West Virginia Photography Workshop with Corey Hilz

Elakala Falls

This past weekend, I participated in a photography workshop hosted by Corey Hilz in the Canaan Valley region of West Virginia.  Corey did an excellent job leading the workshop and providing instruction to the participants in composition and image processing techniques.  The last session consisted of a critique session of selected images from each participant.  Corey's critiques were very helpful in helping us see areas the images needed improvement and also the possibilities with the right image processing applied.

Sunrise at Dolly Sods

This post includes a small selection of the images I captured during the weekend.  Enjoy.

Cascades around Douglas Falls

Sunset at Lindy Point

Douglas Falls

Canaan Valley State Park

First Snow

First Snow at White Sulphur Springs Heritage House

This past weekend, my family went to a weekend getaway at White Sulphur Springs, Eastern conference center of Officers' Christian Fellowship.  While there, we received around 10 inches of snow.  Snow of any amounted is unexpected for the end of October, but great fun for photography and enjoying the time away.

OCF just opened the Heritage House conference center this past spring, so not only was it the first snow of the year, it was the first snow to fall on the newly opened center.  

Night falls on the first snow at Heritage House

Sunrise over the Potomac

My daughter and I went out early Saturday morning to capture the sunrise over the potomac river at Algonkian Regional Park in Sterling, VA.  This is the same location where I posted sunrise shots from almost a year ago.  This time, the clouds provided much more colorful images.  As always, I appreciate your feedback.

Golden Gate at Sunrise

I had the opportunity to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge.  This was my first time at the bridge during sunrise.   As on my first visit, I was fortunate to have remarkably clear weather, although my shooting angle was essentially the same as the last photo in my second visit.   Since I was shooting into the sunrise, I was pretty much done by the time the sun actually rose above the horizon.   I was glad of this later when I encountered the traffic delay from an accident on the way to SFO for my late morning flight.

Golden Gate Bridge at Sunrise

This image is a merge of three images taken in portrait orientation and then combined using Photoshop CS5.  Each exposure is 30 seconds long.

Saguaros, Sunrises and Star Trails

Saguaro at Sunset, McDowell Mountain Regional Park near Phoenix, AZ

I just returned from a 3 day trip to Phoenix and was blessed by a gorgeous sunset the first night and beautiful clear skies the next two nights.  Pictures of long exposure light trails, with the stars swirling around the North Star, have always been favorites of mine.  I have tried, unsuccessfully, several times over the past couple years.  I finally succeeded early one morning a couple weeks ago with a star trail over the Potomac River.  However, I couldn't get a long enough exposure before the sun rose.  More importantly, I lacked an interesting foreground.  The Saguaro Cactus and desert night sky of Arizona could solve both of those issues.

Light Trails at McDowell Mountain Park near Phoenix, AZ

I arrived in Phoenix to cloudy skies -- not promising conditions for star trails.  I went to McDowell Mountain Regional Park anyway, if nothing else just to scout out the area.  I arrived just after sunset.  While there I played around with some long exposures, light painting saguaro cacti and finally capturing a 6 minute exposure of the night sky as I drove the car back and forth along the road -- with only the parking lights, no headlights.

More images and light trails after the jump: