Bill's Trail

Bill's trail is a trail in Samuel P Taylor state park on the way to Stairstep Falls. This is another high-dynamic range (HDR) image. Again, the colors shifted and I could not correct very well.

Stairstep Falls

This is Stairstep Falls in Samuel P Taylor state park. This is a high dynamic range (HDR) image. The colors became very saturated and I tried to de-saturate and correct. I am still not thrilled with the colors but decided this is good enough to post.

On a different topic, this is the new blog site design with one entry per page view. This should cut down scrolling and improve page load time.

Papermill Creek

This is looking down Papermill Creek just below Stairstep Falls. This is a fisheye shot. Given the extreme dynamic range, I took 13 exposures bracketing 2/3 of a stop to merge into a high-dynamic range image in Photoshop.

Coyote Creek Trail #3

Another from my quick visit to Coyote Creek Trail last nite. This is post-processed and fiddled just like the earlier post.

Devil Gulch Trail #2

This is the Devil Gulch Trail in Samuel P Taylot park taken looking the opposite direction.

Coyote Creek Trail #2

Another image taken along Coyote Creek trail. Post-processed and fiddled just like the first Coyote Creek Trail image.

Rock and Tree Root

Another taken out in Sunol before Christmas. The wood on the left hand side is actually a very weathered tree root that has been exposed by the creek.

Devil Gulch Trail

This was taken on Christmas Eve right before I came down with the flu. Chip and I hiked in Samuel P Taylor park up to Stairstep Falls. I do not like any of my falls shots but I like this one monochrome. I heavily fiddled to get the contrast that I liked.

Here is the color version for comparison...

Coyote Creek Trail

Today, Chip and I went out to lunch in Milpitas. On the way home, I noticed a trail along the edge of the marshes. I have been past this area dozens of times but never noticed (my excuse is that I was driving). Turns out this is part of the Coyote Creek Trail. Later that afternoon, I returned but only had about 20 minutes until sundown. The sky was completely overcast without any sundown colors. I fiddled this image for what I will call inspired by "Judith Polakoff" look. Judith Polakoff has a gorgeous photoblog and some of her photos seem slightly fiddled to me. I encourage you to check out her photoblog and prepare to be inspired.

Ancient Sea Rock #2

This is another shot taken before Christmas out in Sunol. At the time, I was frustrated because I was having a hard time maneuvering my tripod into position. Also, I really liked all the textures but was having a hard time simplifying the compositions. All told, I want to revisit the site but I like the results better than I thought I would.

Sunol

Here is a shot taken before Christmas. Turns out that all my sniffles were actually the start of the flu. I have been down in bed with chills and a fever. Tonite is the first time that I have been mobile. So much for our plans to visit Monterey and go adventuring over the holidays.

Alameda Creek

With the recent rains, Alameda Creek is running strong again. Earlier, this area was just pools of stagnant water.

Merry Christmas

Here is to a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

Canon View Trail #2

This section of Canyon View Trail runs along the banks of Alameda Creek.

Ancient Sea Rock

With yesterday's visit to Sunol, I did not take any Alameda creek shots because the recent rains had the water raging and very full of silt. Instead, I tried to capture some of the interesting rock textures and fallen leaves. I read that the interesting rocks are because Sunol used to be at the bottom of an ancient sea bed.

Misty Morning

This morning, I have the day off work. I got up early for me and headed out to Sunol. The fog was breaking up on the hills and I managed to get this shot without flaring out the infrared camera. As a word of warning, I had a bunch of dust on my focusing screen. After the little blower did not work, I tried wiping it off with my lens cleaning cloth. Instead, I scratched the screen and have to send it back to Canon to be replaced. Doh!

On a positive topic, Photoblogs Magazine is a wonderful resource for photo blogs. Through their magazine and web site, I have found many wonderful photo blogs that I read regularly. I feel that I get to travel to different areas of the world and see a little of what they are like plus many new points of view. I recommend that you visit and if possible become a subscriber.

Treasure Island Marina

Raided the archives for this one. I like how the water looks like polished metal with the mast reflections.

Canyon View Trail

A small section of the Canyon View trail out in Sunol. This is the start where the trail begins to get steep.

Over Hill and Dale

Take in Sunol along the Indian Joe Trail.

Warp Speed

This is another fun one. I had a shaky shot of my car's spedometer.

Sunol #2

This is another from our walk tonite in Sunol. It was a blazing yellow tree but I liked it monochrome better. It looks a little like snow in the background.

Sunol

Tonite, Chip and I went out for a quick visit to Sunol. We arrived about an hour before closing so we had limited options. The recent rains have started to bring out the grasses.

Stone Path

Anothr one taken during our recent visit to Golden Gate park. We were on an asphalt walkway when I noticed this stone stairway leading up the hillside. I assume that it is an older unused path.

Amazing Circle

I ran across a fun technique for fiddling an image, called Amazing Circles. This image was made with an variation of this technique that made it into an ellipse. You can download actions for both effects here. The source image for this effect was the 'Sea Monster of Alameda Fair'.

For both Amazing actions, start with a square selection covering as much of your image as possible. To make a square selection, choose the rectangular selection tool. On the toolbar, change the style to 'Fixed Aspect Ratio'. Leave the width and height to 1 (meaning square). Make your selection, and run the action.

Tree Fern Forest

After Chip and I found out that the Conservatory of Flowers was closed, we went for a little walk around the area. I saw these tree ferns and had to go investigate. These are the biggest tree ferns that I have ever seen and there is an entire grove in Golden Gate. Most of the shots are spoiled because there was so much wind blowing everything around.

Conservatory of Flowers

Here is a shot looking back at the Conservatory of Flowers while walking back to our car. You can see that it was a wet and rainy day. We would have had a nice visit inside the greenhouses if it had not lost power.

