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.

Free App: RainyDaze

RainyDaze is another cool app from JixiPix. Its free right now in the app store and could be fun to play with when you want a gloomy style for your photo. I’m definitely ready for summer to be over, so this app is right up my alley. Give me some cool storm clouds to shoot already.

This shot was taken during the daytime with a clear blue sky. RainyDaze added clouds and rain. I also used the app to remove the saturation because it wouldn’t look natural if the ground still looked like it was sunny out. I also added a slight vignette and a dark, purplish tone. I don’t know if I like the dreamy look to it. That was from the romantic strength slider. I’ll have to be more careful with that next time.

This scene already had the storm clouds in it, but no rain. RainyDaze took care of that.

Go check out RainyDaze while its free.

Stormy Road

 

Good news! I got published for the second month in a row in the SLO Coast Journal. Its a local online journal with a good amount of readers. Even cooler still is one of you also got published in the journal. Congrats Lace! Go check out her photos on Flickr (shes not a blogger yet.)

My photo that got published wasn’t even one of my top 3 shots for the month, but the editors sure liked it. You can see it over here on my other blog.

Weed, California

Did you know there was a town called Weed, CA? As you can imagine, it is popular with a certain demographic. There is a gift shop in town with all the I <3 Weed bumper stickers and t-shirts you could ever want. Funnily enough, there are also some outstanding prints of Mt. Shasta for sale. The guy says the photographer goes out onto private property to get the amazing shots. Sounds like something I might be tempted to do haha.

If you’d like to have a look at some of their merchandise you can go to weedstore.com (that address has to be worth a pretty penny!)

This image was shot at the rest stop right next to the airport in Weed. I believe I used Camera+ because the wind was blowing around 50mph or so, making an hdr with 2 exposures impossible. I had to run against the wind to move at the speed I normally walk. It was fun until the cold wind reached my bones.

More Rays

Here are a couple more images of the awesome light show I was treated to yesterday. These were taken at a rest stop near Willows, CA. I shot with ProHDR, used Snapseed to add drama (and a vintage style to the 1st one,) TouchRetouch to remove a telephone wire in the first one, and Filterstorm to reduce some noise and add tone mapping.

In The Middle of It

I was treated to the longest and most amazing display of light yesterday on my drive home. There were golden rays of light beaming through the storm clouds and painting bits of mountainside with light. It lasted for about 3 hours. I really couldn’t keep my eyes on the road, so I pulled over a few times to snap some pics.

This one is from when I stopped in Artois. I pulled over, walked over to the middle of the road and took a few pics, but wasn’t thrilled, so I got down and put my phone on the road to get a different perspective. Luckily no cars or trucks came by for the 5 minutes that I was in the middle of the road.

Although this one doesn’t showcase the amazing rays I was witnessing, it does show the dramatic sky. Also, its not good practice to put the horizon in the middle of the image, but I did it on purpose this time because I felt it was more interesting. I’ll try to post some more today that will do a better job of showcasing the light.

Shot with prohdr and edited in snapseed.