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 […]
I had been saving this image — taken from the end of the pier in Akaroa, New Zealand just after sunrise on an unbelievable July morning — to mark the anniversary of the trip to NZ that my wife and I took last year. I moved it up a few weeks because it is a fitting complement to a short message of thanks to New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Lots of people talk about […]
A volunteer poppy at Filoli, easily as arresting as anything in the manicured gardens. Thanks to Oliver for the push. Not motion this time, but depth. (Nikon D850; Nikon 28-300 f/3.5-5.6G Zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2.2; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine art photography at www.amagaphoto.com
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
For an all-too-brief period in the spring, California poppies proliferate. They’re just starting to appear here in the Bay Area. In a few weeks — maybe just a few days — there will be more patches, fields, entire hillsides of intense golden blooms shimmering in the breeze. There will be more in this space too. Here’s a preview of this year’s bounty. (Nikon D850; AF-S VR Micro-NIKKOR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab […]
(The essence of a tulip might be a onelip. Nikon D750; Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
(In celebration of spring, a California Poppy. Nikon D750; Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Zoom. RAW processing in DxO Pro; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine art photography at www.amagaphoto.com
Enveloped in fog. (Nikon D500; Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2.2; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.)
(Nikon D500, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 ED VR zoom. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab, final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
(Canon G7X II. RAW processing in DxO PhotoLab 2; final editing in Adobe Photoshop.) More fine-art photography: www.amagaphoto.com
December 7 and 8, 2018, Point Reyes National Seashore. Horizons are beautiful in their simplicity. Engaging in their subtle complexity. Their moods are varied. They have endless color and texture possibilities. For all these reasons I never tire of them. But there’s another reason as well. Horizons are calming. Soothing. Stabilizing. Horizons are therapeutic. Stand on a bluff looking outward over the sea for only a few minutes, and if you’re like most people you’ll […]
June 14, 2011, the Tate Britain, London. If I had to pick one favorite artist, it would be J.M.W. Turner. I think of his work as the bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and in my opinion he often outdid both. I find his later work, especially, to be transcendent. In June 2011, my wife, nephew, and I went to Europe to visit family, surf (one of us), hike, and absorb culture. The first stop was […]
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