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An old building ( school house ? ) sits on the high plains between Rexburg and Teton Valley, Idaho on a chilly November morning.

View the entire Teton Valley, Idaho Set
View my - Most Interesting according to Flickr

Tags:   Idaho old building Teton Valley landscape James Neeley

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This is one of the coolest hiking trails I have ever hiked. The Hall Of Mosses trail in Olympic National Park. Amazing park. Amazing but COLD! A major cold front came through here last week. I'm freezing my ass off up here!

This is in the Hoh Rainforest. It's very green.

Tags:   Olympic NP Trail 11-14 9944 www.mikejonesphoto.com Smith-Southwestern Mike Jones photo landscape scenic nature professional photographer washington WA

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San Francisco holiday skyline. With my days counting down before I head back to the east coast for the holidays the weather forecast was clear only for today. This time I decided to shoot the skyline from the Oakland side with the Bay Bridge cutting across. Upon arriving at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park we first checked out the observation deck. The view seemed alright but had some distracting objects in the water. We decided to walk out into the port where there was this small deck that had a clear shot of the skyline without any distracting objects in the water nearby.

Canon 7D
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens
Hitech 0.6 soft ND grad filter
(IMG_4529)

[View on Black]

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I had wanted to take this shot of the SF skyline for quite some time. No matter how much research I did I couldn’t figure out exactly how to get to this spot. After looking through maps and such I figured the only true way of getting there was to hike from the tourist areas of Treasure Island and descend down a steep slope to the shooting location.

This shot is actually the second attempt at this location. A week ago Aaron and I headed to this spot hoping to catch the holiday skyline with the Transamerica beacon lit. Despite seeing a beautiful sunset we were disappointed as the Transamerica light was not yet lit. Bummed we didn’t catch the ideal shot we decided to come here a second try after making sure the Transamerica light was lit via webcams. It seems like the light is lit at different times year to year for the holiday season. I had shot the skyline with the Transamerica light lit the previous year much earlier. On top of that I had shot this scene the previous week using my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens and I must say it produces some of the worst light stars. Therefore this time I used my 17-40mm f/4 lens that produces quite photogenic light stars but surely not as magnificent as the legendary 16-35mm light stars.

As blue hour approached we began firing off shot after shot. Then, much to our frustration, an incredibly slow tugboat began making its trek through the bridge and then just sat there waiting for a large freight ship to arrive during the best of the blue hour sky. Luckily the freight ship arrived quickly and moved much faster through the bridge and out of my framing. I fired off a long exposure shot and captured the traffic going across the top of the Bay Bridge as well. Though the sky was not as stunning as last week’s shot the lights were definitely more spectacular this week.

Happy holidays to all!

Canon 5D Mark II
EF 17-40mm f/4L

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Tags:   “san Francisco” “bay bridge” “sf” “city” area” “night” “long exposure” “bridge” “pier” “embarcadero” “sunrise” “cityscape” “lights” “landscape” “scenic” “treasure island” “skyline”

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