A Photo a Day by Bill Heller

Sky Photos
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Sunset at the Mission Rose Garden

 (click to see a bigger version)

More experimentation! This image was created from about 11 shots of the sunset. I could not get exactly what I wanted from one shot from any one lens. The only thing I had that was wide enough to get the whole sunset was a fish eye. I like my fish eye, but in this case I wanted to give more of the feeling of standing there in the rose garden watching the sunset. The distortion of the fish eye detracted from that too much.

The sheer scale of things caused some interesting problems. The full scale image could be printed easily 4 and a half feet at high resolution. And as long as I am building this kind of thing I figure why not go for full scale!?

I think I need more ram... and more hard drives.

 
Sunday, October 8, 2006

Harbor Light

 Another sunset shot from the harbor. The evenings have been really beautiful lately. This is a good time of year to be a photographer. In fact, the only bad thing is I did so much photography work last week I did not get other things done. I hope to have many more weeks like that. :-D

 
Friday, October 6, 2006

Starlight Harbor

 It was a full moon tonight, a really full moon. My wife read online that the moon was going to look as much as 12% bigger than other times. (The reason for this is the fact that it is near the low point in it's slightly elliptical orbit.) So we thought it would be a good evening for some evening shots.

The sun was gone when I took this, just a faint glow behind me. The glow to the left of the photo is from the full moon. And the stars are clearly visible.

This is not a new type of shot for me. But it is just about a first with my digital camera. I can usually pull this off pretty well with film, but the digital was a little more temperamental. Actually, it is just what you get used to. Now that I know how it likes to be treated, I think I'll be using it a lot more this way.

 
Friday, September 29, 2006

Breakwater Sunset

 This evening we took a nice sunset walk on the breakwater around the Santa Barbara Harbor. The clouds were beautiful and the lights on the water made for some great photos. It's finally getting to that time of year where we have enough moisture in the air to make some interesting clouds.

'Course the huge wild fire doesn't hurt the sunsets either. It's about 35 miles from us, but it still looked like it was snowing here one day from all of the ash.

 
Friday, July 7, 2006

Santa Barbara Sunset at the Wharf

 This image reminds me of visiting Santa Barbara, about nine years ago, on vacation with my best friend. When we first got here she told me that she had to warn me that I probably was not going to want to leave. She was right! But Santa Barbara was not the only thing I got attached to. Now that we live here, my best friend has also become my wife!

 
Friday, June 30, 2006

Stearns Sunset Panorama

 (click to see a bigger version)

More shots from yesterday's wharf walk. Actually, it's a combination of 9 shots. It was a beautiful evening.

 
Thursday, June 29, 2006

Stearns Twilight

 Tonight we took a walk on Stearns Wharf. It was hot and we were hoping to cool off. Of course, we were not the only ones with that idea. It was pretty crowded, but it was a nice walk and a beautiful evening.

 
Thursday, May 11, 2006

Santa Barbara Beach Bums

 We have not been seeing the sun much lately. But, it is a beautiful day when we do!

 
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Evening Fog

 The thing that looks like a large cloud on the ground between the palm trees and the mountain is our evening fog. It is caused by the marine layer. A warm cushion of air from further out in the Pacific that slides in across the cool coastal waters. The water is cool here because it follows the pacific currents down the coast from cold places in the north.

Given the right conditions, the fog slides in as the sun goes down and will not leave the beach till around ten in the morning. Of course, in June, the fog covers the whole city and only leaves for about ten minutes in the afternoon. We call that "June Gloom".

As long as you can stay back from, or above it, it is actually very beautiful. My office at UCSB used to sit at the perfect point at the limit of the fog. I could watch it swirl outside my window, but it never really got to my office.

 
Saturday, November 19, 2005

Santa Barbara Sunset

 There is an artist in the Sunday Art walk on Cabrillo Blvd. (where this shot is taken) who does woodcut images, silhouettes with a gradient color in the background. These evenings, the beautiful cloudless sunsets remind me of those.

 
Thursday, November 17, 2005

Backlit Poppy

 I had fun getting this image. I actually had to lay on the ground to get this perspective. (and it was a very HOT day to lay on the sidewalk)

This is one of my favorite subjects, in fact it was the subject of the first image on this site.

 
Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Poppy Profile

 So I have been building this site for a while, but this evening was a first. I went to Google to search for the scientific name for Icelandic Poppies and this is the page I found.

