Enjoying the Setting Sun
A bit of daydreaming while riding a bicycle as the sun gets low in the horizon. I love the lighting in this.
Palace of Fine Arts at Night
A fog-free night in San Francisco combined with driving by the Palace of Fine Arts with a camera in the car means you must stop to get a few images. The buildings are lit dramatically with sodium lights. This makes difficult color set to capture and reveal the detail in color, so I opted for black & white here. We were in the late hour of twilight so the sky had a nice gradient left to it.
Duck Creek at Sunset
Other than the stifling humidity, it is great to go feet from the house and have tons of vegetation, creeks, and fun things for the kids to do. I wasn’t able to get out to see a sunset in the fields, but the creek did very nicely. I love how the water caught the light.
Dramatic Flamingo
Yes, this is a real flamingo. It is probably the most dramatic flamingo image, as it steps from the shadows. Very little post processing was done to this other than trying to sharpen it just a tad since there is the slightest bit of motion blur. I love the lighting here!
Day of the Living Goofball
I love dark, gritty images, so lets go dark again and keep up the variety. I’ll opt-out of telling the story behind this one to let your imagination kick in.
No Extensions, No Problem
Encouraged by Tracy and Michaela discussing lens extensions, I thought I’d give it a go. Only, I don’t have any, and I don’t have a macro lens. To top things off, I want to experiment with light leaks. So why not make the best of the situation? Reverse lens macro on the 135mm lens, hand-held, about 3/4″ away from the body. Perfect!
This is a white clover flower. You know, the little white flowers in the grass at the park. For this shot I laid down in the grass on my stomach and used the ground to place my elbows on while holding the lens and the camera body. I love the light leak colors from this technique. The challenges here are the razor thin DOF and the moving parts — The lens, the flower, the body. Sharp focus is something I haven’t quite mastered yet, but this one is pretty good.
Morning at the Ferry Building, San Francisco
This morning when the Ferry Building in San Francisco opened, I managed to get to the second floor to get some shots of the wonderful architecture. Supposedly there is a rule against using tripods there. The guards would walk from far away to politely ask me to stop. The first said I could use my tripod on the second floor which I did until the second floor guard asked me to stop as well. I originally wanted to do some HDR shots, but instead I opted for this single exposure. I love the colors here.
I warmed this up slightly and gave a small bump in saturation and some slight manual vignetting.
#ds151 – Every town, village, or city has distinguishing icons and landmarks. Make a photo of one wherever you are today.
Lone Tree, Morgan Hill
Today I’m taking things in a completely different direction. It’s all about experimenting for me in this shot. I’m going for a sense of old, a sense of dark, and a bit scary. Almost like a zombie silhouette will appear over the hill. I really like the steep angle, the white fence and the low clouds in this shot. I’m also a fan of trying to make some eerie images, even if I’m the only one that appreciates them. 
(see my parking garage set. Another experiment with the dark side)
I’m curious what works and what doesn’t on this shot. Let me know.
Zoe
This evening while taking the kids to the park, a neighbor was playing catch with Zoe, a very energetic and well-behaved pup. The photo opportunity gave me more of a chance to practice shots with the evening light and fulfill yesterday’s Daily Shoot assignment of speed. I love that the evenings now come complete with sun.
Evening Light
This shot was taken while visiting friends in the San Bernadino Mountains at Big Bear. The sun was setting casting a wonderful light on the dining room table.
An SJC Morning
Friday morning I had a bit of time to kill in the new terminal at San Jose International Airport. The architectural details are interesting, and the light coming in from the skylights made for this interesting shot with a bit of a skewed perspective for added interest. This is also Daily Shoot Assignment 118 – Curves, squiggles, and flowing lines interest the eye. Make a photograph dominated by a curvy shape of some sort today.
Waiting to Fly
Disconnect
Takeoff
Queried Creativity
While doing some data-mining this evening at work, I thought I would try to complete some of my lagging Daily Shoot assignments. The time during query execution is only so entertaining so why not fill it with something more fun. I don’t own a fancy flash, so the only lighting help I can get is from the sun, room lighting or my trusty pop-up flash. This evening I thought I would try to make my pop-up flash shots look good instead of washed out.
Precarious Pushpin – this shot was taken with a 8×11 piece of paper held just at the end of the lens to diffuse the flash. Overall the results of this look decent to me. The pin is slightly pushed into a plastic bottle cap.
#ds94 – Fragility conveys tension. Make a photo today of a person or object in a fragile state.
Girl Scout Cookies – No fancy title for this one but it did have a cumbersome lighting setup. Well, it was more like a few sheets of paper setup on the sides of the cookies. I had one piece of paper on the right and left sides of the cookies angled at about a 45 degrees from the flash to bounce light towards the cookies. I had a third piece of paper that I held at a very steep angle, maybe 20 degrees off of parallel with the lens towards the paper on the right. This allowed the majority of the light to come from the paper on the right, while still providing some fill light from the front and a bit from the left. Not bad for a pop-up flash and no studio if I do say so myself. I consider this my “experimentation” for this DS assignment.
