Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Pano Sunset

Epic Sunset
Stumbled across an album primarily of sunset shots. I remember at the time not wanting to publish them all for fear I run out of things to post, and I shot them about the same time I shot my zen rock (cairns) focus fun shots. I rediscovered them today and ran across some shots I took for a hopeful panorama. There's one thing I've learned about stitching panoramas with Photoshop Elements 11, if you don't like the outcome the first time around just try it again. I don't think I've ever seen PSE spit out identically stitched panoramas. Now I don't know if that's a quirk in the software or an issue with how I shoot my panorama shots, but it has proven to be very helpful at times. This is a 10 shot panorama with the finished dimensions of 9225x3724 and clocks in at roughly 36 megapixels. And this is not an HDR'd shot.

I really like, for the most part, how this shot turned out, though it's not without some problems. Processing wise, after I got it back from PSE into Aperture I went and adjusted exposure and set the black and white points. That sun was a little blown out, probably still is, but it's the sun. What are you going to do? I did a little capture sharpening and some noise control. Then the heavy lifting was done in +Topaz Labs Clarity using the Sunset preset in the Landscape group. From there I did a little tweaking to get things the way I wanted, then off to Detail to get a little more detail popping. I wish I could say I had planned on the composition turning out this way, with the sun near center with a nice trail of golden light leading to the bottom of the frame and centered by Trinidad Head on the left and Pewetole Island on the right, but honestly it was luck. Or skill that's become second nature. But my money is on luck.What I don't like and will try to fix is an inherent problem with a moving subject (the surf) and a sweeping panorama; things don't line up.

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