Pink Flower

I recently purchased some extension tubes for my camera so that I could get in a little closer for some macro shots.  This past weekend I went out to the backyard and started experimenting with them.  This is one that I thought was interesting.  This one isn't as magnified as I can get, but I liked the composition.

Wave Motion

Photographing waves and making them look unique or interesting can be challenging, at least for me.  This was a swipe, where I was moving the camera along the movement of the wave. 

Bye Bye Autumn

Well, winter is on the horizon as autumn fades away.  Here in SoCal autumn doesn't really kick in (i.e. leaves changing color) until late November on into December.  The photo above was taken in my backyard of the leaf of a liquid amber tree.  As you can see, there is a little glare on the leaf in the upper left.  Had I not been so lazy, all I had to do was to go get my polarizer and that glare would have been history.  Either way, I like the detail in the leaf.  

Night View of the Pier

Here's a night shot of the San Clemente Pier.  This was taken about a half hour after the sun went down using a long exposure setting.  As you can see, the sky looks more like it does in the daylight.  Of course because of the long exposure the water looks silky and smooth.  This is one of my favorites of this pier.  

Coffee and Cars

Ford Cobra

I went over to a weekly car gathering in Irvine this morning called Coffee and Cars.  It is a place where you can see a lot of car enthusiasts showing off there hot rods, muscle cars, classic cars, etc.  It makes for a great opportunity for photographing some fabulous cars. 

Packard Headlight

Laguna View

Canon 5D Mark II, EF 24-105 F/4, 1/10 sec F22  ISO 100

This was taken in Laguna Beach behind the Montage Hotel.  There was a wedding taking place and this ship (boat?) seemed to be part of the wedding.  At the prescribed time in the wedding (the bride and groom being pronounced husband and wife) the ship shot off a few rounds from its cannon and then began moving away.  I'm sure a wedding at the Montage isn't cheap, but I wonder how much extra it was for the cannon blasts?  I'm sure the added memories it caused was well worth it.

Sunflower

There's something about sunflowers that makes you want to smile.  I think it is because they look like big "Happy Faces".  This one I spied peeking over the wall from my neighbors yard.

Evening Surf

This was shot off of the San Clemente Pier just before sunset.  I wanted to blur the surf a little to convey the feeling of the incoming surf so I used a small aperture (f22) in order to get a shutter speed of 1/4 second.   

Ice Cream Cone Flower

Went to Sherman Gardens yesterday and saw this unusual looking  flower.  I didn't catch the name of it, but I think it's from Indonesia.  I thought I would have some fun with this photo and mix a little color and B&W.  I think it makes it look like a strawberry ice cream cone. 

Lily

The lilies in our backyard were blooming a few weeks back, so it gave me a chance to practice some close up photography.  This photo looked OK to me in the color version but when I converted it to black & white using Silver Efex Pro it seemed to show off the flower's detail, simplicity and beauty that much better.

Old Tail Light

I went to a car show that is held every Sunday morning called Coffee & Cars.  It's a place where a lot of regular folks can bring their cars and show them off and visit with a bunch of other people that like to do the same thing.  It's a great place to make pictures of cars of all vintages and makes.  Some are restored to look like the day they came off the assembly line and others are customized to the imagination of its owner.  Then there are cars like the one above which has seen better days.  I'm sure this car will one day be restored but I kind of liked it in this weathered condition.  For this photo I adjusted the contrast using Topaz Adjust to bring out more detail in the old paint and rust.

Laguna Seashore

I went over to Laguna last weekend hoping for a nice cloudy sunset only to find a few scattered clouds in the sky.  This made for an OK sunset opportunity, but nothing too exciting.  I did set up this shot about a half hour before the sun went down that I liked.  Having a prominent  foreground subject always seems to make for an interesting photograph.  This is an HDR photo using 3 exposures (+2,0, -2).  I also used NIK's Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast filter.

Sailboats

Here's a shot taken at Dana Point Harbor of a line of sailboats.  I liked the repetition pattern of the boats themselves but also of the reflections of the boats.  This was a single shot processed using Topaz Adjust and a little tweaking in Photoshop.

Lake Mission Viejo Panoramic

This is fun to do.  This photo is actually made from a series of eight separate photos that have been "stitched" together in Photoshop to create a single wide photograph.  This was taken at Lake Mission Viejo looking north towards Saddleback Mountain in the background. 

Empty Beach

I visited Lake Mission Viejo a couple of weeks ago to check out the sunset and took this photo using my 16-35mm lens set at 16mm f/22.  I was trying to convey the emptiness of the beach.  This was processed as a single image HDR and then I added some vignetting.  I'd be interested in any feedback you might have.  Do you like this look or is it over the top?

Morning Dew

Here's a colorful shot I took in my backyard last Fall.  I used my 100mm macro set to 1/125 sec at f 3.5.  The wide f-stop really shortened the depth of focus and blurred the background flowers and just let the colors show through. 

Old Town Orange

Old Town Orange is a nice old neighborhood in Orange County, California.  There are a lot of old Craftsman style houses in this very well kept neighborhood.  In my opinion, this is one of the nicest examples of what can be found there.  I took three separate images of this scene covering an exposure range of 5 stops and then combined them together using Photomatix Pro software.   I then cropped it to eliminate the power wire and car in the driveway.  Below is the middle exposure of the three images taken.

You can see that the final image at the top has detail in the shadows and sky that is missing in the middle exposure image.  That is the advantage of HDR processing as it pulls that missing detail out of the other two images in the three image series.

Life Boat

This is a photo I took in Dana Point Harbor last year.  I like the symmetry of the boat and its reflection.  The only processing I did was a curves adjustment for contrast and some sharpening.

Disney Fireworks

Here's one of my photos of the fireworks show above Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland.  I had to shoot this one at a high ISO speed in order to be able to use a fast enough shutter speed to hand hold the camera.  For the camera techies, this was taken at 1/15th sec @ f 4.5 at ISO 1600.  The only post processing that was done was noise removal using Lightroom.

Happy New Year!

Vicky and I spent a day at Disneyland earlier this month to celebrate her birthday.  December is always a wonderful time to be there because Disney knows how to decorate for Christmas.  This photo was taken just prior to their nightly fireworks spectacular.  I'm sure many of you can recognize that this was taken from Main Street looking towards Sleeping Beauty's Castle.
Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year.  It's hard to believe that 2010 is over already.  I hope 2011 goes a little slower.  It seems time speeds up the older you get.