Month: February 2007

Winter Hydrangea

Winter HydrangeaWinter Hydrangea Hosted on Zooomr

We have several hydrangea bushes in our yard, most of which have been pruned, but not this one. Hydrangeas flower in bunches, so these few lonely petals are quite a contrast to how they look in full bloom. Sort of like the contrast of the blue sky and dead flowers. I don’t have a macro lense, so I stood back and zoomed in on the dried flower petals. The details of the petals got my attention. I took this from a low angle, so the sky would be in the background. I took several other shots of these flowers. They are on my Picasa web site.

This photo is a little dark. I did play with the fill light in Picasa a little to try to bring out the flower more. You can see some other shots in the album that have better exposure, but I like the composition of this one the best. January has been pretty cold and very dry in California, and this shot seemed to capture that for me.
The image is on zooomr.

White Rounder

White RounderWhite Rounder Hosted on Zooomr

A horizontal shot, finally. I actually took this a couple of days ago, but as I said last time, I’m playing a bit of catch up. I drove out to Tomales at lunch (which seems to be my favorite photo destination so far) to find something new to shoot. I found a barn that I’ve driven by a hundred times. I’ve noticed it before, but it never really attracted my attention. today the light coming through the fog was just right, or at least better than I recalled from the hundreds of other trips I’ve made past this barn. This is one of a few cool, old barns on this farm, which appears to be abandoned. I didn’t climb any fences on this day, but I would like to walk around the farm to get more shots. I like old farms, they alway seem like good subjects to shoot. I’d actually like to do a series of photos of old barns. There are many wonderful, old farm buildings in the area.
On this day the sun was at the right angle to illuminate the front of the barn, and give nice contrast. The broken fog in the sky was nice also. I did a little contrast adjustments in Picasa. I also published a few other shots I took this day to my Picasa web album. For this shot I used my polarizing filter, but in the web album there is a similar shot that didn’t have any filters. You can see the difference. The filter really helps.
My bandwidth on Zooomr seems to have reset, so I can upload there again. This shot is geotagged so you can see the location.

I also have to mention my photographic blunder. Today the Queen Mary 2 was coming into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge. My wife took the camera, which I said was set to auto. Well, I hadn’t set it to auto, so it was on manual and she trusted what I said. I wish I had a shot she took to post, but due to my misdirection, none of her shots turned out. Sorry honey.

Fence/Rock

Fence Rock

So, it’s hardly been a photo a day this week. I did go out a couple of days at lunch and take some pictures, but haven’t had time to get them online.

This one was taken near Bloomfield, CA. I haven’t uploaded to Zooomr because my bandwidth is running out. I’m not sure how much Zooomr gives over what period of time, but I didn’t want to run out. Maybe I’ll create my own geotag map so
I don’t have to worry about it.  I may start uploading more of the photos I take and linking to them from this blog.  I have some space with Picasa’s web albums that I might as well use. The main image will remain on the blog.
Anyway, I used a polarizing filter on this and did some contrast adjustment in Picasa. The weather has been nice, but hazy and this day was foggy, thus the white sky. I again tried some horizontal shots, but like the vertical ones better. With the good weather, I should be out more taking pictures.

I’ve been listening to the photography.ca podcast. It’s pretty cool, and they have samples of stuff they talk about on their blog so you can see the photos. It’s seems to be ‘fine art’ oriented, which is very different from what I do, so it’s a nice contrast for me. Some of the pictures are pretty cool. Check it out.

I have more photos from this week to post, so maybe I’ll catch up this weekend.