© Dorothy Gantenbein. All rights reserved.
My Neighbors Won a Major Prize
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Are We There Yet?
Maizy was extremely impatient to start her walk at Don Edwards tonight.
What?!
 |
I have a Canon G9 that I carry in my purse. I take random shots with this camera and dump the images off the card about once per week. Tonite, I am watching John Adams in Paris when this image came floating by. I stopped and looked and looked. Then, I remembered. It was from inside the carwash!
Yellow #4
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot series dominated by a single hue. I chose yellow.
Yellow #3
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot series dominated by a single hue. I chose yellow.
Yellow #2
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot series dominated by a single hue. I chose yellow.
Yellow #1
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot series dominated by a single hue. I chose yellow.
One Object Abstracted #6
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract series. I chose a razor wire fence.
One Object Abstracted #5
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract series. I chose a razor wire fence.
One Object Abstracted #4
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract series. I chose a razor wire fence.
One Object Abstracted #3
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract series. I chose a razor wire fence.
One Object Abstracted #2
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract series. I chose a razor wire fence.
One Object Abstracted #1
 |
As part of my composition class, I had to shoot one object as an abstract. Here is the first of the series. I chose a razor wire fence.
Surreal #3
 |
As part of an assignment for my Composition class, I need 5 images with a surreal or mysterious feeling. Here is one of them.
Surreal #1
 |
As part of an assignment for my Composition class, I need 5 images with a surreal or mysterious feeling. Here is one of them.
Assignment #2: Impressionistic Painting
 |
I am taking a Corel Painter class from www.betterphoto.com. Our second assignment was to make an impressionistic painting out of a photograph. Here is my original.
Rainy Drive-By
 |
This one is a rainy drive-by that has been fiddled with a loss of some colors when converting to the web. It reminds me a bit of Tracy Helgeson’s work. I enjoy her blog regularly.
Bodie Playing #6
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Check out an exiciting new blog by Donna Cushman. She is the founder of Digital Stop. See blog.
Bodie Playing #5
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Bodie Playing #4
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Bodie Playing #3
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Bodie Playing #2
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Bodie Playing #1
 |
I have picked up a bug and am under the weather. So, I am going to post a series of Bodie playing with his mouse.
Seagulls Multiplied
 |
First off, this one turned out a lot more realistic than I expected. If you look close, you should be able to see artifacts that it is a montage. I had 10 different shots of this lone gull with other flying gulls and solo. The sequence starts from calms, to swell, to wave breaking. I upgraded to CS3. So, I let it auto-align my 10 images combined into a layer stack. That took about 45 minutes. I tried the auto exposure for the layer stack but that was too real looking. Instead, I used undo back to the auto-align step. Then, I masked in all the aligned layers with a mask to keep the bird on the beach intact. Then, I copied the layer stack again to work on the breaking surf. While masking in the breaking surf, I found a new Blending Mode in CS3 called Lighten Color. Most layers used the Lighten Color blending mode.
Geary Road
 |
You know it was just a matter of time before I tried an infrared drive-by.
Queen Maizy
 |
Bodie's Close-Up
 |
Bodie
 |
One last shot of Bodie from his first walk. He was found hiding in a garage and pilfering cat food. He had been attacked by another dog (?) and had wounds on his neck and face. He is fully recovered but still very nervous about other dogs and reacts by getting aggressive. Hopefully, he will relax after he gets used to us and stop this behavior.
Cantor Arts Center #2
 |
This lovely sculpture is in the lobby of the Cantor Arts Center. This is Styx by Deborah Butterfield. Styx is a bronze casting of driftwood. Here is a link to better images of Deborah’s work. I only had my trusty 50mm lens on the camera and could not get a wide enough view.
Just for fun, here is another shot of Styx. Down the hallway is a first century statue of Venus.
 |
Cantor Arts Center #1
 |
Today, I visited the Cantor Arts Center with friends. This is Rodin’s Thinker. The Cantor Arts Center has the second largest collection of Rodin’s sculptures out of France. We went to see the Richard Avedon exhibit "In the American West".
"The Remix Of Orchid" by A.N. Nanda
 |
In a nice surprise, I was contacted about using my ’fiddled’ bamboo orchid shot for a children’s book cover. A N Nanda is self-publishing a book that he spent six years writing! This image is his cover. You can see all the details here. Here is wishing him much success and I look forward to reading my copy.
I am working on launching my artist’s website, dorothygantenbein.com. Please stop by for a sneak peek and sign my guest book.
Looking down Market Street
 |
This is another archive raiding shot. This is from my office looking down Market Street in San Francisco.
More Maizy
 |
After this, I promise no more cute shots. This another shot of Maizy at Coyote Hills.
 |
Here I was inching down the hillside with all the loose rocks. Next thing, Maizy takes off like a rocket after a ground squirrel. She almost jerked me down the hill. Then after creeping along, she goes into the statue pose. I do not think she was after the tufts of grass.
Meet Maizy
 |
This is our new family member, Maizy Girl. We adopted her from the wonderful Ohlone Humane Society and her fairy godmother was Judy. Judy saw her as she was brought into the shelter and immediately took her home and nursed her to health. We were lucky enough to find Maizy over Christmas. She is about 18 months old and we strongly suspect a pure-bred Papillon. She is a bundle of energy and just learning to walk on her leash.
 |
This is from her walk this morning out at Coyote Hills park. On the way down the hill, she poked her nose into every ground squirrel hole. She thought that it was huge fun!
Way Back
 |
Given that I barely did any shooting over the holidays, I decided to do a little archive raiding. This image was one of my first images taken back in 2003. I had owned my digital SLR for about 6 weeks and was attending a weekend workshop up in Point Reyes with Chip. We got up insanely early for sunrise on Drakes Beach. This was the first time that I had used a tripod.
2006 Year in Photos
 |
I decided to create a slideshow of all the images that I posted to DorothyPhoto in 2006 on Flickr. Even though I say I am a photo a day blog, I ended up with 458 images. To see the slideshow, click here. Given the length of the slideshow, I suggest you set the time between images to something 1-2 seconds.
Merry Christmas
|
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
This is a stitched composite of about 12 images from my Krappy Kamera.
Krappy Kamera Fun
 |
I read about the keychain mini digital camera sold at Walgreens for $10 on The Online Photographer. So, I just had to get one. Chip and I stopped at Walgreens after I took the Palm Reader image from yesterday’s post. They only had one camera. Today, I filled its 16 MB of memory with 20 shots. This is the only usable one although I do have a lot of accidental self-portraits because I did not realize there is a really long shutter delay. I would press the shutter (or SNAP button based on the manual). I could not hear the beep and would look to see if the image counter on the front had moved down. Therefore getting a shot looking up my nose.
Leaf Abstract
 |
This is another assignment image for my color class. This assignment was to show repetition with variation and interesting color. In school, I was always prepared for my assignments and was not a person who like the last minute all night cramming. However for the color class, my assignment was not ready. So as I walked from the train to my car, I was scanning the sidewalk for images. This is part of that series. I have several more images from that walk that I intend to post.
Oh, I did not place the leaf. Its placement is what attracted me to the image. I am not good at making these little vignettes.
