Categories
iPhone 13 Pro Max Photography San Francisco/California Street Photography

Back to The City

For many years, I met my good friend and photo buddy Doug Kaye almost every week on Fridays in San Francisco. We’d meet at the Ferry Building and head out walking from there – exploring the streets of San Francisco in a most leisurely way. Taking our time when we saw something that captured our interest, a scene that seemed particularly interesting.

As our tastes evolved, we became increasingly drawn to finding places with the best light, the most interesting light. Chasing the best, most interesting light and then slowing down to capture slices of time – as people would pass through while we watched and waited.

After a couple of hours walking the streets, we’d find one of our favorite places for lunch, kick back a bit and take a breather, perhaps do a quick review of the images we’d captured, and enjoy each other’s company over a shared table.

Then Covid hit… and everything changed. Those walks on the streets of San Francisco just stopped. Our photography interests changed during Covid – they had to change! The circumstances forced our hands – we had to abandon our love of street photography. We no longer had our favorites streets to walk. The people were gone. You know the feeling…

Last week we reinvigorated some of those old memories – meeting up in San Francisco again after over two years of being absent. We traveled light – no heavy camera gear – and we did do a lot of street walking. We stayed along The Embarcadero, shared lunch outdoors at Waterbar and went to see the new exhibition that’s just opened at Pier 24. We had a great time – it brought back memories of those years we’d walked the streets.

Doug summed our time up nicely:

Yeah, it was a great day. Good weather, good food, good friends. Hard to beat.

Here are a few images from our time in San Francisco – all taken with my iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Categories
iPhone 11 Pro Max Menlo Park Photography

Saturday in the Park

Went for a walk on this lovely brisk January morning at Menlo Park’s Sharon Park.

iPhone 11 Pro Max Live photo – edited first in Photos (to change to Long Exposure) and add a bit of warmth. Next, edited in Snapped to add a touch of ambiance, a bit of negative structure (more painterly), and added a No. 12 black border (size: 20).

Categories
Photography San Francisco/California

Fun in San Francisco’s Chinatown and North Beach

Home Delivery - North Beach - 2012

I took a day off from work today to join my good friend Doug Kaye for a delightful photo walk in San Francisco’s Chinatown and North Beach neighborhoods.

Doug Kaye - San Francisco

We met at the Portsmouth Square Park/Garage – with handy underground parking that launches you right into the heart of Chinatown. It’s pretty amazing how your senses are soon overwhelmed when you emerge from the underground parking elevator into the park’s plaza. This park teems with energy – lots of folks, kids, etc just having a great time – even on a workday Thursday morning!

After exploring the park a bit, we headed out – up to Grant Avenue, over to Stockton St. and then across Broadway to Washington Square Park and North Beach. We stopped for a great lunch at Cafe Divine before heading back – up to Grant Avenue, back across Columbus and down Kearney to Portsmouth Square. That’s Doug out in the middle of Columbus Avenue shooting the Transamerica Pyramid!

Total mileage for our loop was 1.4 miles. We spent about 3-1/2 hours exploring, absorbing the many neighborhood smells, and having a great time shooting some fun images. Below is the map of our loop.

Gmap pedometer chinatown northbeach 29mar2011 600px

Categories
HDR Photography Lightroom Photography Photomatix Pro Photoshop

A Better Approach to HDR Processing Workflow with Adobe Lightroom

Last year, I wrote a bit about my mid-2011 photography processing workflow. I talked about how, for single-image HDR processing using RAW images, I would open them in Photomatix Pro rather than using Lightroom’s export image capability. I also wrote how, for HDR bracketed images, I did use Lightroom’s export image capability to convert them to JPEGs for processing in PhotoMatix pro.

My friend Doug Kaye has shared his new insights about a better workflow for HDR processing – one that maximizes the dynamic range available for post-processing rather than limits it as the Lightroom export flow automatically does. Be sure to read his insights – along with those of Klaus Herrmann who introduced the notion creating extended EV value images as TIFF files from the original bracketed RAW images in his article “Creating HDR Images the Right Way.” If you have comments for Doug, please share them on his Google+ post.

Categories
Black and White Golden Gate Lightroom Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II San Francisco/California

New Year’s Day 2012 at the Golden Gate

New Year's Day - San Francisco - 2012

In what’s become sort of a tradition for me, on New Year’s Day I head for the Golden Gate and see what I can find to start the new year off right.

Today, my favorite venue was blocked by construction fencing – so I headed to my next favorite venue – Baker Beach. I happened to arrive just as the California Hornblower sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge.

This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II and then processed tonight in Photoshop using Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2 before importing into Lightroom 3 for final cropping (16:9), toning, sharpening and noise reduction.

There were a lot of people enjoying Baker Beach when I shot the original image – but they were removed using the content-aware healing brush in Photoshop CS5 – yielding this final image. I’m sure they don’t mind! 😉

Categories
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.

Categories
Black and White Marin Headlands Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Rodeo Beach

A Beautiful Day at Rodeo Beach

I Got You Babe - Battery Mendell - 2011

My good friend Doug Kaye and I headed out today to the Marin Headlands – in particular, Battery Mendell up high on the cliffs and, down low, Rodeo Beach itself. I’ve yet to process most of the photos from this walk with Doug – but I did especially like the image above – a couple walking along the cliffs near Battery Mendell. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Doug is helping plan a photo walk at Rodeo Beach after Christmas – details here.

[Update: here are some great shots taken from the photowalk posted over on Google+.]

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
Nik Software Photographers Photography Photoshop

The Images of Edward Sheriff Curtis

This afternoon I began exploring the images of American photographer Edward S. Curtis archived at the Library of Congress. You can learn more about him here.

There’s a treasure trove of public domain images in his collection at the Library of Congress – and I was looking for new subjects to experiment with some Photoshop post-processing techniques. So I picked a couple of his images and went to work.

The first is this image he titled “Kutenai Duck Hunter” – below is my processed version:

Kutenai Duck Hunter - Adaptation of Edward Curtis - 2011

I ended up with fourteen or so layers in Photoshop making adjustments to this image. It was a fascinating experience as I tried to apply some of my recent learnings to this image!