOS 6D, 150-500 mm Sigma lens, at 500 mm, at f/16, ISO 400 captured on a Lexar 400x SDXC UHS-1 memory card.
The Point Sur Lightstation has a carpentry shop filled with some beautiful old hand tools mounted on the wood plank wall.
Point Sur from the Lightstation
This panorama is from ten individual images that are stitched together into one. I was standing near the Visitor’s Center and took ten shots, starting on the right, where you can see the side of the Visitor’s Center building and I rotated to the left nine times. What you see is the Pacific Ocean on each side of the peninsula that is Point Sur. The land in the image is distorted by this technique, making the peninsula look much narrower than it is in reality. The road you see in the center is the road from the entry gate on Highway 1 up to the parking area at the base of the hill on which the Lightstation is located.
Super Moon Rising
Super Moon – August 2014 rising through the clouds
