All posts filed under: Inspiration

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 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 […]

Monserrate Reveal/Blue

June 5, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 35
Abstract / Floral Photography / Florascape / Inspiration / Photo Log / Photography

August 24, 2016. Parque e Palácio de Monserrate, near Sintra, Portugal. While exploring this magnificent park — where I could have easily spent days — I was captivated by a large, smooth succulent. I saw the picture immediately. I made several shots with minor variations in composition and depth of field and moved on to other botanical wonders. I didn’t think about it again until a couple of months later, back in California. Time being […]

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 38
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

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 […]

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 […]

Is This Even a Place?

April 9, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 38
California / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photography / Seascapes

Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, it’s a view from about five hundred feet above sea level off the side of southbound California Highway 1 in Sonoma County. Originally shot in December 2013, this image sat in my archives for years. It didn’t sit there because I particularly wanted it to. It sat there because there’s evidence of a nasty lens aberration in the RAW file that several previous attempts at RAW processing […]

Georgia on My Mind

April 6, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 36
Abstract / Floral Photography / Impressionism / Inspiration / Photography / Tulip

I don’t recall when I first saw Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. It just seems like she was always there. She decided to be an artist when she was ten, and then for almost nine decades she kept herself and her art intensely alive through constant evolution — but she was always unmistakably herself and her art was always unmistakably her own. I don’t know if Ms. O’Keeffe ever visited the amazing and seemingly endless gardens at […]