The warm weather is bringing the tourists back 
. Pismo Beach was crawling with them.
I shot this from the pier with camera+. I added a tilt shift effect with Snapseed.
pismo
All posts tagged pismo
Lately I’ve seen my friends posting about how they’re getting snow, hail, and rain, so I thought I owed it to them to go out to the beach and watch the sunset last night. The tripod and I nearly got taken out by a wave when I first started shooting on the shore. Luckily I saw it out of the corner of my eye when I was looking at my phone. I was able to grab the tripod and jump back onto some rocks just in time.
The first two images were created with Slow Shutter, which allows you to do long exposures, and edited in Snapseed. You really need a tripod to get long exposures as sharp as possible. I do use a tripod, but I don’t have a case to mount it on their properly. I just hold my iPhone as still as I can against the tripod. I think I need to break down and get some real equipment for better results because they could be sharper.
The third image was created with ProHDr, edited with Snapseed for the drama and selective adjustments. Finally, I used Filterstorm to tonemap the water and apply a curves layer to the sky in an attempt to lighten it up a bit. I like Filterstorm, but it takes so long to save an image. This one took about 2 minutes.
I’m always mentally photographing everything as practice.
Minor White
This is great advice from Minor White. I tend to mentally photograph scenes or at least think about how I’d compose them and what time of day I might want to shoot. Its something you may consider trying out if you want to improve your photography.
I’d like to thank Maralee, Sarah and Dan for the well wishes yesterday. My fever is down from 102 to 100 so I’m doing slightly better today. Maybe later I’ll feel up to editing some pictures.
Today’s image was actually one of the first ones I took with Camera+ back in December or January. Its not uncommon for people to take their horses out on the beach for a stroll. I much prefer this sight to the trucks and ATV’s that people also ride out there.
Even as I look at this serene picture from last night’s sunset, I’m feeling STRESSED. I just got called for an interview for a teaching position in Oregon. Now I have a long list of things to get done before the weekend and the 10 hour drive ahead of me. So if I’m MIA for a few days its because I’m exhausted.
The good news is I went out shooting 3 times yesterday. The cool clouds from a passing storm motivated me to go out to a few different places. The show during the golden hour was surreal. It definitely made up for clouds blocking out the sun as it dipped below the horizon. I definitely have plenty of pictures to share over the next few days if I have the time.
This particular image was taken with ProHDR, edited with PhotoForge2, reduced the noise and added a subtle vignette in Filterstorm, and did some selective adjustments in Snapseed. I was tempted to use TouchRetouch to remove a couple things too, but my time is probably better spent taking care of things on my long to do list now.
Today my youngest brother took me out on the Oceano Dunes in his Chevy Blazer. Hes the kind of person that has a different car every few months. For now, he has a toy that he can go out on the dunes with. I’ve been out on atv’s before, but never in a truck. Neither one is really my thing. I’ve read too many articles about people passing away out there and I see too many helicopters airlift people outta there. Its not worth the risk in my opinion. But this time I wanted to go along just to take some pics.
This photo was taken with Camera+ and edited with Snapseed. There was a bit of a problem though because I wanted to bring out much more detail in the sand, but it was making the sky really grainy. ImageBlender saved the day again and helped me create a better image by masking in a cleaner version of the sky.
