Berkeley Botanical 01-29-2005

Went with Aphra to Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Since I am still in my 'infrared' phase, I took most of my shots with my newly converted D30. At the time, I was very excited by the lily pad shots. When I got home and processed the images, I am very pleased with the California poppies instead.

For these shots, I popped the contrast by doing a second blurred layer. The blurred layer was applied in 'Overlay' mode. That mode brightened the poppies and darkened the distracting background.

Purple Clover #2

Many months ago made a creative image out of this tiny waterfall shot from Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Made another shot of the same waterfall and worked it heavily for another take on purple clover.

Sunol 01-29-2004

Took the girls for a walk with Chip to Sunol. It was high noon and all the vegetation is coming in a lush green. Sunol was beautiful today.

Leaf Stencil

Decided I wanted a violet image. This image caused a lot of problems. It uncovered a Photoshop bug where the image did not match the thumbnail or the flattened image. After fiddling to work around the problem, I managed to get what I wanted.

Here is a Photoshop tip. When you have out-of-gamut colors, convert to CMYK color and back to RGB. All the colors are put within range and it usually looks fine.

Metallic Tree

Another infrared shot that was colorized. Had about two dozen steps to get to this state.

Archway

Having a lot of fun lately colorizing the infrared shots and them compositing. I would say it is definite that I am in a 'blue' phase.

Redwoods Park 2005-01-23

Went with Aran to Redwoods Regional Park. We had a lot of run wandering along the stream. At about the halfway point, the sun came and out then I could pull out the infrared camera. I even went bushwacking up to get one of the shots. Going up was easy but coming down ended up sliding down on my rear. Hopefully, Aran got some keepers from her shooting.

Van Gogh Magnolia

Was planning on going to bed. Instead, started fiddling another image. After combining about 3 different images and actually using the stain glass filter, I ended up with something that reminds me a little of Vincent Fan Gogh's Irises. I did include a Siberian iris just for fun.

Blue Branches

Took an infrared shot, applied Pop Art filter, an etch zone and various tweaking. This one seems to be a companion image to the Garden bench.

Seagull Mist

Did a lot of fiddling without great success. So, I will file this one onto the web site for a little while.

Lens Baby

I read about a funky little lens called a Lens Baby. It is described as a love child between a old-fashioned bellows camera and a stuffy tilt-shift lens. When you look at if from the side, it looks like a child's Fisher Price screw.

The lens baby has virtually no point in focus and every shot of even of the same scene turns out differently. I will have to try out a photo trip which I only use the Lens Baby. I need to perfect my "fingertip" focusing technique.

Weekend 01-16-2005

Weekend 01-16-2005 Album

Spent most of the weekend using my new infrared camera. On Saturday, went with Aphra to Ardenwood. We were trying to shoot the Monarch butterflies that are roosting there. However, we only saw a few fluttering around and none roosting.

On Sunday, took the girls for a walk out in Sunol. It was a beautiful sunny day and perfect for infrared. Took several panoramas and found it fun to shoot with the streaming sunlight.

Still have to practice more with infrared because the results are surprising.

Batiked Trees

Not sure if I like this one yet. It is a combo of three images. The main image is the infrared trees shot and colorized using Nik. Added a mulit-coloried leaf shots and then popped color more with a Point Reyes seashore shot.

Aran's Colour and Glaze Studio

These prints are exhibited at Aran's Colour and Glaze Studio. The prints are archival and are already mounted and matted. You can also order unmounted prints. Available sizes are 5x7" to 12x16".

The shop is located at 3330 Village Drive, Castro Valley, CA. If you have never tried, painting your own ceramics, you are missing out on a lot of fun. For details, visit http://www.aranceramic.com/ for all the information.

Stepping Stone

A combination of 4 photos. Started with a bridge shot from Sunol and applied the Nik Midnite Green filter. This gave a deep dark base with green cast. Added 3 different shots from Uvas Canyon and fiddled a lot.

Garden Bench

At Tilden Botanical Gardens, took a shot of the garden bench arched with a manzanita. The colors were very gray and I did not like the background. Composited it with an pathway through a redwood branh arch. Then, used the Nik filters to posterize the colors. Lots of little fiddling for forcing the eye movement to the bench and up through the path.

Digital Infrared Photography

For those that do not want to read, my recommendation is try infrared. Digital infrared is great because you can see and adjust your results right away. Plus, it is fun!.

After much consideration, I decided to convert my Canon D30 to an infrared camera. I attended a workshop where George Lepp spoke about digital infrared photography. With George's recommendation, I sent my camera to IRDigital.net.

Sunol 2004-01-01

For New Year's day, we were planning on going to the city to the Conservatory of Flowers. However, Chip wanted to go closer to home. So, we packed up the girls and went to Sunol. To my surprise, there were a lot of folks out hiking and even more walking dogs. Bocifus met a lot of new friends, and Cho-Cho did her roaring act on all dogs that were leashed. I noticed she craftily ignored the dogs that were off-leash.

The light rain really highlighted the tree trunks. I have taken many shots of this tree but this is my best to date.