four months

mendocino

Quick trip to Mendocino for the weekend. I haven't taken pictures in FOREVER so it felt good to pull out the old camera and try to get some shots. Didn't get too creative. Just some windswept vistas with the 50 mm. 

Point Cabrillo Lighthouse. Recently restored and super cute.  

A pretty walk from the car to the lighthouse. Walk back includes more windswept vistas. Here, looking inland, I put together 5 shots in PhotoStitch (which came on the CD with my 6D).  I lost my PhotoShop license and found PhotoStitch was pretty easy! Export as JPG, and put 'em together. Seems like the resulting image isn't super clear, but if you re-import to Lightroom the file it creates actually pretty big. Click to enlarge:

We also checked out Mendocino Headlands State Park. Two ~20 minute jaunts from the car, with some views of seals in the water and a pretty boardwalk out around to see the ocean. Back to using Waterlogue again!

And the highlight of the whole trip was Montgomery Woods State Reserve. About a 30 min drive inland from Ukiah. A beautiful windy drive. The walk itself had an uphill incline for about 10 minutes then flattened out and you are in the middle of the loveliest forest ever. A couple mile loop we completed in 1-1.5 hours stopping often to just look up and stare. Huge redwoods - this is an area that has remained unlogged. I sort of surrendered to trying to capture it on film, Redwoods at least 10 feet across, I don't even know how to approach that.  Just have a look at the images here.  This spot and Point Lobos might be my two favorite California hikes.

waterlogue - big sur

As I was first taking classes in photography years ago, I was also obsessively reading the photo blog KrisAtomic, which impacted me in many ways that still stick to this day. What inspired me to buy my beloved 50mm lens? Check this out. My urge to visit Iceland despite the fact I would subsist on… ice? Yup. Why I pine for a Fuji x100? Just look here.

So as I pondered the switch from Android to iPhone, you can imagine that her iphonography post stuck in my mind. Then along came the waterlogue post. And well, now, guess what I have an iPhone with the Waterlogue app ($2.99 via App Store) which magically turns photos into watercolors. As it has not been my habit to take phone photos, it took me months to really experiment with this.  This weekend I spent a lovely couple of days in Carmel/Big Sur. I took a few photos with the phone and am really liking how they turned out after running them through Waterlogue! They key seems to be going for high contrast. I found I liked the Bold setting best.

BTW if you are looking for the best hike in this area, it really is Point Lobos, just South of Carmel. Some ups and downs with breathtaking coastlines for a couple of miles. We had a good long 2.5 hour walk/hike and really, just beautiful. The rest of the pictures are from Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. I only wish I had more pictures to play with! I'll aim to do a SF/Mission version soon.

Do you read any good photo blogs I should know about?

golden gate bridge II

I love this bridge. So much. Is there a better bridge? I think not. I love driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. Better yet, I love being a passenger driving across so I can take pictures. I love looking at it from San Francisco, or Berkeley, or an airplane. I have never walked over it, but I have now gone UNDER it. Took a 90 minute cruise of the bay with San Francisco Whale Tours. Don't let the name fool you, 90 minutes round trip from Pier 39 is not going to get you anywhere near a whale. We did see porpoises in the harbor which were frankly adorable, but I digress.

This was another journey with the new 100mm. I really like these photos, however the focus is not tack sharp or really that sharp at all upon zooming in in Lightroom. Was this due to shooting from a moving boat? Am I expecting too much from a distance? The jury is out, hopefully I'll get under there again for another try.

january flowers

New year, new lens! After lots of thought about adding another lens since upgrading to the full frame 6D. I finally bought Canon's 100mm macro. The Macro Class kind of sealed the deal. I'm still getting used to it, and as always I'm somewhat focus obsessed. I need to see how crisp it stays how far away. But so far, I like!

Today was a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco. I didn't have as much time to get out as I would have liked, but was able to snap some blooming trees near my house. Same place on Church Street I took pictures two years ago March, so hopefully the'll stay in bloom for a while. Or maybe it's a sign of rapidly shifting weather patterns that will soon have my neighborhood and all of California underwater. Ok, enjoy the flowers!

angel island

New year, new resolution to post more pictures! Last July already, I went with some friends to Angel Island. Located in the middle of the bay, it is a great place to spend a long afternoon touring the island either on foot or by bicycle (which you can rent on the island). There is a long outer loop of the island and a shorter inner loop both of which are very bike/hike friendly. From the inner loop you can hike up (no bicycles) to the top of the island. From this top point, there is a 360 view of the bay area, from SF to Sausalito and Marin to Berkeley to Oakland and back to SF. On this particular day, the views of Sausalito were so pretty, they reminded me of the costal towns of italy.

We started the day at the Ferry Building which is a great place to grab some lunch from the Farmer's Market to picnic with on the Island. The Blue and Gold line to Angel Island picks up behind the Ferry Building (but will only drop you back off in Fisherman's Wharf) and you can buy your tickets either in the building or even on the boat itself.

It was a good time of year for flowers at the Farmer's Market:

The views as the ferry leaves SF are really great. I tried to make these first few look like old postcards, I think it worked!:

America's Cup Prada boat & Alcatraz: 

Some panoramas happened:

On the island itself, there are lots of interesting buildings from back in the day when it was a fort and immigration station:

The views just really aren't bad:

The Portofino-esque Saulsalito: