Guadalupe River Walk (B&W)

Had feedback that this image would be better in black and white because the colors were 'horrible'. I am not sure that I agree but think the B&W is nice as well.

Guadalupe River Walk #2

One more from our visit to downtown San Jose's River Walk. This one had the leaves blurred by the breeze. So, I went ahead and fiddled until it looked more painterly.

San Jose History Walk

My last post from our adventure yesterday to downtown San Jose. This is a glass wall of depicting various Californians. I had intended to get some people interacting with the wall but the light was too low and everyone just disappeared.

Guadalupe River Walk

This is part of the newly opened Guadalupe Riverwalk park. It runs from the San Jose airport through downtown San Jose. It is really lovely and going to get better as the plants and wildlife get better established. I tried several variations of this composition on both sides of the overpass. However, this is the only version that kept any details. There was a nice gentle breeze that kept blurring all the foliage.

Guadalupe River Walk

Tonite, Chip took me to downtown San Jose. I was anxious to visit the newly opened Guadalupe River Walk. We had to park at Adobe because the Sharks were playing at the arena. We will have to return and bring the girls. It is a great place to walk dogs.

Photo Friday - Burn

This is an extreme closeup of a light bulb filament. This is one of those decorative clear bulbs shaped like a candle flame. I used my Lensbaby with an extension tube to get close enough. I decided that the orange cast did not do must for me so I tweaked the colors. I am not sure but I think all those donut highlights are really out-of-focus dust spots. I did clean the lamp after the shot.

Remember Your Camera #2

Another from the nite that I visited Sunol and forgot my camera.

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Late Summer - Dry & Brown

This time of the year is my least favorite because I do not like all the brown grass and dried up creeks.

Poison Oak #2

One more from Hunting Hollow. I would have like to do a little "gardening" before taking the shot, but I was afraid to get too close.

Remember your Camera

Last week, I rushed Chip and the dogs out to Sunol before the light went. Well, we were unloading the dogs when I realized that I had forgotten my camera! I used my little Canon S1 instead and worked without a tripod (because I forgot that too). This was was handheld at a 1/30 of a second and still pretty sharp I guess the image stabilization works after fall.

Photo Friday - Divine

Taken in the parking lot of Sunol. Was a gray day but there was a light show through the tree when we arrived. By the time that I setup, it was gone. Fortunately, I waited and the lights resumed.

Poison Oak

One more from my visit yesterday to Hunting Hollow. Last spring, I had a nasty run in with poison oak. I can almost forgive it now because it is so pretty in fall. I used my long lens to stay well away from and to compress the trees with the poison oak.

Hunting Hollow

Tonite, went back to Henry Coe State Park. Instead of going to the main entrance, went to the Hunting Hollow entrance instead. I have been consistently whipped by the incredibly steep hikes at this park. One of the docents told me that Hunting Hollow was a flat road along a creek. It is flat but the creek is gone for the season.

Eagle Crest

I was searching for an image for the Photo Friday's Divine theme. Instead, I stumbled across this shot that I like better in hindsight. My lesson for the day is that I have to have a better archiving scheme because I cannot find my images.

Sunol

This is from Sunol. It has been fiddled similar to Kathleen Connally's style. She has a beautiful photoblog, A Walk Through Durham Township, PA. Her pictures have a rich, saturated style that is very distinctive. Here is how I got a similar look.

Moon Shot

Went out tonite by myself to Sunol. I did some bushwacking along a stream I had never visited before. When returning to the car, I saw the moonrising over the hills. Pulled out the long lens and tried for a High Dynamic Range (HDR) Image. Turns out you can see the moon moving in an arc. So, this is a composite of two images and quite a few adjustments to keep details in the moon and the trees.

Tomales Bay State Park - Part 3

One more from our outing to Tomales Bay State Park. I wish that the foreground fern had stayed still.