 
Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Hibiscus

 There are a couple of blocks in downtown Santa Barbara that are lined with beautiful Hibiscus. Lots of bushes as you would expect but this one in particular was on a tree well above my head.

 
Monday, October 31, 2005

Santa Barbara Sunset

 We live in an odd little spot on the coast. If you look at a map of the California coastline there is a small area that runs from east to west. That is where Santa Barbara is. As a result, the sun does not set over the water as you would expect it to on the west coast. Moving straight out from the coast, once you pass the channel islands about 25 miles out, the closet land is Antarctica.

 
Thursday, October 20, 2005

Old Sea Center

 Just went to the new Sea Center recently, it is very cool. This one burned down but they had been planning on remodeling anyway. If you are ever in the Santa Barbara area this is a great place to learn about the Ocean, especially if you bring kids!

This shot was taken the same evening as this one.

 
Friday, September 16, 2005

Backlit Monarch

 This flower seems to be a favorite of the Monarchs, and this was almost a tree. So, it made it easy to get a great backlit shot.

 
Thursday, September 15, 2005

Abstract Julia

 The filters I use to take my close-ups are a combination of several lenses. This particular combination gives me an extremely low aperture, so there is only a very specific distance that is in focus. In this case only a couple of millimeters.

The effect ends up looking like a painting, especially when enlarged.

 
Thursday, September 8, 2005

Julia Heliconian

 Yesterday I went back to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. It is almost the end of the butterfly season there. Each year for the past few years they have had a live butterfly exhibit called "Butterflies Alive". Something that is done other places too, but from what I have seen their exhibit is particularly nice.

In addition to getting some shots I am very happy with, I was finally able to identify this guy. He is from Texas or Northern Mexico. And, I found out that it was not that they are not documented well online, it is just that I did not recognize the images on the butterfly sites. Most of the images are taken with the wings stretched out making them look more of a classic butterfly shape. But, with the exception of a few basking in the sun, they seem to rarely hold their wings that way. They have a more stealth appearance in real life.

 
Sunday, August 28, 2005

Stearns Sunset

 Ahhh, the end of summer. I don't have to go to school tomorrow, but I can't believe it's over already.
 
Monday, August 22, 2005

Sunset Run

 This was a nice evening. We were still recovering from yesterday's adventure, building a sand castle. I wanted to finish a roll of film so I can get some images of our winning castle online! We spent the evening wandering around the Mission Rose garden and the Stearns Wharf areas. This image is from a previous sunset walk near the Wharf. There were less clouds tonight, but it is always a beautiful area.

As for the castle, our church entered an annual sandcastle contest on Leadbetter beach this year benefiting the Music Academy of the West's scholarship program. My best friend was in charge of the design. After a few iterations, she settled on "Gracie the Musical Dragon" (a distant relative of Puff) in honor of our church "Grace Lutheran". Our dragon was playing a keyboard made of sand and driftwood. It was a lot of work, all together I estimate we carried 150 gallons of water, but we were rewarded with a first place ribbon in the adult category! There was also a professional and a childrens' category, both of which came up with beautiful designs too.

Come back tomorrow to get a look at Gracie.

 
Friday, August 19, 2005

Sunset Tree Silhouettes

 Never a dull show!

 
Friday, May 20, 2005

Blazing Sun

 What strange weather! Santa Barbara is now doing it's "mid-summer" impression. Looking out at the thermometer I see about 95° F. I guess that should not be surprising considering the winter California has had. But the timing is a little unfortunate. This week they decided to repave our street, so we cannot have the windows open. And, Santa Barbara is one of those places that wants you to believe the weather is so consistent that they do not need Air Conditioning (or insulation for that matter). Someone once told us when I we were looking at his apartment to rent... "Air conditioning!? Well you must not have ever lived in Santa Barbara before, you don't need air conditioning here!". Well you don't need air conditioning in the Mojave Desert either, but it sure makes it a lot more livable!

Still, I gotta think I am more comfortable than the guys out there running the asphalt spreading equipment! Perhaps I should go see if they need something to drink...

 
Saturday, April 9, 2005

Autumn Sunset

 I was just flipping through some older scans when I found this image. It reminded me that I have about a thousand rolls of slides that I would like to poke through and see if there is anything else interesting lurking in the files. (I'll do that in all my spare time) :0)

 
Thursday, April 7, 2005

Sunset Reflection

 This was taken from East Beach in Santa Barbara. The strings of lights are Christmas decorations on Stearns Wharf.

 
Friday, April 1, 2005

Sunset Palms

 I particularly like the texture of the clouds in this one.

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