Settling In

I shot this out in Shell Beach a few days before the move. I was trying to get in as much beach time as possible before I found myself stuck in the city again. I actually got too much sun at the beach on friday and ended up with a nice sunburn on my back. Just what you want when you’re going to be moving the next day.

So far, the hardest part about being in Santa Clara is the painfully slow internet at my grandma’s house. It definitely has to be upgraded if I’m going to keep my sanity. The second hardest part is living with someone who is losing their memory. She keeps telling people I’m only here for a few days (I’m not) and each morning she gets startled when I join her in the kitchen because she forgets I’m here.

Another thing I’m not loving is all of the people and the pace of life. I’m definitely a small town guy that appreciates nature and open spaces after 9 years of living in small towns. I’m having a bit of culture shock again, just like I did when I first left the city. Fun stuff…

Bye Bye Beach

Last night I went for a nice walk on the beach with a new friend. She wanted to hang out because it looks like I’ll be moving next week. I thought a walk on the beach would be nice because I won’t be able to visit as often as I do now.

I was asked to move in with my grandma in the bay area because her health is declining. I never wanted to move back there, but never say never, I guess. She has dementia or possibly Alzheimer’s. Nobody wants to give a diagnosis for some reason. The doctor did say she shouldn’t be living alone, so I’m going to suck it up so she can still live at home.

I don’t know how this will affect my photography. It’s probably going to be harder to find the landscapes I love. In the meantime, I’ll be doing some real estate photography for work, as well as the usual portraiture, weddings, and anything you can think of. If you know anyone around the Santa Clara/San Jose area that needs photos, spread the word that I’m available

Shot with TrueHDR. Edited wtih Snapseed.

Stop?

I went to on of the more hidden beaches around here recently. I’ve been here a few times before, but never remember seeing this stop sign in the surf. There’s a whole section of beach closed for some dang birds, the snowy plover. There were ropes and other trespassing signs, but this stop sign seemed out of place.

Shot with camera+. Edited with XnSketch.

Tangled Sunset

I finally was able to catch a sunset at the beach last night. We’re getting our June gloom foggy weather already, which means sunsets are usually ruined. Lucky for me, last night the fog stayed off the coast just far enough.

This particular sunset wasn’t anything too amazing. I felt like I should use a few apps to make it look more beautiful in my eyes. First, I shot with TrueHDR. If you’re new to my blog, I use TrueHDR a lot because often times it makes for a  more realistic image by combining two exposures. Next, I used Snapseed to brighten a little, add contrast, and bump up the saturation slightly. Then, I used TangledFX for the painterly/fibrous look. Finally, I used Snapseed again because I felt like the image needed more contrast and saturation.

Santa Monica Pier

After playing in the desert again recently, we escaped the heat and headed to the coast. It was overcast and a little chilly in Santa Monica, which makes for dull photos. I tried to spice this one up with a number of apps, but it still doesn’t pop too much.

Shot with camera+. Edited with Snapseed at first to add saturation,contrast, and to crop. Then TouchRetouch was used to remove a distracting element. Aquarella was used for the conversion to a painterly image. Snapseed was used again to add more contrast and saturation.

Secret Arch

In a funny coincidence, I have a photo featured on photobotos today. The one featured was actually shot up on top of the rock in this photo here.

This cave/arch thing is just a short drive from where I live. I didn’t even know about it until I saw another photographer post a photo of it recently. All I had to do was walk down a mountain of stairs to get to it. Maybe thats why I didn’t find it sooner.

The great thing about this beach is its at a hotel, so the crowds don’t know about it. I had the beach to myself most of the time until a couple came down to watch the sunset. I’m happy to have found another secret beach that the tourists don’t know about

This time out, I was mostly just scouting the location and observing the light at sunset. I don’t think the sun will ever rise or set through the arch, which is too bad. I’m still trying to figure out what time of day will give me the best lighting. I guess I’ll just have to do sunrise, sunset, and stormy. My guess is storm clouds will make the best scene.

Shot with ProHDR because TrueHDR was making the sky grey. Edited with Snapseed.

Ducks at the beach

I went for a lovely horseback ride on the beach and through some dunes last weekend. While we were cruising along the beach, having our picture taken by lots of random tourists, we saw about a dozen ducks playing in the waves. I’ve lived near the ocean for almost 8 years now and I’ve never seen ducks at the beach before.

Not only were they at the beach, but they appeared to be on dates. They were all paired up male-female like the two pictured above. It was pretty funny watching one duck follow the other around.

Taking photos from a moving horse is really hard, but I was happy enough with this one.

Shot with the default camera app and edited with Snapseed.

 

Rise and Shoot

This was shot the same morning of my recent sunrise photo that I posted from my Nikon. I can’t quite figure out what that little cloud is. Maybe a hornet? I though it made the scene a little more interesting, along with the colors.

I hope you’re enjoying this photo from the comfort of your desk as you sip your coffee today. Good morning!

Pismo Sunrise & Nik Announcement

This is a sunrise I shot last week with my Nikon. It seemed uneventful and I wasn’t too excited about the location. The beach gets old when you live by it! Luckily, the colors turned out really nice and brought the photo to life.

When editing my Nikon shots in Photoshop, I like to use Nik Software’s plugins (along with other plugins.) The reason I bring this up today is it was just announced that the entire collection has dropped in price from $499 to $149. That seems like a steal and probably wouldn’t have happened had Google not bought Nik. There’s a free trial if you don’t already have the collection.

If you’re worried that these plugins might be too complicated, there are lots of training videos on their website to help you out.

