El Capitan Meadow

This is the very soggy El Capitan Meadow. That is not a lake but a large puddle. Cathedral Rocks are on the right-hand side and Sentinal Rocks are somewhere in the middle. This is stitched HDR image.

Yosemite Yeti

Here is Chip taking in the atmosphere under Bridalveil Falls. It was wet and did I already say wet! I could actually hear the water ripping over the rocks. While watching the summer Olympics the announcers for diving talk about a rip entry but this is the first that I have heard it for myself.

Filoli Courtyard

This is a small patio at one end of the Filoli mansion. The house itself is 36000 sqaure feet. Lately, I have been experimenting with shooting into lighting conditions that I would have never attempted before. Again, I am processing the raw multiple times for shadows and highlights into a HDR image. Sometimes the results can look surreal but this one is pretty close to my visual memory.

Tenaya Creek

Another from Yosemite hiking upt o Mirror Lake. The water in the creek had this beautiful color and the rocks were very orange. It may appearthat the color is fiddled but it is accurate to that day.

Filoli Formal Gardens

Another fisheye shot from my visit to Filoli. I have been on a bit of a lark using my fisheye lens. Of course given the harsh lighting, this image was tone mapped using Photomatix HDR software which could retrieve all of the highlights.

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.

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.

Merced River

Taken near the South entrance to Yosemite along the Merced River.

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.

Anemone

This one reminds me a little of Georgia O’Keefe painting. I visited Santa Fe last year and toured the Georgia O’Keefe museum. Taken from a floral arrangement in the visitor center at Filoli.