Limekiln Log

To answer your question, yes, the water was that blue.

This is one from my trip with Shannon to Big Sur, CA. We camped at Limekiln State Park, where this was shot. Early on, there is a fork in the trail. To the left is the waterfall and limekiln. This is off to the right. I hadn’t gone that way before, so this was a wonderful find.

I took the easy way out on this shot, but it still came out great. Instead of hopping across some rocks and onto a log like Shannon, I stuck my tripod in the creek from the bank and used the LCD to set up the shot.

In other news, I was recently asked by Topaz Labs to share some photos for their online gallery and be a guest blogger, so I think I’ll be sharing how I edited this lovely shot with their plugins.

More Wildflowers

Today I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to edit this photo of wildflowers. I played with Snapseed to add saturation and contrast. I tried aquarella and autopainter. In the end, I couldn’t decide between the Snapseed edit above or the autopainter styles below.

Which do you prefer?

Building Reflections

This was shot out in Sacramento a couple of months ago. We stopped in Old Sac, for a break, on our way from Oregon to the central coast. There’s a high concentration of candy shops within a few blocks of each other. That’s mainly what I remember. That and the cool architecture of the old, haunted buildings.

I don’t really remember the apps used. I think it was TrueHDR for the camera. I’m not sure if I edited with another app.

Tranquil Sunset

May this photo bring you some peace today

Wildflowers on Figueroa Mountain

I took my first trip up to Figueroa Mountain this week. I’d never been before, so I invited my friend/student to come along for a spontaneous adventure. It’s a lot of fun shooting with someone else thats passionate about photography. Even though we are at different levels, she brings a great perspective and usually sees amazing things that I’m not aware of. I tend to see big, sweeping landscapes, while she sees the beautiful details.

You can’t tell from the photo, but these flowers are on a steep, rocky mountain. I tried to hike down to get some much better vantage points, but I only made it about 10 feet down before the ground slid out from under me and I sent a large rock tumbling down the hill. After seeing that thing tumble down the hill like Chris Farley in Black Sheep, I decided I’d better stay up on the road. Mostly for my camera’s sake.

On this particular day, the lighting was all over the place. It started out sort of overcast, which is good for flower photos, but it wasn’t dynamic enough for my taste. Then the sun poked out for a little bit while it was low on the horizon. That totally changed the scene and brought back some of the vibrant colors. Then, out of nowhere, some fog started to creep in quickly. It actually made for some interesting photos because it was golden fog.

These were taken with my iPhone, but I also posted a photo from my D7000 on my fb page and flickr.

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!

Redwoods

This is the kind of place I could hang out at for hours. Under some big trees. Next to some water. Away from civilization. With good company and my camera. I guess I’m just a simple man

This was a trail at limekiln state park that I hadn’t checked out before. There were a few awesome spots for photos along the creek. I’m sure I’ll be posting those sometime soon. I’ve edited an image from my Nikon, but I’m letting it sit for a while so I can look at it again with fresh eyes. I think I might want to start over from scratch and go over every pixel to make it perfect because it has a lot of potential.

This was shot with camera+ and edited with SimplyHDR.

Wind Turbines

When I look at this photo, I remember the crazy gusts of wind blowing through this valley. You can’t really tell just by looking at these turbines though. I should have had the girls that were with me posing as turbines too. Then you could see their hair blowing all over the place. This one was actually taken from the passenger seat of a moving car.

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. The drama filter made for a dramatic sky, once again.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns

Normally, when I go to Julia Pfeiffer Burns in Big Sur, I, like everyone else, hike the short trail to McWay Falls. This time, we had a little time, so we hiked the other direction and found this little waterfall on a hike through the woods.

It was a tricky spot with big, ugly logs just below the frame, and really harsh highlights from sun beams poking through the trees. I think we both made it work though.

I think if I wanted to make the image even better, I would use TouchRetouch to remove the twig from the bottom of the frame, but I don’t have time to go back and do that. I have tons of editing to do already!

Shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed. The drama filter did a great job of bringing detail back into this image.

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.

Another Article!

I was recently asked to contribute to another article on mobile photography. This time it was for smartertravel.com. The article can be found here. The other contributors were the people of Photojojo, Chuck DeLaney, the director of the New York Institute of Photography, and Kirsten Alana. Some excellent contributors to be sure.

Go check out the article for some tips on improving your travel photography with your mobile phone.

Painted Falls

I shot this out in Morgan Hill, California a few weeks back. I seem to have a lot of photos to edit on my phone and my mac. I got around to this one a week or two ago and gave it the painterly effect with AutoPainter. I couldn’t tell you which effect I used because my memory is bad.

I picked up AutoPainter recently when it was available for free. Unfortunately, its not free anymore. Oops, I should have mentioned it at the time.

I have all these apps that turn photos into paintings. Maybe I should take up painting already.

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.

Crater Lake

It was cold and the snow was deep. We didn’t bring any snow gear on this trip because we thought we were going to be on the coast the whole time. That didn’t stop us. I was knee deep in snow at some points.

The whole time I was looking at Wizard Island, I was thinking of my oreo truffles. I know you see it too.

Both images were shot with camera+ and edited with Snapseed.