Hardly Harley

Reno in Infrared, a photo by iharley on Flickr. Infrared. For me it's like a drug I can't quit. The long exposures, the blurriness, and the noise all combine to make most of my IR shots hard for me to look at. This one, pleasantly, isn't so hard to look at. Taken in the mid-day Reno sun the exposure time was a far more reasonable time of 2 seconds. The clouds were my initial focus, as IR really does something to make them pop more that normal, but the trees came out nicely too! Love how you can make out the green in the hills in the background.

Via Flickr:
Reno in Infrared

When I heard that Flickr was upping their free storage for photos to one terabyte, my first thought was, "I hope Google does the same." And for me, that's the problem with the Flickr news. I have a Flickr account that I post to about once a week, when I post a shot on Thursdays here on the blog, but beyond that I've just not been able to get into using it. I've joined a couple groups there related to micro four-thirds, HDR, and a couple relating to the software I use, but I've not been able to get any kind of engagement there. Instead I use Flickr as a browsing agent. If I'm going to be in a certain area I'll search for the area on Flickr to see what kinds of photos there are to be found there. So I've been trying to figure out just what I can do to take advantage of so much storage.

My current strategy, if you can call it that, is to make Google+/Picasa my main photo sharing site. This works well because Google+ is my social network of choice an…

Compositionally this isn't the greatest, but I enjoyed playing around with long exposure shots from the comfort of a 23rd floor room. Our theme for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 was Action/Motion. I had a number of shots to choose from, but I kept coming back to this one. This was a full 60 second exposure that I only worked on in Aperture because a recent Topaz Labs update has (temporarily?) killed my normal workflow. I primarily played with white balance to try and get rid of the very strong yellow cast from the street lights.

Usually thought of as the lesser Bay Area Bridge, the Bay Bridge (which connects Oakland and the East Bay to San Francisco) recently got some LED art installation. You can see more about it here. It's fun to watch and draws a large photography crowd most evenings. I took this at the oddly numbered Pier 14, which for some reason comes before Pier 1 and is the closest pier to the bridge. I think I'll try here again maybe for a panorama shot leading from Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island (on the left) into San Francisco (cut off).

I haven't posted photos for my projects for the last couple weeks mainly because they've not been photos I enjoyed taking, never mind looking at. But these I enjoyed. I love San Francisco. It has some great photo opportunities day or night, but I really liked my night shots. The theme for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 was Contrasting Colors, and I think we have that covered.

It's been a bit since I posted. It'd also been a while since I had felt like shooting anything. I think the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco in general is a good remedy for what ever the equivalent is for writer's block for photographers. I have a couple GG shots (a couple hundred) but this is my first down from the Fort Point area. That's Fort Point, a Civil War era fort, under the bridge. I'd seen a lot of GG shots from this vantage point on G+ so thought I'd give it a try. I like the heavy chain, it gives a kind of anchor and a little extra to the shot. Sadly the waves weren't so big as to give me a real dramatic bridge shot with a wave crash. Maybe next time. Weather was also not ideal for a photo, but was typical SF. Should have waited around a couple hours for the clouds to burn off. Other things I would have done differently would have been to actually use the tripod I had in the car with me, that might have made this seven shot HDR composite a…