November 10, 2019 — Wright’s Lake, California Whatever it is, it feels no pain and it never cries. It spends a lot of time reflecting. What do you do when you go out on your first shoot in several weeks and you’re not satisfied with your take? You crop ruthlessly and improvise in post-processing. (Nikon D500, Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di VC USD. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 3.0; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
December 8, 2018 — Point Reyes National Seashore Mr. Red Tail sat on a rock about fifty yards down a ravine, in perfect view but with his back to the camera. I waited. And waited. With scant warning he took flight, heading out to sea before turning a tight one-eighty and coming right at me. No. Not at me. At his next perch. He picked his spot. Flared. And grabbed his rock. He gave me […]
September 7, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. f/16, 4 seconds, ISO 64. Pan to the left. This is the longest uninterrupted series I’ve done so far on this blog. Your comments have been interesting, informative, and gratifying. A number of people have asked in comments, email, and in person, to see a “before” image. I don’t usually like to discuss technique because I think it’s potentially limiting: I don’t want it to come off as “do […]
September 7, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. Earlier in the evening. f/16, 3 seconds, ISO 64. Pan to the left. In the past few days, many words on the subject of going in the nonobvious direction have passed through my eyes. Aside from being interesting advice for life, photographically this applies to both the initial creation of the image — click — and to the post-processing of the image. A recurring theme for me has been […]
September 7, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. Getting even later. Getting even darker. Still at f/10. Now 15 seconds at ISO 64. Pan to the left and back to the right with a twist. Luke’s mentor advised him to use the Force. My mentors have advised me to embrace and use the conditions before me. There were lights before me. (Nikon D850, Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2.3; Editing […]
September 7, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. Getting later. Getting darker. I opened up to f/10 to let in a little more light, and let it go for 10 seconds at ISO 64. Click. Slow pan to the left and back to the right. Clack. In dealing with abstracts, all of the hard-and-fast “rules” go out the window. The only consideration left in post-processing is “what do I want to show?” Something in the image suggests […]
September 7, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. Second evening. Five second exposure, f/16, ISO 64. Yesterday’s post was almost exactly what came out of the camera. A bit of color optimization, removing a tiny bit of extraneous light on the left, and a 16×9 crop. That was it. Today’s image, on the other hand, received extensive tweaking, first in DxO PhotoLab and then in Photoshop. Most of the work went into bringing out the subtle color […]
September 6, 2019 — Lake Tahoe. The sun was down and the conditions were perfect for some ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) work looking across and around the lake. As the evening progressed, the shutter speeds declined. This one was made towards the end of the first night of spin: f/16 @ 8 seconds, ISO 64. This series is a test of my ruthlessness as an editor/curator. More to come. (Nikon D850, Tamron SP 24–70mm f/2.8 Di […]
May 8, 2015. Devil’s Slide, near Pacifica, California. For Chewy’s Birthday walk, we settled on two places: Land’s End in San Francisco and Devil’s slide. Chewy always loved the sea breeze. Highway 1 had years prior been routed through a tunnel at Devil’s Slide (that portion having lived up to its name far too often), leaving the old Highway 1 free to be used as a park with long stretches for Chewy to run and […]
February 17, 2018; Big Sur Coast, California. What do you do when Mother Nature serves you a blah sky? Not a cloud. No fog to speak of. Just boring blue sky. You improvise in post-processing, that’s what you do. This is one of two treatments of this frame. Many pixels’ lives were forever changed. (Nikon D750, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro, Editing in Adobe Photoshop. More fine-art photography at […]
January 28, 2017; Sonoma County, California. Heading home after a weekend on the coast. As I drove, I watched this squall develop over a period of thirty minutes but there was no place safe to pull off the road for an unobstructed view. Thought I was going to lose it for sure. Finally a safe turnout. And there she was, climbing out of the water, into the cloud. (Nikon D750, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR […]
July 13, 2019, Back Deck. Roberta was born about two years ago and we’ve been watching her grow since she was a kitten. She comes around every six weeks or so, patrols the yard, and moves on. Sometimes she looks inside and watches us. More often she gives the house a wide berth. Last week she walked by about thirty feet away, heading for the steps on the deck. I grabbed the beast, confirmed that […]
July 11, 2019, Just down the street. Red-tailed hawks have lived in my neighborhood for years but they have been stubbornly elusive when I’m out with a camera. One day last week I went out to get the mail and I heard hawk cries nearby. Several different voices. I looked up, into a tree and there they were. Three of them. I dashed inside and got the beast — eight pounds of camera body and […]
July 14, 2019, Los Gatos Creek Trail. For the past several weeks I’ve been in a mode of weekly themes. It does give me a focus, so I’ll continue — but this one is different: it’s a smattering of what I’ve shot in and near my neighborhood in the past week or so. Not deathless photography, but it does make a nice potpourri. In many cases it proves the adage, the best camera is the […]
March 9, 2018. Oakland, California. The horizon was called on account of mist. (Nikon D850; Nikon 28-300 f/3.5-5.6G Zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
