Outdoor – Page 7 – Always Breaking

Trademark

It’s been two weeks since I posted anything, time flies. This has been the busiest May I can remember in 15 years. I did manage to catch a Giants game with my daughter last week and grabbed this shot of the Coke bottle. I wasn’t sure if I liked it in color or black and white, so I had my wife decide. She makes good choices. I took a bunch of shots around AT&T Park, and noticed a lot of people with digital SLR cameras. They’ve become quite popular.

This shot is hosted on my Picasa Web Albums site, not Zooomr. Zooomr’s been down for what feels like forever getting the Mark III changes online. Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate have been keeping things updated via their blogs and on the Zooomr channel on ustream.tv. I hope it gets back online soon, I have a bunch of pictures to upload and post here. Zooomr was already the coolest photo site, so I expect great things and will wait patiently (please hurry). When Zooomr is back up I’ll post this with a geotag.

One last thought, I suppose I should change the name of the blog. I clearly don’t post a photo a day. I’m lucky for a photo a week.

Roses in May

Roses in May Hosted on Zooomr

The past few weeks have seen the most spectacular roses I’ve seen in town since I moved here. All over town, rose bushes of every color have had an abundance of flowers. At this point, many are past there prime, but last weekend was great.
I shot this a couple of days ago, thinking it was one of the last flowers to bud on this bush, but today it still looks amazing.

I shot it in RAW and did some adjustments in Picasa; just some brightness and contrast. I really wish I had a real macro lens for my camera. I know I mentioned that before, maybe this summer I’ll get one, or at least before next spring. This year was great for roses, but who know what next year will bring. We didn’t get as much rain as normal, and the weather has been pretty mild, at least until today.

Higher resolution versions are on Zooomr, but no Exif data. Shooting in RAW doesn’t capture the Exif (because Exif is jpeg specific) and I haven’t found a good tool for editing Exif data. I tried a couple, but was unimpressed.

Rust and Sky

Another shot I took in RAW format. I really like RAW, now that I’ve actually taken a few shots and played with them a little. I really like how this shot came out. The contrast and lighting really make the shot, for me. I waited until the sun was going down, made a special trip to the location, and took a few shots with the light hitting the building. It came out better than I expected. I used a polarizing filter. This shot is on zooomr, as is the color version. I like the BW version better, but the color one is good too.
I drive by this old feed company on my way to work, and have always thought it was a cool, old building. Sort of an icon of days gone by when this was more of a farming town. There are still a few of these around town, and I hope they stay. Skoot took a great shot of another one. I’d like to eventually do a whole series of pictures of old buildings, specifically from the agriculture industry.

I had to use a smaller image here because it was pushing into the sidebar, but larger versions are on Zooomr.

Crossroads

Crossroads Hosted on Zooomr

The trains stopped running in Petaluma years ago, but the tracks are still around. These tracks are behind a hay and feed supplier that’s still in business, but not using the railroad. This shot is actually the bottom of a wider shot, but the tracks were the best part, so I cropped the image. This was also one of the first shots I took in RAW, and I’m glad I did.

This part of the original was in deep shadow. I had to adjust the brightness and contrast a lot. I could not have done it with a JPG file. The RAW format saved this shot. I was shocked at how much flexibility I had, even in Picasa. Picasa isn’t really designed for photo editing, but it did the trick with this image. I didn’t care much for the original shot, but thanks to some cropping and exposure adjustment, it was a favorite from that day. I’ll be shooting a lot more RAW, and buying a 4 gig compact flash card to make sure I have enough room.
See Zooomr for the geotag and a few other shots I did in RAW the same day.

The Wall

The Wall Hosted on Zooomr

OK, probably not the best title, but it is a wall. This is the front wall of the de Young Museum, in San Francisco. I took this on the trip to the tea. It’s unlike any building I’ve seen. I guess they tried to make the building a work of art in itself. Mostly it worked. It’s a little out of place in the park, but the surface compels you to look, and admire it. The closer you get, the more attractive and compelling it becomes.

There are a lot of pictures of it on Zooomr, so I guess the wall has had the intended effect. People seem to like it, and after seeing it close up I had to like it too. And seeing it really made me want to shoot pictures of it, so much so that I made my family walk over to the building after we came out of the tea garden. The kids like exploring, and the museum definitely captures your attention, so they didn’t mind. There are a lot of things to see around the museum, so you can spend a bit of time exploring the grounds without actually paying the admission to go inside.
I converted this to B/W in Picasa and adjusted the contrast, quite a bit. The sun was pretty much overhead, and the excess of light in the upper left makes the building fade into the sky. The effect is much better in black and white.

