Tag Archives: Fujifilm X-Pro2

Landscapes, Nature

Ohiopyle State Park after 24 hours of rain

In an uncommon occurrence this Winter, we have had roughly 24 hours of steady rain and storms.  Creeks and rivers all around were rising and overflowing their banks.  Once the worst of that finished, I drove over to my favorite local hiking spot at Ohiopyle State Park to scope things out.  Normally, this park has quite a few awesome waterfalls, streams and a nice river, but with the amount of rain that fell, I figured those would be well above normal levels.

Knowing it was currently raining, I grabbed the only brand of bag I trust in any kind of weather, a Billingham.  It doesn’t matter how hard it might rain, the bag would protect my gear without messing around with clumsy rain covers.  Sure enough, even after being out in the rain for a few hours, nothing inside the bag got wet.  The same could not be said for myself.  The gear in the bag was my usual landscape setup consisting of my Fuji X-Pro2, Rokinon 12mm f/2, Fuji 18-135mm and a Fuji 23mm f/2.  I can cover pretty much anything with it and is still compact enough to fit in the Hadley Small.  The other gear was an AmazonBasics carbon fiber tripod and a Variable ND filter.

The water levels were way higher than normal and you had to be very careful moving over the rocks, as one incorrect step could lead to an untimely swim.  Thankfully, my footing held sure and I was able to return home to process the pictures.

Landscapes, Nature

Fall Hiking and Biking

As I try to do once a year during the Fall, I took a day off of work on Friday to get out into the woods with a backpack full of camera gear and a bike.  There was an overlook that I haven’t been to yet outside of Ohiopyle State Park so I started my day off at that trailhead a bit before sunrise.  2.5 miles uphill later, I arrived at a beautiful scenic overlook, albeit a bit clouded over.  Next I hopped on my bike for a 10 mile ride from the town of Confluence to the Pinkerton tunnel on the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail.  Then I just wandered around Ohiopyle proper a bit.  The last pictures are some detail shots of making fresh apple cider with the family.

Portraits

First of Fall Portraits

It is fitting that on October 1st, I did portraits for some good friends.  Every year, about this time, we get together to do Fall portraits.

This went very smoothly as I was using my new Godox wireless TTL flash setup.  I metered at about -2/3 of a stop in background light and then used a single speedlight off camera in a 24″ Octabox to illuminate the people.  Since the Godox can do wireless TTL and High Speed Sync with the Fuji setup, I was able to use my Fuji 56mm f/1.2 at about f/2 and shutter speeds above the 1/250 flash sync of the camera.  I dialed the TTL flash exposure down about 2/3 of a stop and everything just popped.  Having gear that just works makes the rest of the process that much easier.