While heading to the Anderson Collection at Stanford I stopped by Andy Goldsworthy’s sculpture Stone River which lies in the field just across the street. Built from fragments from Stanford buildings damaged in the 1989 earthquake, it’s beautifully crafted and well worth a visit. All of these images were made with my iPhone 11 Pro Max.
From a recent afternoon photo walk with my Fujifilm X100F. The days are warming but the sun angle is still low in the sky. Her shadow in perfectly parallel to the wall itself – walking directly into the sunlight.
I got serious about losing weight three years ago. In addition to watching portion sizes when eating, the keys to my success in this journey have been:
Simple.
We had lunch today at a restaurant on Palo Alto’s University Avenue. Sitting at a window table, I did some experimenting with manual focus on my Fujifilm X100T as folks walked by that window – capturing their profiles. The film emulation was Fujifilm’s new Classic Chrome – these are JPEG’s from out of the camera.
Here are some more of the images.
One of my favorite local restaurants is Evvia at 420 Emerson St. in Palo Alto. A long time favorite, this restaurant serves up great Greek and Mediterranean cuisine. In addition to the great food, the setting is also superb – with lots of texture, color and ambiance.
Here’s a shot from a lunchtime visit last August when I happened to take along my then-new Fujifilm X100S. I happened to have a table right across from the oven – and loved this scene with the bread and bread baskets piled high and the copper cookware hanging from the rack above.
This image is straight out of the X100S (shot as a JPEG) with a bit of vignette added in Lightroom 5.
I recently took a 1:1 workshop with Jaime Ibarra – wanting to learn more about his technique for post-processing images. His approach to post-processing is strikingly different – and one which I enjoy. And he’s also an amazing photographer as well!
Jaime and I spent a couple of hours together via Skype video talking about both his approach to photography, some new challenges for me, and then his approach to post-processing images in Photoshop. I’ve been to several photography workshops over the last couple of years – but this one was really unique and different – and I learned a lot!
Frankly, I expected our time together would focus mostly on post-processing – but we spent a lot of time upfront talking just about photography, what it means to us, how we approach it, how we’re challenged by it, etc. That discussion was surprising for me – and enlightening. Great fun. Perhaps even more useful to me in terms of my wanting to learn about portrait shooting than the post-processing techniques Jaime subsequently shared.
So, what did I learn? Here’s an example of an image I both shot and post-processed earlier today using some of what I learned from my workshop with Jaime. The colors are different – not exactly unusual, but different. Different enough to matter and capture the mood. The venue is the California Avenue Farmers Market in Palo Alto. The image is titled “Karmel Korn” – shot with my Canon 5D Mark II with the Canon 135mm f/2 lens.
Thanks to both Trey Ratcliff and Victor Cajiao for introducing me to Jaime.
It’s fun to get to make repeat visits to interesting locations at different times of year with varying weather conditions, etc. For example, I do a lot of photography at Stanford – where I have my favorite spots that I enjoy seeing with different sun angles, cloudy vs. blue skies, etc. Looking back at my portfolio of Stanford images, I can also see how I’ve improved over time (or, at least changed!) – and that’s fun to observe and reflect on.
Another recent subject this week has been the Bill Bliss Memorial Sculpture in the Palo Alto Baylands. I blogged about it a couple of days ago. Yesterday, while taking my car into the dealership for service, I was near the Baylands again – this time with a wicked morning sky as a front was moving through the San Francisco Bay Area. I made a quick detour down to the sculpture, grabbed my little Canon PowerShot S95 out of my backpack (it’s always with me – like my iPhone 4 – who’d imagine we’d be walking around with multiple cameras these days?!).
The image above comes from a 3-shot exposure bracketed sequence shot handheld – and post-processed in Photomatix Pro, Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom. It’s different than the ones I shot a few days back – and that’s why I like it!
You must be logged in to post a comment.