This morning I headed out to University Avenue and Cowper Streets in downtown Palo Alto for a look at this year’s Italian Street Paintings. The annual street paintings (done in chalk by artists from around the country) are part of the Palo Alto Festival of the Arts 2010. Here’s one example – click on it to see the full Flickr set.
[Update – 9/4/10: Most of my Point Reyes workshop photos are in this set on Flickr.]
I’m just back from a weekend photo workshop at Point Reyes.
The photo workshop was led by Dave Wyman and Ken Rockwell. About a dozen of us spent two intense days photographing Tomales Bay, Point Reyes and environs – some great fun and challenging photography!
For a great tour description of the Point Reyes area, be sure to read the Point Reyes series of posts by Margaret Husband (with photos by Tom) on their excellent California Travels blog.
Well, maybe not exactly “sail”…
Heading north today I diverted into Sausalito for this photo of Andrey Melnichenko’s yacht “A”. Pretty awesome stuff just sitting there cooling its heel (or rudders!).
Click here to see a bigger version!
I got going early this morning to head over to the Palo Alto Concours d’Elegance sponsored as an annual event by the Palo Alto Lions Club. It’s pretty amazing to get there early and watch the cars arrive – often with their owners in period costume!
Today, like last year, was going to be a hot one. I finally faded about 10 AM – just before Brian Douglas took to the air on KSFO with his auto show.
Here’s a set on Flickr of the post-processed shots from my time at the Concours. These were shot using my Canon 5D Mark II – in Aperture priority. They were post-processed using Adobe Lightroom 3 and Photomatix Pro as single image HDR’s.
A bit abstract perhaps, but I enjoyed how they turned out – and I certainly didn’t feel like lugging a tripod around to shoot multi-image HDR’s!
I was reminded by Chris Gulker’s ’56 Chevy post on our InMenlo.com blog that this Sunday is the annual Concours d’Elegance at Stanford – a benefit for the Palo Alto Lions Club. I attended for the first time last year – and had a great time shooting some great classic cars! Here’s a link to my photo set on Flickr from last year’s event.
Below is another great shot – taken in the classic campground area – of a Teardrop camping trailer. This is an enhanced image – transformed the original Raw file from the 5D into a high dynamic range (HDR) image using Photomatix Pro and cropped to a 16:9 form factor.
I had fun yesterday shooting the Marine Corps Harriers as they made several low passes over the Vertical Challenge Airshow sponsored by the Hiller Aviation Museum. The two Harriers were from Marine Attack Squadron 513 (VMA-513) known as the Flying Nightmares. I was using my Canon 5D Mark II with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and a 1.4x teleconverter.
Very early yesterday, I headed into Yosemite National Park for a quick one day photo shoot – with my Canon 5D Mark II and Canon PowerShot S90 in hand. You can see some early results in my Yosemite Flickr set here.
Most of the photos I shot with the 5D were shot on a monopod – good for some stability and sharpness in the individual images but not good enough for post-processing HDR images without aligning the photos.
A few tests confirmed that Photomatix wasn’t nearly as good as Photoshop CS5 at aligning the 3 raw images I had shot for each capture. So my workflow evolved into the following:
That’s it – a bit complicated. Makes me want to go invest in a good tripod – to avoid the need to auto-align the images!
Earlier this week, Doug sent me an email asking if I’d be interested in joining him for a photowalk at today’s Maker Faire 2010 being held in San Mateo. What perfect timing! I’m coming off a dreadful week at work – looking for a bit of time outdoors and anxious for more exercise! (With Chris and Linda off in France, my twice-weekly walks with Chris just aren’t happening!)
Even better, my right shoulder is now essentially back to 100% – after my dreadfull “massive tear” just about a year ago. Since that tear happened, my “big camera” – Canon 5D Mark II – has just been sitting in its case, having been replaced by my little Canon Powershot S90 – something I could manage with the shoulder mostly out of commission. While I’ve great fun with the S90, I’ve been looking forward to getting back out with the 5D Mark II!
So, this morning I took Caltrain from Menlo Park to the Hillsdale Station and walked the 10 minutes to the Maker Faire event. What great fun it was – lots of fun stuff to photograph in great (if a tad bit cool) weather. Doug and I spent almost four hours doing a big loop of the Faire grounds – shooting til our heart’s content!
Mostly, we were shooting with our 70-200mm zooms – firing them wide open (f/2.8) in aperture priority to maximize the bokeh backgrounds. Doug’s a Nikon shooter (D90) while I’m a Canon. Check out our Flickr sets – here’s Doug’s and here’s mine!
Thanks again to Doug for the invite – it was great fun to be back in action with the big camera again!
For the first time, I headed over to Stanford early this morning to the Concours d’Elegance sponsored by the Palo Alto Lions Club. This annual event brings together car fanciers (I’m actually not one!) from all over northern California. And, what an amazing assortment of cars they brought!
I was looking for a little “fun in the sun” with the Canon 5D Mark II camera – and enjoyed myself in spite of the relentless heat as the morning warmed continuously!
My full collection of Concours photos are available on Flickr. Below is my favorite – a very early morning shot of a Ferrari – all by itself on the field at the time.
Unfortunately, I jumped from a Blackberry to an iPhone 3G last August shortly after the new 3G was introduced. I say unfortunately because the iPhone 3GS is the phone I really wanted – but didn’t get. Let me explain.
I’m a payments professional by day and an aspiring photographer otherwise. The photo and video features of the iPhone 3GS are just about ideal for a go anywhere device that’s always in your pocket. The new iPhone’s everyday photo/video capabilities coupled with a high-end digital SLR (in my case, the Canon 5D Mark II) for those special photo shooting occasions are just about everything I might need to satisfy my photography desires!
Would I love to upgrade from my iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS for its enhanced photography features? Absolutely. But, then there’s AT&T – who thinks I haven’t owned my iPhone 3G long enough to qualify for the best pricing on the 3GS. Based upon the pricing signals AT&T is sending to the market, they’d prefer that I stay with my original iPhone 3G for at least another year.
For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).
The result? I’ll most likely be skipping an iPhone 3GS upgrade this cycle – and just living with my 3G until June 2010 when my current bondage to AT&T is exhausted and complete. I really don’t want to give AT&T another $200-$300 for an upgrade!
Who knows – by June 2010 I might be even happier with the mid-2010 rev of the iPhone – perhaps available then on another wireless network other than AT&T?
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