Big Bend National Park

Black_Dog · **Posted:** Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:23 pm

Some pictures from a trip last week to Big Bend National Park...

January through April are the best months to visit the park unless you love inescapable desert heat. The park is enormous and has over 100 miles of backcountry dirt roads through a great historic area. For a National Park the place was really empty and it was a great way to spend Spring Break.

Cruisin' along West River Road:

Old Ore Road to the Ernst Tinaja:

(not bad articulation for a stock rig -- Add the Old Ore Road to the list of places you can't take a Rav4, CRV, Outback, etc.)

Ernst Tinaja:

Terlingua Cemetary (ghost mining town a few miles west of the park):

dog_party · **Posted:** Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:07 am

Those are some great shots Black_Dog! I'm diggin' your screen name too. ;-)

KJs sure do look great out on those dusty trails.

zeero · **Posted:** Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:56 am

Looks like a great trip...kinda reminds me of my trip to Ocotillo Wells in Southern California :wink:

the1jferg · **Posted:** Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:50 pm

Wheres the Lonestar Sticker? Nice pics

TexasSara · **Posted:** Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:19 pm

great pics I love Big Bend. Im Boy Friend is buying land in Terlingua.

Endurance · **Posted:** Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:21 pm

Something is wrong with your camera. Except for the top one they are all overexposed. The exposure of the top one is not too good either.
You may wanna buy something else :wink:

dano104 · **Posted:** Sat Apr 08, 2006 5:43 pm

Endurance wrote:

Something is wrong with your camera. Except for the top one they are all overexposed. The exposure of the top one is not too good either.
You may wanna buy something else :wink:

I hope you are just stoned and kidding!

SKIDOG · **Posted:** Sat Apr 08, 2006 6:30 pm

What the heck do ya mean their overexposed?They look fine or are we going to critique everyone's trail photos?

Endurance · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 2:06 am

Do what? Stoned? This is an expert comment on the pictures. I am not critizing, Im just telling you whats wrong with your camera in case you were wondering...No reason to feel offended already.

And SKIDOG and what do you mean with

Quote:

What the heck do ya mean their overexposed?

, you dont know what overexposed means?

Exposure:
In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the film (or electronic sensor in the case of digital photography) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in exposure value (ev), with higher values denoting more light.

So overexposure means your camera is letting too much light through which results in an image that is too bright.

SKIDOG · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:46 am

Sorry I'm not an 'Professional' .But it does appear that way, after looking again they seem a little bright...AWESOME PICS ANYHOW!!!!!!!!

dano104 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 9:23 am

Endurance wrote:

Do what? Stoned? This is an expert comment on the pictures. I am not critizing, Im just telling you whats wrong with your camera in case you were wondering...No reason to feel offended already.

And SKIDOG and what do you mean with

Quote:

What the heck do ya mean their overexposed?

, you dont know what overexposed means?

Exposure:
In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the film (or electronic sensor in the case of digital photography) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in exposure value (ev), with higher values denoting more light.

So overexposure means your camera is letting too much light through which results in an image that is too bright.

In my opinion, you may have gotten a little further with your remarks had they followed a compliment. I.E. " Really great photos, I loved the location " " Bye the way, they may be a tad bit overexposed" IMHO

Tokyojoe · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 10:05 am

Just use photoshop or whatever software you have and fix them.

Endurance · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 12:07 pm

dano104 wrote:

Endurance wrote:

Do what? Stoned? This is an expert comment on the pictures. I am not critizing, Im just telling you whats wrong with your camera in case you were wondering...No reason to feel offended already.

And SKIDOG and what do you mean with

Quote:

What the heck do ya mean their overexposed?

, you dont know what overexposed means?

Exposure:
In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the film (or electronic sensor in the case of digital photography) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in exposure value (ev), with higher values denoting more light.

So overexposure means your camera is letting too much light through which results in an image that is too bright.

In my opinion, you may have gotten a little further with your remarks had they followed a compliment. I.E. " Really great photos, I loved the location " " Bye the way, they may be a tad bit overexposed" IMHO

yeah you're probably right. I really do like the pictures, I just didnt say it. Location and motifs are awesome, just the camera brings it down, but thats totally fine for people who are not bothered by that. It was also supposed to be a constructive comment, 1 or 2 changes on your camera and they look a whole lot different.

Renegade363 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:36 pm

Nice looking park
Looks like it would be fun to ride there

Black_Dog · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:17 pm

My apologies if the photos are not up to everyone’s discriminating taste. I agree that several of these pictures appear overexposed but there is nothing wrong with my camera. Let me explain.

All of these photos were taken by my 11 year old son and it was his first time really using the camera so I had it set on full auto landscape program mode. I think he did a nice job with the composition. However, at this time I did not want to complicate things for him with filters or manual exposure compensation. All of the shots were taken with a simple 50mm lens on a 35mm camera. An 81B warming filter was screwed on the lens for use primarily as a lens protector.

The sky looked white and hazy due to a combination of high level stratus clouds and low-level atmospheric dust. None of the shots that include the sky look very good. Normally I would have used a polarizing filter to take the reflective the sheen off all of the dust particles floating around in the air, which would have helped to define the sky. I also would have considered using a split field ND filter to darken the sky for some shots. However, on that day nothing but heavy Photoshop manipulation would have fixed that sky.

Part of the illusion of overexposure is the fact that geologically Big Bend is mostly limestone that is bleached-bone white/yellow in color. If you were expecting to see red-hued Navajo sandstone and red soil that is prevalent through much of the southwest then you would think that these photos look really bad.

All Through The Lens (TTL) camera metering systems measure reflected light and are calibrated for 15% gray. When shooting objects of either lighter (i.e. white) or darker (i.e. like when a black Jeep fills the view), manual exposure compensation must be made. When shooting the Jeep climbing the rise on the Old Ore Road the light absorbing black fooled the camera into thinking that there was much less light available than there actually was resulting in overexposure. Normally I would have stopped this image down 1-2 stops to compensate for this, as one would with any TTL meter.

Finally, these were shot on 400 speed Fuji color negative print film (not what I would normally shoot for good landscape photos). They were developed and scanned to CD by Sam’s Club. This is the first time that I have tried this service. The price was great and the scans were much better than I expected but I still noticed some minor increase in contrast compared to the prints.

Guest · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:45 pm

Pictures look great! I'm from out west (Phoenix, AZ) and most people don't realize that everything is super, super bright out there - this is what it really looks like. If you don't wear good sunglasses every day then you might as well start reading brail, because your eyesight will get bad in short order fasion

dog_party · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:50 pm

Very nicely handled Black_Dog. Very nice indeed. ;-)

jg45 · **Posted:** Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:50 pm

Black dog, the pictures are great. Your son did an excellent job. I had never heard of that area. I am very interested in visiting now. Thank you for sharing your trip with us.

desertkj · **Joined:** Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:24 pm **Posts:** 677

The pictures turned out nice. Always nice to see the Liberty getting used in all different areas. And to me, based on the southwest, the lighting looks fine.

Big Bend National Park

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