Category: Seascape

Views of the oceans and seas

Saturday (28-December-2024) — New Jersey

Fourteen-Years Ago Today. Yellow Flower in front of a Locked Vault. Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. (28-Dec-2010, Argentina)

Gone to See Antarctica 2014/2015: Day 13 – At Sea on the Hurtigruten MS Fram in the South Atlantic Ocean

The wind and waves were not as bad as the Hurtigruten MS Fram continued traveling south and west from South Georgia to Antarctica. Still not many folks were up and around either in the observation deck or in the dining rooms. I didn’t take any sea-sick medication and was doing fine as long as I kept eating the meals and could view the horizon. The ship’s musician was playing Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on the piano in observation deck in the background during this short video clip recorded on a Leica T camera.

Friday (27-December-2024) — New Jersey

Thirteen-Years Ago Today. Alligator with its Jaw Wide Open. Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. (27-Dec-2011, Florida)

Gone to See Antarctica 2014/2015: Day 12 – At Sea on the Hurtigruten MS Fram in the South Atlantic Ocean

Short videos from the observation deck of the Hurtigruten MS Fram of the sea conditions while traveling between South Georgia and Antarctica. I didn’t get seasick but remember that there were not many folks in the dining room. I did notice that my GPS track for the day had about six times as many data points from all of the rocking and rolling. We were going into some really heavy head winds, which reduced the speed of the ship from about 15 knots to 7 knots.

Tuesday (17-December-2024) — New Jersey

Fifteen-Years Ago Today. Nakalele Point Blowhole, Maui Hawaii. (17-Dec-2009)

Silhouettes of a Jet Passing in Front of the Sun.

Today, I captured an image of a jet passing in front of the sun while looking at the sunspots (we are at or near the solar maximum). I was viewing the sun with a Vespera Passengers telescope fitted with a solar filter. The exposure time for solar observations with the Vespera Passengers telescope is 300 microseconds (1/3333 sec). The Vespera Passengers takes ~30 solar images per minute. Over an hour that amounts to 0.54 seconds (or 0.015% of the time). I am not sure why the background of the image is blue. Previous observations the background was black and the sun orange. I will be contacting Vaonis support about the strange colors.

Silhouette of a jet transiting the sun with sunspots. Image taken with a Vaonis Vespera Passengers Telescope (200 mm, f/4, 1/3333 sec) with a solar filter.
Silhouette of a jet transiting the sun with sunspots. Image taken with a Vaonis Vespera Passengers Telescope (200 mm, f/4, 1/3333 sec) with a solar filter.

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS)

The comet is getting fainter and the tail much shorter. You may need to look closely; the comet is in the center of the frame. The magnitude is now 10.7. The first image is a composite of 32 images (5 min 20 sec) and the second one is a composite of 128 images (21 min 20 sec). In the second image there is some movement of the comet head. 

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). Composite of 32 10 sec images taken with a Vaonis Vespera-Pro Telescope (250 mm, f/5, 320 sec).
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). Composite of 32 10 sec images taken with a Vaonis Vespera-Pro Telescope (250 mm, f/5, 320 sec).
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). Composite of128 10 sec images taken with a Vaonis Vespera-Pro Telescope (250 mm, f/5, 1280 sec).
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). Composite of128 10 sec images taken with a Vaonis Vespera-Pro Telescope (250 mm, f/5, 1280 sec).

Monday (16-December-2024) — New Jersey

Fifteen-Years Ago Today. Surfer Girl at Hookipa Beach Park. (16-Dec-2009, Maui)

Image of the Day.

For the image of the day, I select an image from the past taken on this day of the year. I now have over a million digital images going back to 2006 when I got my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D200 for a cross-country road trip. I have a few other digital images from a Polaroid PDC 700 point and shoot from before 2006.

The “Surfer Girl” image was taken while in Hawaii for a Pacific Chemistry scientific meeting. I had the morning off and went for a drive along the coast. I stopped at Ho’okipa Beach Park and went to a section overlooking the beach. It was windy and there were some big waves. I could see some folks surfing the waves at a distance of 300-400 feet. For the trip, my travel camera was a Nikon D3x with a 70-300 mm zoom lens. At that time the 24-megapixel sensor was state of the art — great for landscapes or portraits with a steady tripod. But it was slow, not really suited for fast moving sports. Maybe 2 shots/second burst rate that quickly filled the buffer. I took a number of shots of the surfers out on the big waves.

It wasn’t till I downloaded the images later that evening that I realized I captured this great shot out of a 15-shot sequence taken over 8 seconds. Having a 24-megapixel image allowed me crop and zoom in on the surfer. I posted a cropped image on my photoblog and on Google+. A print of the image won an award at a Photography Show in Florida. I posted it on my photoblog and on Google+. Later, I found out it ended up in some surfer sites and it had been used in time-share and condo rental advertisements. Probably, my most stolen image.

Below, I show the original image sequence along with reprocessed versions of the sequence with currently available tools. DxO Pure Raw (Camera/Lens correction), Capture One Pro (Levels and High-Dynamic Range), and Topaz AI (sharpening).

Original RAW Image Sequence (2009, NEF)
Image Sequence Processed with Capture One (2024, TIF)
Image Sequence Processed with DxO Pure Raw (2024, TIF)
Image Sequence Processed with DxO Pure Raw and Capture One (2024, TIF)
Image Sequence Processed with DxO Pure Raw, Capture One, and Topaz AI (2o24, TIFF)
Image Sequence Processed with DxO Pure Raw, Capture One, and Topaz AI (2o24, JPEG)

Eleven-Years Ago (14-April-2010) — California

Springtime Nature in California.

Evening walkabout at Point Piedras Blancas Beach: Common Raven, Western Gull My eBird Checklist.


Evening walkabout. Images taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 70-300 mm VR lens. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.