San Francisco Ferry Building

This is the San Francisco skyline as seen from Treasure Island. The center spire is the recently renovated Ferry building of the Port of San Francisco.

Coot

Another from our recent visit to Treasure Island. I have not processed my 'cityscapes' yet.

View of Coit Tower

Coit Tower is lit up and toward the right side of this picture. I guess a barge went by while shooting this image. This was taken from Treasure Island near the lookout point.

This is my new blog styling. My last design was panned with comments like 'not pretty', 'not wide enough', 'what changed?'. So I went back to the design board for this one. One of the blogs, that I read regularly, is Superhero Journal. This design is inspired by Andrea's blog design.

Treasure Island Marina

On Saturday nite, Chip and I went out with the camera club to take pictures of the San Francisco skyline from Treasure Island. While waiting for the sun to set, I wandered over to the marina. This is very abstract and the motion is because the exposure was 15 seconds. I have not work on the skyline shots but think that I have a nice shot of the bay bridge and Coit tower that will be posted sometime soon.

Infrared Portfolio

Note: This portfolio has been replaced by Woodland Quiet.

As those who have visited my blog recently, I have been working (and struggling) to put together an infrared portfolio. To see my selections, click here. I still need to name the portofolio and write an artist's statement. I have learned a lot just from getting ready for the review. I reviewed my images from the last 4 months and was very surprised to find several good shots that I never processed. On the flip side, the images that I liked at the time do not look good to me now. Finally, I have found out how much cropping can improve an image.

Thanksgiving in Sunol

Chip and it went out for a quick trip to Alameda Creek. We went wading along the creek. I planned a creek shot but this little still life caught my interest instead.

Alameda Creek - alternate composition

This is an alternate viewpoint to this earlier shot.

Photo Friday - Imperfection

HAPPY THANKSGIVING
This morning, I dragged myself out of bed with a pounding sinus headache. I was zoning out on the BART train platform waiting for the train to let us on. I watched this blackbird looking shiny and perfect just hanging out on the roof. Every once in a while, the blackbird let out a half-hearted mellow chirp. It made me smile, then I realized it was a good photo op. For me, the imperfections of the caulk just add to the picture.

Alameda Creek

This is another find from the archives. For one thing, I think that cropping can make a huge difference. Also, I think that Pixmantec's Rawshooter has hugely improved my infrared work. Using Rawshooter, I can get much closer to what I want for the final result. Here are my Rawshooter steps for infrared images...

• First, I need to set the white point because infrared images come out of the camera with a strong magenta cast. I can get my raw files close to neutral. Somewhere between 1800-200K. Photoshop's camera raw lowest color temperature is 2000K.


• Next, I use auto exposure which gives a good starting point.


• Most infrared images need more contrast so I use the built-in Strong Contrast curve.


• I can fine-tune the shadow and highlight contrast independently. Usually, I add more shadow contrast and less highlight contrast.


• While converting to a 16-bit TIFF, I do raw sharpening. My images enter Photoshop with a nice crisp look without any over-sharpening.

Grant Street

One more from our nite photo outing. While processing this image, I noticed a sign for Jack Kerouac that I never saw when I was there. The sign is located about a third of the way down the foreground lightpost.

Nite Photo Class #4

Another from the nite photo class. This is a car headlight detail taken in front of the famous Stinking Rose restaurant. The red and green streaks along the top are a green traffic light and a cars taillights.

Alameda Creek - alternate crop

This is an alternate version of the image in the previous post. This one is processed differently and a different crop.

Alameda Creek

One more found image. This one was previously posted. I reworked and cropped differently. Look at the next post for a different crop.

Alameda Creek

Another find in the archives in prep for the infrared portfolio review.

Alameda Creek

I am getting ready for my first portfolio review. I have decided to make a portfolio of infrared images. So, I am reviewing all my infrared original from the last 3-4 months to cull for images. This one was shot last summer but never processed.

Broadway & Columbus & Grant

Taken at the corner of Broadway, Columbus, and Grant in San Francisco on a very busy Saturday nite. Taken with 7-stops of bracketing and merged as a HDR in Photoshop CS2.

Nite Photo Class #3

One more from my nite photo class. This is another from the same wall sconce as the previous image.

Nite Photo Class #2

One more from our nite photo class. This one is "Demented Tulips". This is a color corrected neon reflection in a polished metal sconce.

Buick Riviera

Tonite, we had our outing for a night photo class. It was a very long day before Aphra and I even met up with the group. We tried some neon reflections in cars. This car owner was very nice and accomodating. She waited and let our group take more photos. For me, trying for an abstract shot is very new.

Posting an Image

My blog is a photoblog. So, I post a lot of images. It maybe surprising but I do not use photo albums. Instead, I post one or two images per blog entry.
To get the best results. Here are a few tips for prepping your image before display. I use Photoshop but any imaging program will work.

Typepad Blog Setup

As you may have noticed, the blog styling has had an overhaul. After a few questions/comments from friends, this entry provides all the details for configuring and posting images to your Typepad blog.

Here are all the details...

Photo Friday - Yellow

This is a quick grab shot from the lobby of our building. I heavily fiddled for this look. The lighting was atrocious.

