We just don’t colors like this where I live, so to me the color of this leaf is impressive. Our maple trees turn sort of yellow-brown, then the leaves fall off. At higher elevations, like Yosemite where this was taken, it gets much colder much faster so the colors get more vibrant. I can’t image what the Fall colors must look like in New England.
When it’s 82 degrees F, it’s hard to imagine it’s really Fall.
Well, Fall may have come but it seems Summer is trying to hang on a little longer. Today was beautiful - clear, sunny and warm. It could not have been a more perfect day in mid October. With the recent rains grasses have started growing, so in addition to the changing color we have new growth. That refreshing after a long, dry summer. The leaves on the trees are still turning and dropping, but this week will be warm so I expect Fall will drag out a little longer. We have yet to get our first frost, but the nights are getting downright cold.
This is one of two ash trees in my backyard. They both have a range of color from green to red, but are mostly red. In a couple of weeks the leaves will probably be gone, especially if we get a frost.
Until, I’m going to enjoy the warm weather. This shot is part of the Fall Series.
Big Leaf Maple turning colors. Taken in Yosemite, October 2007
Yosemite isn’t really known for its Fall colors, but I thought they added some contrast to the landscapes. Yosemite has a lot of conifers that don’t change colors, but there are enough Black Oaks, Maples and Pacific Dogwood’s to mix in a splash of yellow and red. The colors make up for the lack of water at this time of year. The meadows with Black Oaks are really beautiful.
Another thing that makes up for the lack of water is the bears. We saw bears in broad daylight foraging for food to fatten up for the winter. Fortunately they are pretty tame and if you don’t bother them, they don’t bother you. But it’s good to keep your distance. I tried to get a picture, but wasn’t fast enough.
Vineyard photos in Sonoma County, California are a little cliché, but they do make for great landscapes. I took this yesterday at lunch. A storm was heading in, creating some dramatic cloudscapes. I used a graduated filter to help bring out the clouds and keep the vineyard visible. I did some tweaking in Lightroom to add more contrast to the clouds and bring out the blue in the sky. Lightroom makes it very easy to adjust colors and contrast in subtle ways. The flexibility of that program is astounding. When my trial runs out I’m going to be sad. Hopefully in the next few months I can buy it.
The sun was just out of the frame, at the top of the picture, making the exposure a little tricky. I used manual exposure and according to the meter, overexposed the shot. I think it worked better because you can still see some detail in the vineyard and the sky is not blown out. Since I started this blog, I learned to read the light of a given shot much better than I used to. I know when the meter isn’t getting the exposure I want. I’ve taken many shots that if I had used Program mode would not have come out the way I wanted. If the light is even the meter is right on, but sometimes you have make adjustments based on what you see. I do need to experiment more with metering modes in my camera to see how the different modes impact a picture. Some test shots may be in order.
This photo is part of the Fall Series I started this week. I specifically drove to this vineyard to take some photos of the vines changing colors. The clouds ended up being the focal point of my images because they looked so amazing. This photo is on Zooomr with a geotag if you want to see the location and EXIF information. Here’s another shot I took yesterday:
I copied the settings from the main shot and applied them to this image as well. I also used the “Heal” tool to remove a bird from this photo. It looked like a black speck in the sky. I don’t normally retouch images in that way, but this bird just bugged me, so I had to remove it.
Also, I won’t be posting anything for a few days. This weekend is a busy one for my family, and with all the activities and commitments, I know I won’t have time to blog anything. I’ll still take some pictures, but won’t have time until early next week to post anything to the blog, or even to Zooomr.
The first real rain of the season came last night, the days are getting short, and the leaves are changing, so I guess I can say Fall has come. Northern California doesn’t get the dramatic colors like other parts of the country during the Fall, but there are enough non-native trees and plants to give some bright colors. I’ve been thinking of doing a series of photos on a particular subject, and decided today to do a Fall Series. It’s not the most original idea, but it gives me something to focus on.
