We just returned from a 10 day trip in England. I shot a bit over 1,000 pictures and put 61 of them on Flickr and in the travelog – a 6% rate which seems pretty typical. The full travelog is at www.anirama.com/england and the Flickr set is here. Here are six of my favorites.

Kevin and Sarah at Windsor Castle. I like that the background is blown out - it gives them a sense of space without competing with their faces. I don't even mind the fence.

Taken during a tour of Oxford in a light rain, giving a softness to the light. Kevin struck the pose, but it works really well.

London City Hall. Lots of processing in Lightroom to bring out the dramatic sky without the building descending into darkness. The beauty of shooting RAW is that you have a few extra stops of latitude to play with in post production. It's much easier than trying to do this with HDR.

The lake in St. James Park with the London Eye and Horse Guards in the background. The soft sky flattens the light and gives the scene a painterly feeling. View it bigger and over black here.

Napping in front of Salisbury Cathedral. I like this one because you get a sense of the scale of the Cathedral without showing the whole building. Plus it has my kids napping in it.

Beer.

SF Bay baylands, shot from a Southwest Airlines flight after having just taken off from San Jose. I’m a sucker for the colors and patterns.

The Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Center at the top of the frame.

Parking for trucks in an industrial yard in Alviso, CA.

Sea Anemone

I spent the late afternoon at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve near Half Moon Bay, CA. The tidepools are locally famous, and there was a very low tide at 5:30pm today – right about sunset. I thought I could get some nice tidepool creature shots and a Pacific Ocean sunset all in one trip. The sunset was a bust – low clouds kept any red from reaching us, so it just gradually got darker. But low light is a great time to be shooting in tidepools with a flash – when the sun is shining the glare from the water is a big problem, particularly on cloudy days. But with just a flash you can control the angle and get some dramatic light angles and colors.

Shot using my flash hand held off to the side, and the camera mounted on a tripod. The anemone was just below the water line.

Sea Anemone

Anemone Tentacles macro shot

Tentacle Macro

Tentacles Cluster

Snow Ranch with low power launch under way

For Eric’s day we went to the LUNAR monthly high-power rocket launch at Snow Ranch in the Sierra foothills. By being so far away from civilization they can get clearance to go to 15,000 feet. Today had a low ceiling, so there were only a few opportunities for the high-power engines.

The rocket in the image below disappeared into the clouds after an impressive lift off, and had a successful recovery (eventually). Another of the high power rockets wasn’t quite as lucky – after screaming up into the clouds a small bang was heard, and instead of floating down under a parachute it just rained parts.

High-power launch

It was also a beautiful day for exploring the hillsides. You don’t realize how relentless the wind can be until you see trees like this one.

Wind blown tree

The USS Hornet

Every year between Christmas and New Years we do ‘Family Days’ where each member of the family is responsible for a day’s schedule. For my day we went to the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier moored in Alameda. We spent about four hours on board touring the ship – which wasn’t enough to see it.

In addition to three deployments to Vietnam, the USS Hornet was the recovery ship for Apollo 11 and 12.

F14 on Deck of USS Hornet