Tag: North America

Photo of the Day: Old Faithful Rainbow

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Greetings readers, and long time no see. It’s been ages since I’ve posted, in part because I got super busy at work, but also because I spent several months culling and processing all of the photos I took during my two-week trip out west this past summer. Hopefully now that I’m mostly caught up, I’ll be able to start posting more often and maybe get back to updating my trip journal again.

In the meantime, here’s a photo taken during my stay in Yellowstone National Park of Old Faithful erupting and producing a pretty rainbow in the process.

Date: 8/28/2017
Camera: NIKON D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Jen and Ollie Watch the Sunset

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I don’t often feature people in my photos, but I couldn’t resist sharing this shot of my wife and dog on the beach watching the sunset at Cape May Point.

Date: 6/7/2017
Camera: NIKON D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Villas Sunset

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This was taken during our stay at a bayside cottage in The Villas, New Jersey. Although the house itself was terrible, we did enjoy some nice sunsets on the back patio.

Date: 7/4/2010
Camera: Panasonic DMC-FX8
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Monster Cloud

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I always liked this photo taken at Disney World with my old pocket camera back in 2006. The cloud/sun combination, in addition to producing some nice colors and patterns, looked to me like some kind of monster emerging from the horizon.

Date: 9/25/2006
Camera: Panasonic DMC-FX8
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Misty Mountain

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I thought it might be a neat exercise to hone my black-and-white conversion skills on some of my favorite older color photos that haven’t aged well (due to being shot with low-quality digital cameras). This is my first attempt, a photo taken during my foggy hike up to the top of Clingmans Dome in the North Carolina Smoky Mountains back in 2004.

Date: 7/4/2004
Camera: Fuji FinePix2650
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Jungle Pyramid

Michael Rappa5 Comments

This is a shot of the Pyramid of the Magician rising above the jungle in Uxmal, Mexico. This was my favorite of the pyramid sites I visited: more remote, less crowded, and less touristy than the more famous sites of Chichen Itza and Teotihuacan. When you walk around here you can really feel like you’re in the middle of an Indiana Jones film.

Date: 11/2/2013
Camera: Nikon D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photo of the Day: Cape Breton Beach (long exposure)

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I don’t often get to take long exposure shots while on vacation because it involves lugging around a tripod, but this beach was located just outside my cabin on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, so it was a perfect opportunity to set up the tripod and try out the neutral density filter I bought last year. These types of filters enable you to take long exposures during the day without blowing the highlights. I’m still getting the hang of it, but I like the effect here of smoothing the ocean and blurring the clouds while keeping the rocks in focus, almost like a painting.

Date: 9/3/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photos of the Day: Canadian Maritime Night Sky

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The night skies over the Canadian maritime provinces are spectacular, particularly in the remote areas where these two photos were shot–the skies are packed with far more stars than most of us are used to seeing on a regular basis. Although my astrophotography remains a work in progress, I feel like these are definitely an improvement over some of my earlier efforts.

The first photo was taken outside of the inn where I stayed on Prince Edward Island. In setting the building against the night sky I tried to capture the remoteness of the inn, which is located by itself out on a cliff overlooking the sea. I always feel weird going outside for night photography, setting up the tripod and everything while people are wondering what I’m doing out there. The women in one of the downstairs rooms kept looking out the window–I think they thought I was up to something nefarious. 🙂

The second photo of the Milky Way was taken outside my cabin on Cape Breton Island.

Date: 8/30/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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Date: 9/3/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photos of the Day: The Hopewell Rocks at Low and High Tide

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The Bay of Fundy in Canada has the highest tidal range in the world. To get a glimpse of this natural wonder in action, I visited the famous Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick on two consecutive days. The first photo below was shot at low tide, while the second was shot at high tide. The visual comparison would have worked better if I had shot both photos from the same angle, but you can still see that all of the people in the first photo would be underwater in the second photo.

Date: 8/29/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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Date: 8/30/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.

Photos of the Day: Out of the Fog

Michael Rappa2 Comments

As I was walking along the waterfront boardwalk in Nova Scotia’s capital city of Halifax, I spotted this ship that appeared to emerge from an endless sea of fog (the camera picked up land in the distance that had been invisible to the naked eye).

I can’t decide which photo I like more, so I’m including both. The first photo is softer, reflecting the enveloping fogginess I recall from that day. The second photo, with ship further removed from the fog, is sharper, and I like the juxtaposition of the tiny duck next to it.

Date: 9/6/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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Date: 9/6/2016
Camera: Nikon D5100
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You can view more featured photos at my Photo of the Day Collection.