Orchid Show - Conservatory of Flowers

Today, Chip and I went up to the city to visit the Conservatory of Flowers. The orchid show is on until the first of the year. The whole trip turned into a fiasco. It was raining heavily off and on. Chip had directions to the Botanical Gardens not the Conservatory of Flowers. It was a case of cannot get there from here. After crawling through traffic around the edge of the park because there are a tree down. We still could not find the Conservatory of Flowers. Finally, we parked the car and walked on the blocked off roads and found it. However, they were closed because the power was out. I took this shot peering from the outside in. The windows were fogged causing the fuzziness.

Zulu Daisies #3

Today, I planned on visiting Sunol for some new photos. I got a late start and realized I would get to the park with only about 20 minutes until closing. Plus, it was raining and nasty all day. I know that bad weather makes good photographers but I passed today. Here is an infrared shot taken last month at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens.

Bocifus (Photo Friday-Depth of Field)

I had read about a very famous photographer who only takes wide-angle close-ups of dogs, cats, etc. They are called "big-nosed" shots in Japan. I decided to try it out on our black Cairn terrier, Cho-Cho. As you can see, this Cairn terrier is not black but blonde and is Bocifus. Chip stood above her with two flashlights for top lighting. Cho-Cho became too hyper with the liver treats and I did not have any chance to even focus on her nose.

Stone Lantern

This is another shot from my archive raid. This started as a fisheye shot bracketed by 4 stops and merged into an HDR. I did not like the resulting color so it became a B&W. Next, I gave it a heavy crop on stairs to remove some clutter. I like how the stone lantern is circled in light but the shot was not read well. I did a flip horizontal and voila a much better entry into the photo.

Zulu Daisies #2

Another shot of the Zulu Daisies from my visit last month to the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. Hopefully, I will go out shooting soon and can stop raiding my archives.

Bay Bridge

This is the Bay Bridge as seen from Treasure Island. At the time, I thought that the sunset was bland. This was taken during twilight and the long exposure makes the colors pop.

Ferns and Falling Water

This is another shot taken at Hakone Gardens on Sunday. I intended this shot to be black and white but did not find a conversion that I liked. Instead, here is the color version.

Infrared at Nite

Whenever I talk about shooting infrared photography with my friends, one of the first questions is "So, you do nite photography?" Of course, I have not until the recent nite photography class. We were at a shopping center to shoot water droplets on mylar. Instead, I decided to try out the infrared camera. My initial conclusions is not great. The street lamps caused a ton of flair. I tried shading the lens but that did not help the flare problem. The infrared camera is not very sensitive at nite. I had to shoot at ISO 400, f/2.8, for 10 seconds. It was underexposed by a stop but I did not want the flare to blow out too much.

Hakone Gardens

Visited Hakone Gardens this Sunday. The gardens were fairly busy. They filmed "Memoirs of a Geisha" there and I think more visitors came out with the release of the movie. I really liked the shape of the tree. I tried color, color converted to B&W, and infrared looking for the best separation. Turns out infrared was the best choice although I wish I could have found a way to minimize the background even more.

Nite Photo Class #4

Another from my nite photo class in San Francisco. This was actually my first shot of the nite.

12th Street in Downtown Oakland

This shot is taken in downtown Oakland looking down 12th street toward the covnention center. One edge of the frame is the reflection of the Oakland Tribune tower.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays! I am working on my Christmas card this year. I am having trouble finding inspiration. I bought a winter bouquet from Trader Joes and tried it arrange it in the Ikebana style. I fiddled the scan for the white background and added grunge with an etch tone filter.

Cyclamen #2

Another of the potted cyclamen at the Oakland City Center. Tonite was a late nite. I visited the Focus Gallery at Polk and Union. They had an abstract show of photography by four members. I have not done much abstract work so my goal was a better appreciation of abstracts. Art Levit's work is beautiful and elegant even though his subjects are trash, graffiti, rust, etc. Eric Larson had intriguing idea for a collection that I will call "Commuter Art". He shoots while driving his car and gets very interesting results. Of course, I tried while driving home. My result is a mishmash of squiggles (but fun).

Cyclamen

This is a heavy crop of a planter at the Oakland City Center. I liked it better in B&W to that all the texture is more visible without the extremely bright pink and reds of the blooms.

Tis the Season

Today at lunch at the Oakland City Center, this choir sang like angels. It was a nice surprise to walk around the corner and find the performance. This image has been heavily fiddled.

Iris (Photo Friday - Experimental)

This is one taken from the Berkeley Botanical Gardens. I did not like the straight up image because not enough emphasis was one the iris. So, had heard about the wonders of LAB color mode and decided to expriment. Found that the 'b' channel had good contrast between the foreground and background. Did various blending using the 'b' channel and the original color image for this final result.

Palm Fronds

This is one of the few infrareds that I took while visiting Treasure Island. I liked how the palm fronds looked like feathers. This infrared image is very different light than most of my other infrared images. This is actually golden light which is much harsher and more directional than my infrared images from Sunol.

Chrysanthemum

Since I have been digging in the archives lately and finding hidden goodies, here is a picture taken at the hair salon.

Whoooosh!

The view looking down Columbus Avenue. I think the streaming lights were caused by a Muni bus going by. After a few weeks of reflection on this class, I think that I learned a lot. I tried many new types of shots that I would have never considered before. Now, I would like to try more night photography.

Pink

Another from the nite photo class. After a few weeks, I do not even remember where or what this was. This one reminds me of my Granny because this shade of pink is her favorite color.

Garden Path

Had to dig into the archives for a picture. Had the portfolio review last nite that I will write up later.