Monday, January 2, 2012

Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri)/Scenery - Lake Tahoe 2011 Part 1

I recently went to Lake Tahoe for vacation. Took some photos. :) There wasn't a lot of snow this year though. The weather patterns have been really weird recently. Anyways. I hope you enjoy the photos!

Lake Tahoe is a large fresh water lake in the Sierra Nevada of United States. It is located on the state line of California and Nevada. The lake is 1645 feet deep making it the second deepest lake in the USA (#1 is Crater Lake in Oregon). Lake Tahoe is a major tourist attraction in both California and Nevada. It is home to a number of ski resorts, summer recreation areas, and other tourist attractions. The Nevada side also includes high amounts of casinos which also attracts quite some people.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best bird photos from 2011, use this link. To view my best photos from Lake Tahoe and Truckee in 2009 and 2011, use this link. To view all of my photos from this trip, use this link.

Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

Today's post will include several panoramic shots taken at Lake Tahoe and several photos of the Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri). I will start off with the Steller's Jay photos.

Cute bird right?

Birdy butt. :P


Now moving on to the panoramic. They are either photos of Lake Tahoe, or some place near it. Click the image to see the full size. Also, the panoramic photos are probably resized by Blogger. Not sure how much though.

Also, these photos were taken at 18mm with a circular polarizer attached. The one I own is a 58mm B+W Kaesemann Circular Polarizer. It is probably one of the top polarizers in the market, and I will post a review up soon. :)

Photography Tip: If you are interested in landscape photography, you should invest in a good polarizing filter. It helps saturate colors and make the sky blue. It can also help you to get rid of reflections of water and glass. Please remember attaching any type of filter (especially a polarizing filter) will cut out a lot of light, so you will need to compensate for it with ISO, shutter speed, or aperture. The top filters (ones I recommend) are usually over $90. Mine cost me around $105. A filter can also shield your lens from falls, water, dust, scratches, fingerprints, etc (another reason why you should have one). Anyways if you are noob, a linear polarizer means no auto focus, and a circular polarizer allows auto-focus. The polarizing effect is not that different, but circular polarizers will cost you about double the price of a linear polarizer.

It kind of sucks how the Canon EOS 7D doesn't have geo-tagging capabilities. :( I don't know the name of the view point. I also took the photo at a bad time of the day, the sun was shining directly at my camera. that's why the left top corner is so over exposed.

Another panoramic. :) Photo taken at the side of the highway. This one turned out perfect. :D

I too this panoramic with my camera, and used my phone to take a back up... Okay not really back up, I wanted to mess with the new panoramic feature on my Galaxy Nexus. Well anyways, apparently there was no geo-tag data on my phone's photo either... I don't know why, I turned it on, but yeah, no idea what the name is for this view point either.

This photo was also taken on the side of the highway. The over-exposure in the top left hand corner was due to the sun. Sorry.

So I started the Lake Tahoe photos :) The next photo will be more Lake Tahoe photos. Today's was kind of a preview. I hope you enjoyed it! Please share this blog post with your friends and family! See you guys next time.

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