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Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 San Francisco/California

Our BART Photo Tour

Car 28 - San Francisco - 2012

Yesterday, Doug Kaye and I headed out for another one of our duo photo walks. These are always great fun – as we get to catch up and chat while having a fun time photographing things that we see. We usually pick a venue and work it pretty thoroughly – but this time we tried something different.

The weather forecast looked like it might be a nasty day to be out and about – so Doug suggested we try hopping on BART and then getting off at a couple of the more interesting stations to just see what we could find that might be interesting.

Sounded like a plan – we agreed to meet at the Powell St. BART station – me arriving from Daly City and Doug from North Berkeley. We both got there within 5 minutes of each other and could see some blue sky up through the exit. So, instead of staying underground, we headed outside to Market Street and began taking pictures.

The one above is of the Muni cable car turntable at Powell and Market Streets. This image was shot with my Canon PowerShot S100 and post processed using Adobe Lightroom 4. Because of the weather and our original plan of mostly being underground, we both left our big cameras behind and just brought along small cameras – the S100 in my case and a brand new Fujifilm X-Pro 1 that Doug had rented for the weekend.

From there, we walked down Yerba Buena Lane to Yerba Buena Center where we explored “puddle photography” – taking pictures of reflections in puddles of water, glass reflections, the kids’ carousel, and more.

After lunch at Mel’s, we walked back to BART and headed toward the Glen Park station – apparently known for its architecture.

After that, on to SFO Airport and the Aviation Museum there. I’ve been to that airport hundreds of times – but never to the museum! We had fun talking with the curators there and were able to have some fun taking photos of an Italian motorcycle exhibit in the large International terminal. From there, we headed home – to begin looking at what we had captured during the day – some 115 images in my case!

It’s always fun to see what we each captured and what (and how) we choose to interpret our images in post-processing.

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iPhone 4S iPhoto Nik Software Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photography - Canon PowerShot S100 Photography - Canon PowerShot S90 Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Photomatix Pro Photoshop

What I’ve Learned about Photography in 2011

IMG_7971
“I’ve got you babe!” – Battery Mendell, Marin County, California

2011 turned out to be a big year for me in my pursuit of photography skills. As I reflect back on my learnings, I thought I’d try to write down the highlights of the year for me in this New Year’s Eve post.

Beginning with my purchase of my first digital SLR about five years ago (a Canon 30D which I purchased immediately after reading Doc Searls post about his evaluation of this camera!), I’ve been making steady progress learning more about both the most important shooting skills for capturing images as well as the post-processing techniques that can really help enhance an image.

For me, it’s all about trying to get it right at capture time in the camera – but then also maximizing the image’s beauty in post-processing. Among other things, I’ve learned that even if the capture isn’t perfect, the end result can still be stunning with the right post-processing. But, it all begins with trying to get the right image at capture.

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Blogs/Weblogs Cooking HDR Photography Living Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photography - Canon PowerShot S90 Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

The Most Popular Posts of 2011

The Golden Gate - New Year's Day - 2011
Clearing Winter Storm – Golden Gate Bridge – San Francisco, California

As we’re wrapping up 2011, I took a look back at what posts on this blog generated the most page views during 2011. Here’s the top twelve list (in honor of 2012!) – along with my commentary on each post:

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Nik Software OnOne Software Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Portland Topaz

Lone Rower on the Willamette

On the Willamette - Portland - 2011

Back in August, I wrote about this earlier shot I took along the banks of the Willamette River in downtown Portland, Oregon. That image was a very tight crop of a much larger shot I took with my Canon PowerShot S95.

The original photo can be seen below – with the lone rower far away! But I loved how he looked in this shot – looking over his right shoulder with his oars at the ready. It thought he was a great shot – but he was so far away!

For this version, I first cropped the image and then used OnOne Software’s Perfect Resize 7 to resize the image back up to about 3000 pixels wide. I then used Nik’s Viveza 2 to adjust the saturation and structure of the rower and his boat along with Color Efex Pro 4 to tweak detail definition and contrast. Topaz Simplify helped me deal with the water in the foreground – smoothing it out just enough to still be realistic but not too noisy.

Click on that image above to see the larger version – hope you enjoy it!