Tangled Clouds

The clouds were pretty interesting the other evening. Just for a few moments, the light and the colors of the scene were awesome. I was lucky enough to be there to witness it. Stupid me didn’t wait around for the sunset though. I drove to another part of the coast, chasing a cloud that I was hoping would make for a great shot at sunset. Unfortunately, it evaporated before the sun went down and I was left in the middle of agriculture fields with nothing too exciting going on.

This was shot with TrueHDR. Edited with Snapseed, Tangled FX, and ImageBlender. I liked the Tangled FX version, but wanted to dial it back a bit by using ImageBlender to reduce the opacity of the effect to about 70% just to bring back a hint of realism.

All Smiles

Our campsite at Limekiln was maybe 250 feet from the ocean. The night we checked in, we had hoped to do some night photography on the little beach there. That idea was quickly squashed by a group of drunks with flashlights that wanted to know what we were doing. Drunks + Flashlights + Long Exposures = Ruined photos. Now that I think about it, we were probably the only sober people in the camp. If you ever go to Big Sur, be prepared to cross paths with foreigners and weirdos.

The next morning, I think we all spent a little alone time on this peaceful beach. My friend pointed out that there was a face in the rocks so I had to go back to camp and grab my gear for a few photos. When some large waves crashed against the rocks, the ocean spray looked like smoke being blown out of the mouth. It was pretty cool, but it only happened a few times before I got my camera.

From this spot, the stream is flowing into the ocean from the bottom left corner. There were lots of cool rocks of various colors. They probably don’t show up too well in this iphone shot, however.

Shot with camera+ and a simple edit with Snapseed. There wasn’t much to do with this one.

App Review: Aquarella

Aquarella is yet another interesting app by JixiPix. They’ve made other apps that I recommend, such as Dramatic BW, SimplyHDR, and PhotoArtista Oil. There’s a lot to like about Aquarella, and a couple of things that bug me. Let’s take a look at their familiar user interface. (You can click on the images to see them larger.)

   

    

Just like in their other apps, JixiPix provides the user with a lot of presets. The 32 Aquarella Presets will apply a watercolor effect while keeping the colors roughly the same. The 28 TwoTone presets will change the image into a watercolor using two tones instead of all that are present in the original. When working on a two tone image, there is a tone panel where you can choose the two tones you want to use.

   

If you want to make your own adjustments, or fine tune a preset, tap on the adjust button on the bottom to bring up this panel. The color panel is where a lot of the heavy lifting is done. By adjusting the details, you can get a image with a subtle painterly effect to an image that looks like a rough watercolor. The color detail slider affects how much overall detail is in the image by adding or subtracting the range of colors. The enhancing colors slider adjusts the saturation. Wet Edge Strength adjusts the thickness of the line between colors. Wet Edge Detail also affects the amount of detail in the image. To me it acts like the clarity slider in photoshop or lightroom.

Texture is the paper style that image is painted on. It varies from subtle to a very noticeable canvas.

    

The wash and Bloom panels both make the image appear more like a watercolor. Think of the Wash as overlaying color on your image. It will change the color in your image slightly, or quite a bit, depending on what the Color Strength and Color Shift are set to. There are an incredible 63 choices in the wash panel.

The bloom is basically adding a texture to the image that makes it look like a watercolor. Some of the bloom overlays have drips or splatters to make it look like someone actually painted it. You can adjust the opacity of the bloom by adjusting the Bloom Strength. If you switch from normal to reverse, it basically inverts the white to black and black to white, giving you even more variety to the 41 textures to choose from.

The Share panel has a number of features to note. First, in the settings panel, you can choose to save your images as low, medium, or high. I always choose high. You can also save your settings as a preset and name it so you can use the same settings in the future. There are buttons to share directly to facebook, twitter, and tumblr. The app will render the image for those mediums, which takes some time.

Gripes

Not everything was perfect with this app for me. The loading and saving were very slow. They do admit that the app is optimized for the iPhone 5, so thats probably my issue. I’m using an iPhone4, so I’m sure its faster on the newer models. I tested the loading speed multiple times, with the slowest being 37 seconds before it even began to render the image for the first time. The fastest loading time for me was 20 seconds. It seems like 27 seconds is about the average time. In an age of instant gratification, this is a lifetime haha. The save times were much worse. The first few times I saved an image I thought it was taking way too long, so I decided to time it. After a number of tests, 2 minutes seems to be the average time it takes to save a hi-res image.

Examples

These are examples that I created. The last one is an example of a two tone preset.

    

Conclusion

The results are great for an easy to use app. Its fun to play with and theres a lot of room for customization. The wash and bloom overlays are where you’ll be able to really make your photo look like a watercolor. This is an app that can save your photos that might be a little out of focus by turning them into a lovely painting. If you enjoy turning your photos into paintings, Aquarella is an excellent app to pick up.

Rating   5/5 I can forgive the sluggishness because my phone is considered somewhat old now.

Price   2.99 for the iPhone and iPad. Currently 7.99 for the Mac.

Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

***Full disclosure, I did not pay for this app, I asked for a promo code so I could review it. I’m not being offered any compensation for this review. ***

Golden Sunrise

Another shot from the D7000. I’m just throwing this up quickly so I have something to share today. I have “homework” to do. Best Buy wants me to write some tips for their mobile blog for taking better photos with your iPhone and I want to finish this app review for Aquarella today.

Rise and Shine

I woke up before sunrise again today, but my warm bed won over going out for photos. Good thing too because its really foggy this morning.

I should have time to give Aquarella a proper review this week, so stay on the look out for that.

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed.

Before the Dawn

Last night I thought about getting up early for sunrise. I guess that thought was enough for my internal alarm clock to set itself for 5am. Since I tend to wake in pain these days, I figured I’d get up instead of laying there uncomfortably.

This was shot with my Nikon D7000. I did take some with the iPhone4, I just haven’t got around to editing them because I was more excited about the cool shots I got with the DSLR.