Walk to lunch

I decided to take a long walk to lunch the other day....mmm, Joan's. Anyway, brought along my little camera with hopes of some photo opportunities. I passed this one house and BAM! a 'splosion of color! I spent quite a few minutes looking like a flower stalker on the sidewalk, but it was worth it.

Park it

Some non-jacaranda images from my new favorite park. It's such a blast exploring a new place.

Found objects

Not really my normal thing, but I came across these two little "scenes" at my church and thought they'd make interesting images. A little bit of Photoshop fun and voila, happiness.

Memorial Day

In honor of all who have served and are serving our country. Thank you.

Jacarandas in bloom

The Jacaranda trees are in bloom around here and they are just beautiful. Some streets are lined with them and the parks are full of them. I stopped a few times this past week at a park that's close to my work to try and capture a bit of the color and shape of these trees. It turned out to be a really pleasant start to my day and I got a few images that I was happy with.

3 cuties and Bridalveil

What can I say, they are just too cute. I wanted the water to have a smoother feel so I had to take a longer exposure and they all did great! We were coming down the trail after having stood under Bridalveil Falls and were soaking wet. It was the last thing we did before leaving the park and it was a great way to end our time there. We're already looking forward to next year!

Photographers unite!

Some of you may remember my post from a few months back where I talked about being "asked" to leave an L.A. subway station. Well, it seems that I'm not the only one who's been hassled about taking pictures in public places. On June 1 there's going to be several peaceful demonstrations to protest/highlight the treatment of photographers and videographers around L.A. If you're interested in participating or want more info, click here. Hope to see you there!

Tunnel View with clouds

Here's a view of Yosemite that most people have probably seen. This is called "Tunnel View" because this is the view you see after emerging from the tunnel along Highway 41. There is a larger parking area there and is normally the first place people stop during their visit to Yosemite. Each time we've gone I've taken a picture (ok a bunch of pictures) from here, but none of them ever really excited me. We've always visited slightly later in the month when all the the storms have moved away and all the snow had melted. This visit there were clouds every day and there was still a fair bit of snow in the higher elevations.

Back to the picture. This is a panorama stitched together from five images. There were actually 15 images to start with because I took three different exposures for each image. This is the same technique I used to make this image. With all that being said, this is exactly the way I remember it looking, and in the end that's what was important for me in this image.

Rooted Movement

I love what can be done with fast moving water and a slow shutter speed. It makes it even better when you have something stationary to compare it to. These are two of my favorite from the Yosemite trip. These were taken along the creek below Mirror Lake.

Back to reality...

Man, what an amazing trip. I always set my sights high when I go to Yosemite, and I've yet to be disappointed. The kids had a great time, the weather was perfect and I even got to take a few pictures. Speaking of pictures ('cause that's why we're here), I had a specific type of image I was hoping to capture this trip; a star trail. The technique for this is not overly complicated, although it does require some prior planning and a lot of waiting. The tricky part is being somewhere that's dark enough to make it turn out. Turns out Yosemite is just that kinda place. It's far enough away from any major cities, has some prominent features facing the right direction, and fortunately, can have some amazingly clear weather.

My wife said I should start my Yosemite posts with my favorite image (and hers). Well, here's the result of my hour long vigil on Swinging Bridge. The falls is Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in the U.S. and the reflections are courtesy of the Merced River that flows through the park.


Curiously I should have had a second star trail image to post, seeing as how I spent 45 minutes the following night at Tunnel View, but a slight technical error (not fully depressing the shutter button) left me with a one second black frame. I didn't realize this until an hour later since this technique requires the camera to take a second exposure of equal length to eliminate noise. Imagine my surprise. Lessons learned.

That time of year...

Well, I can't believe it's May already. Time to round up the family and head north. What's north you ask? Just one of the greatest national parks in these here United States. I'm talking about Yosemite National Park. It will be our third visit to the park, and we're hoping to make this an annual event. Such a majestic place that words and pictures can't adequately describe it. Of course that won't stop me from trying! Here's an image from last year, showing Half Dome just before sunset. Oh, for those of you who were curious about yesterday's post, it was some mud that had washed across the sidewalk. See you when I get back!

Abstraction

I know this is a bit of a departure from the norm, but I thought I'd branch out a bit. This is an abstract that I've been kicking around for a while. The only thing I've done is rework the color a bit, but the detail and overall image are "as taken". Lemme know what you think.

Dissolving

Added warmth

I saw these awesome clouds and I waited for the sun to light them up beautifully, but it never happened. Soooooo, I decided that a little post processing was in order. I'm sure this is what it was supposed to look like anyway.