All posts filed under: California

Return to the Sea 3: Soft/Set

August 3, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 17
Abstract / California / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes / Sunset

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 […]

Return to the Sea 1: Rising

July 29, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 21
California / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes

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 […]

Around the Neighborhood 3: Roberta

July 19, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 38
California / Photo Log / Photography / Wildlife

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 […]

Around the Neighborhood 2: Red-Tailed Hawk

July 17, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 28
California / Hawk / Photo Log / Photography / Wildlife

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 […]

Around the Neighborhood 1: A Tree

July 15, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 26
California / Inspiration / Photography / Positivity

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 […]

Rose Mountains Sunset

June 3, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 43
Abstract / California / Floral Photography / Florascape / Photo Log / Photography

May 13, 2012. Monterey, California. Shooting roses from the side opens the door to myriad possibilities. I was unaware of most of them when I shot this. Imagine my surprise when I checked focus a moment later, magnifying the image to 100%, and was faced with a visage that took me straight to the New Mexico desert with Georgia O’Keeffe by my side. I coined the word on the spot. A floral landscape. Florascape. This […]

Cat Feet

June 1, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 23
Abstract / California / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes / Sunset

September 1, 2018. Marin County Headlands, California. Standing on old gun emplacements that go back to the Spanish-American War. Sun going down. Fog rolling in. This one spent hours in post-processing. Not one pixel was left untouched. The perfect balance that I so clearly saw in my mind was eluding me in the file. But it came. It crept up on me very slowly. (Canon G7X II. RAW processing in DxO Pro; Editing in Adobe […]

Silver/Streak

May 30, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 35
Abstract / California / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes

December 24, 2017. The Sea Ranch, Sonoma Coast, California. Christmas Eve. A few hours before the previous post’s photo. The storm was coming in. The sky was threatening but the water was still flat calm. It all had a silvery glow that only winter can bestow. This is the essence. (Nikon D750; Nikon 28-300 f/3.5-5.6G Zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More Fine-Art Photography at www.amagaphoto.com

The Calm After the Storm

May 28, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 28
California / Photography / Seascapes / Sunset

December 24, 2017. The Sea Ranch, Sonoma Coast, California. Christmas Eve. It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, to get my tenses correct, it had been a dark and stormy night. Now it was clearing. Outside it was gray-black. Then a glint of orange. Then black. Inside it was toasty warm. (Nikon D750; Nikon 28-300 f/3.5-5.6G Zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More Fine-Art Photography at www.amagaphoto.com

Through a Glass, Lightly

May 26, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 39
Abstract / California / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photography / Seascapes

December 22, 2017. Sonoma County Coast, California. On our way to The Sea Ranch for Christmas. The Pacific was living up to its name. Pacific. Peaceful. Mirror flat. The sky was calm. The temperature was mild. All was right with the world. Waiting until the clouds lazily drifted into position, I clicked. I wanted the dreamy look that Nature suggested. I just helped her along a bit. Then in creative rapture I hit a wrong […]

There’s a Ship in My Shot!

May 21, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 33
California / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes / Ships / Sunset

January 24, 2016. Nepenthe, Big Sur Coast, California. We were celebrating my birthday with a day trip to Big Sur, and what trip to Big Sur is complete without an Ambrosia Burger at Nepenthe? Satiated, I turned to see what my prospects were for a sunset shot. Laminated clouds? Check. Sea calm? Check. No fog bank? Check. Free of shipping traffic? No. There was a ship on the horizon, heading south at a good clip. […]

Another Day

May 15, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 28
California / Photo Log / Photography / Seascapes / Ships

April 4, 2014. Marin County Headlands. My seascape horizon photographs are devoid of any vestige of land, for the most part; and they show no man-made objects at all. So this image will never be part of my Horizons collections. But this scene intrigued me in 2014 and it still intrigues me today. The first draw was and is the subtlety of color on the water. And the sky. But then there’s the ship. Container […]

Georgia’s Back (Or Someone Like Her)

May 7, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 33
California / Flower / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography / Tulip

May 4, 2019. Crystal Hermitage Gardens, outside of Nevada City, California. When we went to visit our friends in the Sierra foothills, we were prepared for some landscapes. Alas, the sky was blue. From horizon to horizon it was utterly devoid of texture. Not the best for landscapes. But little did we know that our friends had something else in mind anyway. Two weeks ago, they were exploring Highway 49 and stopped in Nevada City. […]

Point Reyes 3: Silence

May 4, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 25
California / Inspiration / Photography / Point Reyes / Seascapes

All you can hear is the breeze, the waves, the birds. Silence promotes calm. Calm brings about refection and realization. Recognized many times before but confirmed through repetition: Although there are those who try to create chaos in the world, it’s up to me to decide whether I want to respond in kind or to disagree with an automatic knee jerk and maintain my own conviction that the basic good in the majority of people […]