It’s On Zooomr with geotag, although I noticed the exact location seemed to wander a little. Zooomr has a lot of photos in the area as well.

WordPress ate my post

I thought I had posted something yesterday, but apparently WordPress ate it. I had saved it as a draft SEVERAL times, and published, but something went awry. The draft is not there, and neither is the post. Very odd and quite annoying. I was a good post, very profound and insightful.

Anyway, here’s the picture. I’m a little too frustrated to try to re-write what I wrote last night.

links Hosted on Zooomr

It’s at the old WWI and WWII artillery bunkers west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not many tourist go there because the get wrapped up in the bridge, but it’s a pretty cool place, with great views of the bridge, Marin headlands, and the Pacific Ocean.

It’s geotagged on Zooomr, with a couple of other shots from the same day. I’ll post them on this blog, maybe tonight if I can muster up the courage and trust WordPress.

Look Up

Look up Hosted on Zooomr

I have to credit my wife for this shot. We were walking around the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco and I was looking all around for things to shoot, then she said “Look up”. This was the shot. I decided I liked the black and white version better than the color version, although both were good. This shot is on Zooomr with the geotag and exif information. There’s also another, similar shot on Zooomr as well. Additional pictures of the Japanese Tea Garden are on my Picasa Web Album, including the color version of this shot.
The Japanese Tea Garden is a really cool place. It’s only a few bucks to get in, our whole family went for I think $11, and we spent a few hours there. The kids love it, with all the paths and foot bridges. I love the architecture and design. Mostly, I like seeing something not Americana. We live in an old part of town with lots of Victorian and Craftsmen homes, which I like, but sometimes a taste of another culture is refreshing. The Tea Garden gives you that, along with some tranquility. I’ve only been on weekends when there are crowds, but even then it is worth it. If you live near San Francisco, this is a great, inexpensive day trip.

Arch

Arch Hosted on Zooomr

Another shot I took Easter weekend, actually only a few minutes later than Camouflage. I have been taking other pictures, but have been slow getting them up online. Also, I took a few photos I really liked Easter weekend, so figured I’d make them last for several posts. I find taking pictures in spurts works better for me. Less stress, more creativity. I do take my camera with me pretty much everywhere I go, just in case I see something interesting. I’ve got at least three of four pictures I’ve taken over the last week that I want to blog.

My foot is still slowing me down, and tomorrow I have arthroscopic shoulder surgery. I feel like an invalid already. The surgery should keep me from shooting for several days, hopefully no more, so I’m going to post the pictures I’ve already taken while I’m recovering. If all goes well, I’ll be back out shooting pictures in no time.

On to some comments about this shot. I took it while my kids were busy playing in the river. It was warm, and the water was really low so they were wading in up to their ankles and playing in the sand. This river willow branch caught my eye and I started shooting. I took it in color, but knew when I was shooting that I wanted it in black and white. I did a good deal of contrast adjustment and added film grain to help give a more surreal look. I also used a wide f-stop (which I tend to do a lot) and had to obviously get down on the ground. I get nervous when my camera gets too close to sand, but this shot was worth it. (I got dirty, the camera is fine) I think it came out nicely.

It is on Zooomr with a GeoTag and another shot of the branch.

Easter Eggs

Dyeing Hosted on Zooomr

This probably should have been posted right after Easter, but I had a couple of other shots I wanted to get up first. Every year for Easter we head up to our parents’ houses. At my in-laws, the kids dye eggs outside on the deck where they can make a mess with little impact. This year, as with most, hands as well as eggs got dyed. It took a few days for the dye to come off my daughter’s hands.

The eggs came out quite nicely. The hands were almost black by the end.

Zooomr Link

Russian River

Russian River Hosted on Zooomr

Another shot I took before Easter. I’m not taking photos during the week because I just don’t have time. I wish I did, but don’t right now.

Again, for this shot I used the polarizing filter which eliminated the glare off the water. Normally, without the filter, the water would reflect light, but in this shot you can see the rocks on the river bed. I also used a slow shutter speed to give a more fluid look. I’ve always like shots of moving water with long exposures. Sometimes it’s over done, so the water is really a blur, but I think this shot has a nice mix of motion and stasis. I posted it here because it is one of the few moving water shots I’ve taken.

I did not use a tripod, because I don’t have one. I just set the camera on the rocks and tried to hold it still. I wanted a low angle, so it worked out. I’d like to get a Gorilla Pod for situations like this.

See it on Zooomr with GeoTag and exposure settings.