Golden Leaves

Another from the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. This is this year's falling golden leaves.

Oakland Convention Center

This was a grab shot taken outside my office. The glass building is the Oakland Convention Center. The spire with the clock is the Oakland Tribune building.

Today, I attended a Photoshop seminar. I thought that I was taking Photoshop Creativity by Bert Monroy. Instead, I signed up for Photoshop CS2 Power Tips by David Cross. The seminar was excellent and I learned a lot. Here is one of the tips from the seminar.

Tip: For this image, I used the Image | Apply Image command. I chose Blending Mode of Multiply. This caused the colors and details to pop. Then, I changed the opacity to reduce the strength. The seminar recommends Overlay mode. Try both and see what works for you.

Zulu Daisies

These Zulu Daisies were near the entrance of the Berkeley Botanical gardens. I walked right past and never even noticed. I stopped nearby to buy a bottle of water. Another pair of ladies entered and started admiring them.

Autumn in Asia

This was taken at the Berkeley Botanical this weekend. Tonite, I installed all my image processing software on my ancient desktop system. I got tired of waiting for my laptop's new video card. For this picture the colors are accurate. It was spectacular at the gardens. They were promoting the event as "Autumn in Asia". I told Aphra that she had to go. However, Monday nite had a windstorm and blew away all the glorious leaves.

Winding Stream

Another from the archives. I am thinking of entering a contest for 'Autumn' and am reviewing my achives. This was taken in Jackson, Wyoming last fall. If you can visit Jackson in the fall, do it. It is unbelievably gorgeous there.

Falling Golden Leaves

I raided the archives for this one. Nope, my laptop is still not fixed. Dell promised the new video card by Thursday. However the web site says that the part is still in transit to the carrier. Hmmm... I hope that it arrives soon.

Laptop Broken

No posts for a while because my laptop is dead. Talked to Dell and ordered a replacement video card that is supossed to arrive at the end of the week. Hopefully, that fixes the issue but it may be a bad motherboard (which would be my 2nd for this laptop).

Good Guys

Tonite, Chip and I took in the movie, Zathura. Chip vetoed Pride & Prejudice immediately. In fact, we had a fun time and the kids in the audience loved it. Walking back to the car, I took a quick snap of the Good Guys store.

This is the first time that I tried out the Tiles Photoshop filter. Try it out under the Filter | Stylize | Tiles menu.

Litte Yosemite Detail

I am currently reviewing old images getting ready for a portfolio review at the end of the month by Fotovision. This was taken a few months ago but never processed. I struggled with cropping but decided that it is good enough to put up tonite.

Rooted

One more from my visit to Sunol. I have visited these roots several times and tried various shots. This one is ok but not my favorite.

Downtown Oakland

Taken outside my work while returning from lunch in downtown Oakland.

Sunol

This was taken just below the visitor center in Sunol. Tried maybe 4 different crops before choosing this one. If you look close, there is a tent in the right-hand side. I burned it down to make it less prominent.

Tip: I have been using Pixmantec Rawshooter for a couple of weeks now. I find that I can get much closter to my final output while still in raw. I thing that I love is the composition grid. It shows the rules of thirds even while cropping. I simulate that with setting the dividers to 33.333% in Photoshop but cannot see them for reference while cropping.

Tree Diagram

After wading into Alameda creek for the last shot, I sat down to get my feet clean and put back on my hiking shoes. After a while, I noticed this shot. To get the angle of view, I needed to use my fisheye lens. I also had to shoot this as a high dynamic range image.

Looking Down Alameda Creek

For this shot, I took off my shoes and rolled up a pants and waded into Alameda creek. After fiddling around for about 10 minutes, my feet were numb but I did get this shot.

Sunol

This afternoon, I following made it out to Sunol. I had planned to go several times but never seemed to find the time. I am trying to make more infrared images to fill out a portfolio to be reviewed at the end of the month.

Vegetable Trellis

One of my few infrareds from Napa. This is a trellis in the vegetable garden at Copia.

Reynolds Winery #5, Napa

This shot is a variation on Reynold's Winery #1. This shot was taken with my zoom lens while #1 was taken with my fisheye.

Cherry Tomato

I just finished reading an article about using complementary colors in a photo to add movement (like red and green). The article showed a vibrant blue and yellow photo with everything out of focus. Well, here is my out-of-focus shot of complementary colors. Technically, not good because I missed my focus but somehow I still like it.

View from Bart

Every day, I ride the train to work. Earlier this week, I hopped on my train, sat down, and looked out the window. I loved the fog wisping down the hills. So, I took a quick snapshot through the train window before we started moving. I believe that my car is parked under the farther seagull.

Reynolds Winery #4, Napa

While we were visiting the Reynolds Winery, a Black Phoebe flycatcher was fishing. The bird dropped to the water. This shot has the flycatcher in the water but the bird is in the shadow of the left-most tree. You can see the ripple from this shot.

Reynolds Winery #3, Napa

One more fisheye from the pond at the Reynolds Winery in Napa. This one has been fiddled with with a blurred imaged overlayed.