Tomales Bay State Park - Part 2

One more from our hike at Tomales Bay State Park. This is a high dynamic range (HDR) infrared shot.

Tomales Bay State Park

This is a high dynamic range (HDR) panoramic. I bracketed by 3 f-stops with 5 separate exposures. There were gusts of wind that you can see moving around the leaves and tree branches around while taking the individual shots. Everything was a little too brown for my taste so I cross-processed to pop the green. My biggest surpise is that the blue of the sky is peeking through the branches.

Evening Breezes

Another shot from Baylands from the other nite. During the evenings, we get nice breezes making the reeds sway.

Photo Friday - Massive

This is a small section of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. During July, the tall ships came to town. As you can see, massive depends on your viewpoint.

Insomnia

This one is probably the result of waking up in the middle of the nite and not being to get back to sleep. It is a combo of an infrared marshes shot (there is a tiny egret in the middle of the left-hand third) and a rusty gear panorama. Of course, layered and tweaked.

Lily Sketch

Try posting this one again. Re-worked the scan until I have somthing that looks like a charcoal sketch.

Follow the Dots

One more from my visit last month to Hakone Gardens. This is part of the bamboo forest with dappled light.

Graffitied Poppies

Montage of my graffiti shots from Hercules and a so-so poppies shot from Mount Diablo.

Berkeley Botanical Gardens

Went digging into the archives for a shot from Berkeley Botanical taken around the fourth of July.

Little Yosemite - Part 3

One more from Little Yosemite.

Baylands

Tonite, Chip and took the girls out for a walk at Baylands. When C visited, Cho-Cho decided that C was great (I think she likes C better than us). Cho-Cho made all sorts of noises we had not heard before while trying to entice C to pet her belly. C looked shocked by the size of her belly. Note: we adopted Cho-Cho last year and she was seriously overweight and the lumpiest dog we have ever owned. Well, Chip and I decided to take her out for more exercise. Tonite, she waddled around Baylands and her a grand time.

Little Yosemite - Part 2

This is another shot from yesterday a taken at Little Yosemite with C. This is Chip's pick of the shots. Personally, I think it looks upside-down but it does not looked right when flipped. I was suprised to see how clear the reflection is becaue on site, the reflection was not visible. Previously, my infrared shots of water always had the reflections removed like a polarizer.

Little Yosemite

Went with C out to Sunol. It was her first visit. So we visited Eagle Crest for the view and then hiked out to LIttle Yosemite. I was very surprised to see the radical changes from a month ago. The creek was dried down to small pools and everything went very brown. We scrambled over giant boulder to get to this small canyon areas. This one reminds me of the canyon shots from Arizona Highways magazine.

Hakone Gardens - Part 3

This is another shot from Hakone Gardens. Because there were dark green leaves with a white flower, I used one of my favorite techinques for dodging and burning. On the layers palette, hold the Alt key and click on the new layers button. In the pop-up dialog, select mode of Soft Light (or Overlay for stronger effect). Check the fill with 50% gray checkbox. Now, you have a neutral gray layer that does not affect the image. To burn, select a black brush with 10% (adjust per image) opacity and lightly paint the areas. To dodge, select a white brush and repeat. If the effect is too strong, you can always change the gray layer's opacity.

Photoshop Lighting Effects

With this image, I used one of the most overlooked filters in Phothshop, Lighting Effects. For this shot, the sun was getting low and lighting of the duck's rear and rock well. But, the duck's head and background bamboo were too dark. I ran Lighting Effects three times. Each acted as a very small amount of fill flash on the head and various places in the background bamboo. The key with using Lighting effects is to experiment with the settings. Use Spotlight when you have directional light and the Omni for diffuse lighting. Also, remember to make a duplicate of your flattened image and mask the Lighting Effect. That way, you can paint on the fill light just where you need it.

Hakone Gardens - Part 2

Another shot from this weekend at Hakone Gardens. Dug out the fisheye lens for this oen.