Author: DorothyPhoto

Cave Painting

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Cave Painting

It has been a while since I have put up a new grungy flower. I feel inspired today after seeing German Herrara’s work at the BAPC event. After spending more time with his ‘Book of Mirrors’ portfolio, I was shocked to see the similarities that my recent work has with his. I thought that my grungy series was a little weird but unique. Not true. German has been working on his composites for over 5 years. I guess I just have to keep to my own path.

On another front, I thought that I had broken my new Canon 5D. I had been plagued with dust and now hair in the viewfinder and even on the sensor. I felt like the camera is a Hoover sucking in all the gunk outdoors. I kept cleaning and cleaning but seemed to make matters worse. There was a small hair in the viewfinder that was making me crazy. I tried to blow it out and wipe it out with a sensor brush. After my efforts, the viewfinder now appeared to have a semi-circular crack. Since I was down in Long Beach last week, I dropped into the Canon repair facility in Irvine. They took one look and said it is just a big piece of har and you need it cleaned. It can be ready in a few hours and is covered by my warranty. WOOHOO! Finally, a clean camera again. I just hope I can keep it that way.

Yosemite #10

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Tenaya Creek

This is Tenaya Creek in Yosemite. I was struck by the unusual water color repeated by the cedar stump. This shot represents an experiment with water texture. I had read that if you combine different exposures of flowing water with a fast, medium and slow shutter speed that it gave a more realistic look to water. Some folks (not me actually) do not like when flowing water shots become very soft and blurred. If that is you, you may want to combine multiple shots for a more ‘textured’ look to your water. For sure, the water in this shot looks very different from most other flowing water shots.

For this image, I used 5 shots with shutter speeds starting at 1 sec going as long as 3.2 seconds. Because none of my shutter speeds is fast enough to freeze water, I still have some blurred water effect. I used the Photomatix software to build a HDR but you could just combine the images as 5 layers in Photoshop each with 20% Opacity.

Back from Road Trip

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Long Beach Hyatt

I am back from my road trip to Southern California. Chip and I stayed at the Long Beach Hyatt right along the waterfront in downtown Long Beach. The area as really changed since I lived in Southern California and is a fun place to visit. These palms and the orange glow from all the sodium vapor street lights really remind me of LA. Boy, am glad that I now live in San Francisco.

Filoli #9

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Filoli Formal Gardens

This is another shot taken with my fisheye. AFiloli Formal Gardens This is another shot taken with my fisheye.gain, this is a single raw image processed using Photomatix HDR software. I know the colors seem ‘fantastic’ but I do like the effect. I thought this scene looked like a movie set where a dream sequence is happening.

Filoli #6

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Tulips and Birdbath

Filoli has a tough policy for photographers. They are only open from 10:30 am to 3:30 pm. Plus, no tripods or monopods allowed. They do offer a special evening for photographers one nite a month but this month is already filled. So, I had fun playing with the fisheye lens. Again, I used the Photomatix HDR tool to do tonal mapping which it really needed.