#ds107 – Find out what those buttons and dials on your camera do. Play today! Try a new setting and make a photo. (via @dibytes)
Warm Morning Light
Today the light shining through the window blinds cast a perfect striped pattern on the lamp shade for the Daily Shoot assignment. I think this is made more interesting by the horizontal blind pattern and perceived inversion of the shadow pattern on the blinds.
#ds109 – Striped patterns have a natural pattern that catches the eye. Find some stripes today and make a photo.
Corking a Corona – Daily Shoot 81
I thought about this assignment for two days. Finally, I thought using the rabbit corkscrew and a corona would fit the bill perfectly. The only change I think I would make to this is to have the corona label less-than dead-center.
#ds81 – Contrasting ideas engage the mind. Make a photo today that tells a story with contrasting elements. (via @dibytes)
Rusted Bolt in Old Mossy Fence
This HDR image is composed of 3 exposures. My goal here was to keep it very natural looking. There are slight bumps in saturation to bring out the grass, which is actually very green on-site. I’m very pleased with the results. The amount of detail in the wood and the growth on the fence is very sharp. This was taken at the same location as my previous photo, Old Barn, off of Casa Loma Rd. near Morgan Hill. Click through to see the detail on SmugMug.
Cars, Bridge, Camera and Purple Haze – Daily Shoot 65,66,68,70
A wide range of shot types today. I fell behind last week on my Daily Shoot assignments so I spent some time this weekend to catch up.
Foot Bridge Over Freeway at Night (ds70 - Sunday challenge: Experiment with shutter speed today by making a photo with a long exposure.)
Camera Self Portrait - Canon DS50 (ds66 - Make your camera the star of the show today. Use another camera or mirror to put your camera in a photo of its own.)
Coming and Going on Highway 101 (ds65 - Make an interesting photo of a mode of transportation today: car, plane, bicycle, subway, or whatever you like!)
Purple Haze (ds68 - Let's have some fun on a Friday. Make a photo that goes with the title (or lyrics) of a song. Interpret away!)
Sun Behind Pigeon Point Lighthouse
From the same photo-walk as Sunrise Captured by Fog and Tree we stopped off at Pigeon Point Lighthouse since that is someplace every photographer must visit once. This is an HDR image composed of three shots (+2, 0, -2). I did some split-tone tweaking on this one to give it a bit of an aged look.
I like the detail in the glass at the top of the tower. The photographer in the bottom right of this shot is my friend Jonathon Jenkins.
Sunrise Captured by Fog and Tree
In Woodside, CA on a photo-walk with some friends, we caught a great sunrise that was enhanced by some trees and fog. I wanted to try my hand at a few different HDR shots and this one seemed to fit nicely. I have been working on-and-off with this image for awhile , trying to find the right balance the 6 images used and the Lightroom recipe to get it how I liked it. Tricky areas on this shot were in the tree branches and the grass.
I really like the color range in this shot which is pretty natural. Other than a slight bump in saturation and a tiny nudge in temperature, there isn’t anything fancy going on here. There is quite a bit of detail on this image and it is worth looking at larger.
Since HDR is still quite new to me, (not to mention trying to be more serious about Photography in general) I’d love to hear how this shot could be improved further.
Dumbarton Bridge Reflection – Daily Shoot 61
Today I made another stop at the Dumbarton Bridge on the way home. I wanted to catch a shot of the bridge’s highrise section with the cars on it for the Daily Shoot “Converging Lines” assignment. I really liked the reflection that the small rain-created pond gives. Unfortunately two things are wrong with this shot. The first is I forgot to check my ISO, so this was done at 400 when it wasn’t required. Secondly, the construction vehicles in front of the bridge are less-than-ideal. I couldn’t see them until after the exposure was done since it was dark.
#DS61: “Converging lines direct the viewer’s eye. Sometimes found in railroad tracks, highways, and buildings. Make your photo!”
Sunrise at Almaden Lake
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This morning I caught the sunrise at Almaden Lake in San Jose. It was great to be there as the birds were waking up, the light was changing and the world came to life. This was good practice in dealing with quickly changing lighting conditions and fast-motion photography. To top it off, Mt. Umunhum and Mt. Loma Prieta made for a great backdrop to the flying geese. Here are some highlights. The rest can be found here.
A Happy Light Source – Daily Shoot 52
For today’s Daily Shoot assignment, photographing a light source, I decided to play with light. I made this on f/14 and bulb exposure. Since the camera was closed down enough, I could open the shutter, leisurely walk in front, then make the character you see above. I like that the background got picked up in the long exposure. It took a few attempts to get the right shape and features.
Parking Garage – Exploring Dark
This parking garage is in San Jose. I wanted to explore doing some dark images. These remind me of some nightmares I had as a kid.
Daily Shoot #33: Flame
#DS33: “Set your weekend on fire by making a photo of a flame today: candle, match, fireplace, or your own interpretation!”
This was much harder than I was expecting. I think I went through a couple hundred shots experimenting with framing of fire in my fireplace, to long-exposure flames, to what I finally settled on, high ISO (3200), high speed 1/640 and closed up (f18) aperture. I like the resulting color depth. I still feel I need quite a bit of practice to get it just-right.
Lamp & Vines
I really like how this one turned out. This was taken in downtown Willow Glen, in San Jose, CA.
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