McLaren 12C @ Club Sportiva

The photo on top is edited with just Snapseed. The one below is Snapseed and Tadaa. I used the tilt shift feature in tadaa and also used their masks to mask some of the tilt shift off of the car. It was my first time using the mask, and it was pretty easy with the edge detection. It’s not perfect, but good enough to get the desired effect for this image.

My first friday night back here involved free drinks and appetizers surrounded by exotic cars and people with too much money. It was a grand opening for a new Club Sportiva location. They rent exotic cars, like this McLaren, to people that would rather pay a fraction of the $240,000 price tag to drive it. They even do drives together along the Big Sur coast. Must be nice!

One thing I didn’t understand was how they could afford the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Viper, Porsche, Shelby, and so on, but the models they hired weren’t very attractive. Honestly, there really wasn’t any reason to have models there. This crowd was there for the cars and booze.

Soda Lake

I went out on an adventure to the eastern part of the county a couple of days ago. I’ve never been out that way before, so I didn’t know what to expect. First, we drove to a wildflower hotspot in Santa Margarita where there was no trace of any wildflowers being there this year. I know the peak was a month or two ago, but I thought there might at least be a few flowers and some grass. Not this time. It was all brown. All I found was a couple of tiny flowers in a dry creek bed.

After that disappointing find, we headed to Soda Lake. Before we left, I googled the lake and saw some cool pictures. When we pulled up, we were greeted by a massive salt crust in the shape of a lake. It was cool, but not what I had envisioned. The white lake bed was so bright that the camera’s sensor couldn’t handle the dynamic range of the scene. The sky ended up being very dark.

We walked out on the dried up lake because we drove all that way. Some of it was powdery and some was crunchy. I felt like I was walking on the moon. If you stood still, you sank into the ground another inch or two. It was a funny feeling.

I got some cool shots with my Nikon too. Hopefully, I’ll find some time to share those soon. I was able to capture one of the white dust devils (twisters) out on the lake.

This image was shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. I included the before image below so you can see what I started with. I had to brighten it up and straighten the horizon. I chose to use the tilt shift filter on this one to bring the focus more to the dead bush in the foreground.

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.

 

Mini Challenge Gallery Is Up

The gallery is up for your viewing pleasure. I was hoping for a larger turnout, but I think we caught you guys at a busy time (I know Shannon and I both procrastinated, or were very busy.) And maybe others were a little intimidated by the number of shots. Those of you that did participate seemed to enjoy it and get something out of it, which makes me feel great.
I’d love to hear any and all feedback about this challenge so the future challenges can be even more successful. Was this one intimidating? Did you not have time to shoot? Did you forget?

Without further ado, here is the gallery.

Ashland Creek T/S

I’ve found a couple of ways to keep cool this summer. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the library reading magazines. You can never get enough helpful tips from those photo mags, even if you’re advanced. It also seemed like a good idea to read some Southern Oregon magazines to see if they mention any places I should photograph.

As you may have guessed from today’s photo, I also got my feet wet in the creek. The water is quite chilly, but there are no complaints on a really hot day. I shot this spot with my D7000 first and then I remembered I should get a shot for this blog. When I went back in the creek with my iphone, I slipped and nearly fell on a bunch of rocks, but my awesome balance saved me. The things I do for the shot.

I shot this with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. I felt like it had been a while since I’d done a tilt shift, and the effect was perfect for giving the image a focal point.

Free App: Fotor – Camerabag

Fotor – Camerabag is free right now. They call themselves the best all-in-one camera and photo editing app. Its definitely not the best camera because of a few features that are missing, but there are so many tools in this app that its worth a look. I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes playing with this, so I can’t tell you a whole lot about it, but it looks pretty decent.

A few features that stand out:

• HDR camera that merges under and overexposed photos.
• Frames
• Filters with opacity sliders
• More than just the basic editing tools, including 1-tap enhancing.
• Collage
• Tilt Shift (big aperture)
• Color Splash

 

Rural Road (tilt shift)

This is the road leading to Emigrant Lake by Ashland, Oregon. Its been sitting on my phone for a while because I felt like there was some way that I could edit it to make it more interesting, but I couldn’t figure out how. Then I kept taking better pictures that deserved to be worked on first. I finally got around to working on it yesterday and I think it came out better than I expected. I think the tilt shift saved this one because the scene was lacking focus before the effect was applied.

I recommend clicking to see it larger.

Created with ProHDr, edited with SimplyHDR and Snapseed.

Tadaa

I’m sure you’ve heard about Instagram selling out to Facebook for a billion dollars. I was never into Instagram, but now that FB owns it, I definitely won’t be using it. There are alternatives out there, one of them being Tadaa.

I just read about this app on ashcroft54′s blog. I won’t go through the trouble of making a walkthrough because Tina already did a good job. You can go read it here.

There are a few things to love about this free app.

• The clarity slider is very similar to the clarity filter in camera+
• The tilt shift generator is pretty good
• All of the filters have an opacity slider
• Some of the filters are actually really good
• The most appealing thing to me is your copyright is respected and you retain control of your images.

I’d say its worth checking out. Most free apps don’t have this many good features.

If you want to follow me, my username is iphonephotog. I’d be happy to follow you back.

http://www.tadaa.net/en/en

Tilt Shift Ducks

 

Heres a tilt shift from Oso Flaco Lake last night while I was watching the sunset. I thought the tilt shift would work because the ducks were providing an interesting foreground element. You have to click on this one to do it justice.

Camera+ to take the photo and Snapseed used for the edit and tilt shift. I cropped it quite a bit for a more pleasing composition.

Touristas

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.

 

Ashland Creek (tilt shift)

Well, I’m pleased with how the job interview went this morning. It included having to go introduce myself to 3 strangers before the interview even started and then tell the interviewers about them. There was also a little singing and dancing (not too unheard of for a preschool job, but I still feel silly doing that when I’m all dressed up.)

I’m also happy to say that I was able to pick up another power cord for my imac and it was just $6! I would have suffered through the rest of the week without it, but my friend needed some help editing real estate photos today.

Today’s image of Ashland Creek was taken with camera+, touched up and given the tilt shift look in Snapseed, and edited just a bit more in PhotoToaster to get the colors looking more natural. It was a little under 40 degrees when I was out shooting in Lithia Park, but there were quite a few locals in shorts….or less. One guy was wearing nothing but shorts.