Last Sunday I headed to the San Mateo Event Center for Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 – joining my photo buddy Doug Kaye for the third year we’ve shot this event together.
This image is from the Steampunk area at Maker Faire – one of my favorites spots – where they had a table setup for folks to create their own Steampunk Goggles.
This image was shot with a Nikon D600 and post-processed in Lightroom 4.
This image, shot recently at San Francisco’s City Hall during a photo walk with Doug Kaye, breaks many of the “rules” of good photography.
But, rules are made to be broken, right?
And, what’s most important is to enjoy and have fun with images – and this one seems to do that. Hope you enjoy it!
Image shot with my Nikon D600 and post-processed in Lightroom 4.4.
For the first time, I attended the San Francisco Saint Patrick’s Day Parade a few weeks ago. The event is a great time – lots of wonderful street photography opportunities!
This image is of the firefighters’ section of the parade – one of the largest units. I enjoyed seeing these guys have a great time driving their old time fire engine, smoking a couple of cigars and enjoying the crowd!
The image was shot with a Nikon D600 and post-processed in Lightroom and Photoshop using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 plus some other tricks.
One of the things I’m always looking for when out shooting is a puddle – something that can be used to shoot reflections.
Here’s a shot based on a big puddle – a hotel swimming pool – shot shortly after sunrise. I loved how the palms were shimmering in the surface of the pool’s water.
I used Lightroom and one of Trey Ratcliff’s Lightroom presets to process the image- Infrared Morning to help create the effect. Naturally, I also flipped the image upside down so that the trees look semi-normal!
I felt a bit like I was back in Havana watching some of the classic cars that turned out yesterday to carry dignitaries in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade in San Francisco. This 1947 Chevrolet was one of the beauties!
I had fun processing this image in Photoshop – tweaking the background a bit to bring the car out more and adjusting the luminosity a bit. I love the angle of the car – the beauty of the chrome on the front grill – and that tail flying off of the radio antenna!
This morning I headed up to San Francisco to try my hand at some street photography during the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. This parade is a big deal in San Francisco – and it was my first time heading out to try to shoot it. In hand, I had my Nikon D600 with the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens
But, before the parade began, I headed to another one of my favorite San Francisco venues – Yerba Buena Gardens. As I left Menlo Park this morning, we were fogged in – and I wondered what I would encounter weather wise as I got to San Francisco. As it turned out, no fog and brilliant morning sunlight washed across the beautiful Yerba Buena scene.
As I headed into the gardens, I noticed a lot of steam rising from over by the waterfall. As I headed closer, I could see a fellow was using a high pressure water blaster to clean the payment around the waterfall. This turned into a classic example of a “stage” – a place where you think something interesting is going to happen and you plant yourself as a photographer and just wait for it to unfold.
Earlier, he was working in the shadows to the left – a relatively uninteresting area given the poor light. But when he came out into this area – and began working the pavement and tiles being lit by the morning sun, everything got a lot more interesting. As I was shooting it, I thought this would probably work out best as a monochrome – but I left in just a touch of selective color on the worker’s face and hair. Such beautiful light!
Floats, fishing nets and chains – from inside one of the buildings at China Camp Village. I loved the light, the pile and texture of the nets and the random nature of the chain and float. Definitely one of those “in the moment” shots!
Shot with my Canon PowerShot S100, edited in Lightroom 4.3 using Trey Ratcliff’s Lightroom Presets (Marketstreet).
Just east of San Rafael in California’s Marin County lies China Camp State Park. It’s a beautiful setting on the west side of San Francisco Bay and delights with a number of stunning Bay views. Among the more interesting spots is the China Camp Village – site of this dock, a beach area, picnic tables and the Quan Bros. snack shop (open on weekends). It’s a delight – and a wonderful place for photography.
I had some used lenses to try out that I’d gotten from my late friend Chris Gulker and decided to head to China Camp for the first time to try them out. This particular image, however, was taken with my trusty Canon 5D Mark II looking down the dock at China Camp Village. I post-processed it using Lightroom 4.3, Photoshop CS6, and Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 filters. I purposely subdued the tone of the image a bit to an almost film like quality – preferring this version to the brighter one I originally shot as it came straight out of the camera.
Note: Lots of photographers use neutral density filters to smooth the water via a long exposure setting. Here’s a great example of one of those kinds of images – shot by Swee Oh on a recent long exposure photo walk. I don’t yet own a neutral density filter – so this shot is just a normal one with the subtle waves showing in the Bay water.
For the last few years, I’ve had a tradition of heading out on January 1st for some San Francisco photography – always of the Golden Gate Bridge – but usually some other spots as well.
Today was bright and sunny – although not especially clear. My first stop was on the hill up by the Cliff House above Ocean Beach. This is such a simple shot – shooting straight down the beach – and it captures the late morning mood on the beach perfectly.
Shot with my Nikon D600, I post-processed the image in Lightroom 4.3 using Trey Ratcliff’s Lightroom Presets which added the dreamy effect and tones. This particular preset is named “Under the Stars” and is in package 3.
After Ocean Beach, I headed into the Presidio and on to Baker Beach where I caught this view of the Golden Gate – I titled it “Smooth”.
Here’s a final photo of the space shuttle Endeavour departing Menlo Park and heading for Moffett Field and points south.
This version – the last of the shots I took Friday morning as Endeavour passed overhead – shows a wonderful sun angle complemented by treatment in Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and Adobe’s Lightroom 4 to darken the sky and kick up the contrast just a bit. A friend suggested it needed some clouds in the sky – but I don’t think so!
Seeing Endeavour pass overhead was a special experience for me – an emotional one. Hard to believe that we’ve now retired these amazing orbiters – the ones we came to marvel at when they launched so beautifully in the Florida sky and that we wept for when they didn’t return home again. Endeavour’s now heading home. I hope the spirit of the space shuttle program lives on – it was an amazing time!
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