Hardly Harley

Loleta Lumber Over at  +The Patch - PhotogrAphy Themed CHallenge  we're gearing up for architecture themes for the month of March. If you you're not familiar, I'm helping run a project this year that has both a monthly theme and weekly themes. It's a little more challenging than a typical single theme project and has been forcing participants to think a little bit more about their shots. It's been a lot of fun to see how different people interpret the theme and to get together with my co-moderators to pick winning photos each week, which are then eligible for a monthly prize of a  +Topaz Labs  plugin. This isn't the shot I'll be using for week one (Building Features & Architecture) but I enjoyed processing this seven shot HDR and thought it'd be a nice prelude to the month. If you're an architecture photographer, or know someone who is, have them check us out. People can join in at anytime.

As I've mentioned, I've been struggling with my photography lately, so I've been reading and watching videos on how to improve my skills. As I've also mentioned I'm mostly self-taught, or more accurately, internet taught. I picked and chose what I wanted to learn to get the final image I wanted. I didn't learn the basics until later in my photo taking life. And I sometimes need to brush up on these skills. So on a surprise free day last week I set out with the camera with somethings in mind as to what I wanted to work on. Sadly, the middle of a very bright day out doesn't make for great photography, and what I was thinking to shoot also didn't work out. Then I stumbled across this. Zen Rock Altar If you look closely it has a lot of what I call "zen rock formations" on them. Maybe there's a more accurate name for it, but I'm sticking to this. I thought this would make for good practice on composing a shot, focus control and lightin...

From the Other Side This is a tale of futility. A tale of ignoring hard data and still going after the shot. I happened across this rock formation sometime last year ( this  is probably the best shot of it from it's south facing side) and have been desperately trying to come up with an interesting way to shoot it. I've tried to force different looks on it, all to bad ends. Having only been able to shoot it from the south facing side due to tide issues, I had deluded myself into thinking the other side was the money shot. What I wanted was to shoot this with some sunset perfectly framed in it. So like any good landscape photographer I Google Earthed the approximate location, and this is what Google Earth had to show: Google Earth: Not Looking Good So as we can see my spot is the middle of a cove with two heads to the north and south of it. The window of my formation faces north/south, and as any good Boy Scout knows, the sun sets in the west. And, to make matters more ...

Not Alone It's February 2014 and I've hardly taken a photo. OK, that's not exactly true. Aperture tells me it has some 550 photos in it's library dating from January 1, 2014. But in looking over those 550 photos I can honestly say I don't like more than 10 of them. That's not a good ratio. In fact it was so bad I hadn't picked up my camera in 2 weeks, even to just fiddle with it. The way I know I like a gadget is how often I want to hold it and fiddle with it, not just use it. My camera, my cell phone, and my tablet were, or are, constantly in my hands. The camera lately hasn't been. This wouldn't be so bad except I happen to run a photo project on Google+ and though I'm not eligible for winning anything I had hoped to make it through the year with photos contributed to it. Last week I submitted a photo from my library. This week I didn't submit a photo at all, and that's because I didn't have a photo in my library that I felt met...

Golden Cliffs The Golden Hour (the hour or so before sunset) lives up to its name with these golden cliffs. This is a 3 shot panorama which, after I cropped down to cut out some distracting rocks at the bottom, and too much sky at the top, came out to be 16.2 megapixels. A mere .4 megapixels more than my camera's sensor. But it's where those pixels went that make it more useful than a regular shot. At over 6,200 pixels in length it's far longer than the 4,592 pixels the camera can take in a single shot. A single shot with the camera would have had me choosing to cut out either the large rock on the left or some cliff on the left, so this worked out for me. With moving water it's important to try and get a lull in the waves when shooting through your sequence of shots for easier stitching together and to move quickly once you've prepared to shoot. I use my auto exposure and focus lock set on what I picture as being the center part of the photo then start shooting...

Sunset Over Trinidad I started 2014, photographically, on the wrong foot. My shooting has been uninspired, and so I went to shoot something I do enjoy and usually get good results with. A sunset. This shot was taken in a clearing with bushes at least as tall as me. And this is the reason why I love my rotating/tilting/flipout screen on my G3. I bumped the ISO up then held the camera up as high as I could while looking at the tilted and rotated screen to try and frame the shot. Once into Aperture I straightened the shot, adjusted for exposure then sent the photo over to Topaz Labs. There I did what's becoming a first step for most of my photos and doing some pre-sharpening or capture sharpening with InFocus , some DeNoise work for the sky, Clarity to work on contrasts and color in the sky (slight saturation bump), then some creative sharpening in Detail. I think when you shoot things in silhouette, like the rock on the left, the head in the center, or the tops of some smal...

First shot of 2014