Terra Galleria Photography

Archive for the ‘Techniques’ Category

Light Painting the Redwood Forest

When you think about natural subjects for night photography, things like the rock formations or bristlecone pines of the southwest often come to mind, not the redwood forest. In old-growth groves, the dense canopy obscures most of the night sky. I made so many visits to Redwood National Park in the 1990s that I haven’t […]

How to make 360 degrees spherical panoramas

I’ve been asked how I created my 360 spherical panoramas (360s). By the way, if you haven’t, be sure to check the latest ones from the Grand Canyon. A detailed tutorial would take several posts, so instead I’m going to try and explain just the finer points I’ve learned – information which doesn’t seem to […]

Photographing Moonbows in Yosemite

A moonbow is a rainbow produced by moonlight, rather than direct sunlight. While observing a rainbow in the sky requires rare and unpredictable combination of conditions, it isn’t too difficult to predict the appearance of spray moonbows, which occur in the mist of waterfalls. Yosemite moonbows have been known for some time. John Muir described […]

Green Sand Beach, Hawaii – ND filters

For a change from working in the rain in Hawaii Volcanoes NP, I drove to South Point, the southern tip of the island of Hawaii. The access to Papakolea Beach consisted of a maze of badly rutted vehicle tracks, along the coast, alternatively sandy and rocky. A four wheel drive was definitively necessary. Hiking would […]

Best ISO for low noise on Canon 5D mk2

What ISO should you use for lowest noise ? Everybody knows that low ISO will result in lower noise and high ISO will result in higher noise. But is it a continuum, as one would intuitively think, or are some ISOs better than others ? In the past, I had seen advise to use only […]

Mac system re-install and software list

They say “it just works”. However, over the last month, my Apple computer just crashed. The symptom is a “kernel panic”, with a message over the frozen screen advising to hold the power button. This first happened a few times a week, and then worsened to several times a day. After two other support people, […]