Here’s that original shot:

IMG 2006

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Black and White Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

Water Jugs Revisited

Water Jugs 2 - San Francisco - 2011

Back in September, I posted a black and white image of three water jugs that I took earlier at one of the restaurants at the Ferry Building in San Francisco using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95. I loved the black and white treatment I was able to create with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

This afternoon I played around a bit more with this image – basing my new treatment on that earlier post-processed black and white. I wanted to try some selective color enhancements to add some glow and depth to the image. Above is the result. Not sure why this image came to mind – but there’s something about it that I particularly enjoy and it drew me back to post-processing it again using some new techniques and new tools that I’ve been learning this fall.

This afternoon’s image certainly isn’t perfect – for example, I don’t like the subtle glow around the jugs or the bright lines on the bottle edges – but you get the idea of what’s possible from this version. In particular, the filters I used to enhance the image included Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 – especially detail enhancer to pull up the details of the condensation on the jugs – along with two Solid Color adjustment layers to add the tonality to the image and a final Selective Color adjustment layer to tweak the final colors.

For easy reference, below is the earlier black and white version. Click on either image to see the large version. Which do you prefer?

Water Jugs - San Francisco - 2011

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Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stanford

Breaking Away @ Stanford

Breaking Away - Trey Ratcliff @ Stanford - 2011

A couple of months ago HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff held a photo walk at Stanford University. It was a beautiful late afternoon – and some 200 photographers showed up to join Trey for his second photowalk around the Stanford Campus.

This shot was taken with my tiny Canon PowerShot S95 and post-processed in Photoshop using Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 – in particular the Details Enhancer and Cross Processing Filters.

I titled it Breaking Away – with the bicyclist heading home…ignoring the crowd.

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Nik Software Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stockholm Travel

Sunrise in Stockholm

Sunrise - Stockholm - 2011 by Scott Loftesness

Here’s an image from a recent visit to Stockholm, Sweden – shot just at sunrise with my tiny Canon PowerShot S95.

I did a bit of post-processing using a combination of David Nightingale’s curves adjustments along with Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4. I love how these colors turned out – they so captured my memory of this morning.

What do you think? Add your comment below.

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Black and White Golden Gate Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 San Francisco/California

Sail Away – San Francisco – 2011

Socked In - San Francisco - 2011

Yesterday, I headed north to Sausalito to join the Marin Photo Club’s charter boat heading out onto San Francisco Bay for the Blue Angels air show performance.

Coming north across the Golden Gate Bridge, the fog was still blowing through and under the bridge and created this lovely view toward the skyline of San Francisco. I shot this using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95 – handheld – from the View Point on the north side of the bridge.

When I noticed the sailboat in the image, I decided to post-process it a bit – using curves and masks in Photoshop CS5 to isolate adjustments in the sky/skyline, the fog, and the water/sailboat at the bottom of the image. A final curves layer added the toning – tweaking the blue and green colors just a bit.

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Compact HDR HDR Photography Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stanford

Back in Stanford’s Memorial Court – 2011

Memorial Court - Stanford - 2011

Last night I was walking to my Stanford Continuing Studies photography workshop as the skies were beginning to clear from our first of the season rainstorm. The clouds were richly textured and with the sunset glow reflecting off a portion. As I walked to class, my mind was still reeling from the news of Steve Jobs’ death that I had heard just a bit before. Somehow this image brought me back into focus.

This image is a 3-shot handheld HDR taken with my Canon PowerShot S95. It was post-processed in Photomatix Pro and Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 (details enhancer and tonal contrast) with the final tweaks, noise reduction, vignette, etc. applied in Lightroom 3.5.

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Cooking Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

Home Cooking – Petaluma – 2010

Home Cooking - Petaluma - 2010

Figured I needed to put up a cooking-related image (!), as this personal blog of mine continues to get more page views on my tri-tip steak recipes than almost anything else I’ve written about. Oh, and then there are the posts about my rotator cuff surgery – they’re pretty popular too!

Anyway, back to this image – shot at twilight in Petaluma last year as I was doing a photo walk with a workshop group. This image was pretty noisy coming out of my Canon PowerShot S95 – so I gave it a more painterly style using Topaz Simplify. I also desaturated it a bit – liking the more subtle toning in this version. One of these days I’ll have to go back to Petaluma and give Volpi’s Italian Ristorante at try!