I’ve struggled lately with finding good subjects and thought a series would help inspire me. I’ve been running through ideas, but nothing has really jumped out at me. Fall colors don’t last long, which means my first series will have a definite end, and soon. It will sort of force me outside to take pictures, and force me to try to be a little creative with the limited subject matter.
This wall is on a street I don’t normally drive on, but construction forced me onto side streets. The colors and textures jumped out at me so I stopped and took a bunch pictures. Most days I have to struggle to find a good picture to post, but today I took several that I liked for various reasons. The vines growing on the wall had such a variety of colors and were growing in such cool patterns that I couldn’t pass it by. In a couple of days it will look different. This series will be a little challenging because I will pretty much have to take pictures as I see things. If I try to come back the colors may look very different, even the next day as temperatures drop.
Here are the others I posted on Zooomr:
Another quick shot taken along the Petaluma River in downtown Petaluma.
Shooting Date: 9/8/2007 12:09:33
Shutter Speed: 1/60Sec.
Aperture Value: F5.6
ISO Speed: 100
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 28.0 mm
On our day trip to San Francisco last weekend, my wife had to take me by the dahlias outside the Conservatory of Flowers. I’m glad she did. I’m so bad with flower names I probably couldn’t have identified a dahlia myself, so didn’t really know what to expect until we got there. I had no idea dahlias came in so many sizes, shapes, and colors. My wife is a florist, so I’m a little ashamed to admit me floral ignorance. But I do like to take pictures of flowers, and this was an excellent opportunity. I geotagged the image on Zooomr so you can find out how to get there, but if you want to see them you’d better go soon. The flowers were a few days past their prime (according to my wife) so won’t be as spectacular much longer.
We went there late in the day, around 6:00 pm, so were able to park right next to the flowers. There were several other people taking photos of the dahlias, including a few people with the exact same camera I have, the Canon 30D. I’m still getting used to the controls on the camera, so I was slowed down a little. I still managed to take a couple of dozens photos in a few minutes. There are so many varieties and great shots, it wasn’t hard to take a lot of pictures. I wish I had thought to write down the flower names as I shot, or at least took shots of the little plaques with names. I’m going to need to get a notebook to start writing things down. The JPG records EXIF data, but usually there’s more going on in a shot than what EXIF records.
I used my 70-300mm IS lens to get the shots. The light was starting to fade, so even with the image stabilization a couple of shots were blurry.
Here are two other shots, the second one is the same variety as the main image:
As summer warms up, manzanita bushes in Northern California start shedding their bark. Having grown up in the middle of these bushes, I pretty much ignored what was right in front of me until I started taking pictures and the ordinary became extraordinary through the lens. Last week as I drove up my in-laws driveway I noticed the bark peeling off the bushes and thought “How cool”. Something I grew up with became the focus of my shooting. For this shot, I converted to Black and White in Picasa and adjusted the brightness and contrast quite a bit. It’s hosted on Zooomr. Most of the year the bark is a deep red color, almost burgandy. In the summer it peels off to expose fresh green bark. I have an alternate shot that shows the colors.
As I wrote this post I started remembering scenes from my childhood. I clearly remember peeling the bark of the bushes during the summer and trying to see how big of a piece I could get. I spent many hours every day in the summertime amongst the manzanita bushes on our property. They made excellent forts. At my grandparents house in the Sierra Nevada foothills the manzanita bushes were much bigger and provided a canopy for taking walks in the summer. More on Manzanita bushes can be found on Wikipedia.
Indian Springs Resort in Calistoga, CA has easily a hundred palm trees on the grounds. Most of them are young, but quite a few have been there for decades and tower above you in the sky. The sky in Calistoga is also the perfect shade of blue, and on this day had fascinating clouds in the upper atmosphere that kept changing. I spent a little time walking around in the 90+ degree heat taking photos. The palm trees drew me in the second I saw them against the sky. The clouds happened to form the perfect background for the trees.
Even though the color of the sky was perfect, I liked the shot better in black and white. Here’s the color version.
Both are on Zooomr with Geotags.
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