New Seascapes

I spent the last two Sunday evenings down at Crystal Cove doing some sunset practice.  Been so busy with work lately that I haven't had much of a chance to really take time and focus on landscapes.  December is always great in Southern California for colorful sunsets, plus it gets dark early so I can still be home for dinner.  Below are some of my favorites from both nights.

More here:

Crystal Cove Sunsets

In the RAW

Since I started with digital photography I was mixed on the raw vs. jpg wars.  RAW is clearly superior but such a pain to deal with huge files when compared to the compressed jpeg renderings.  Such a pain, that is, until the advent of Lightroom.  Lightroom leveled the playing field by making dealing with either file type a seamless operation.  Since that day I have switched full time to raw and never looked back.

Life was good, load all my .CR2s into LR, convert to DNG, and very light processing in LR to get them ready for the web.  Since installing Lightroom I had always kinda fudged my way through the develop module tweaking and turning different settings until I got something that roughly resembled a good looking image.  For any heavy lifting I would always turn to Photoshop, of course then I not only had a 10mb raw file to archive, I now had a 40ish meg PSD file to keep track of.  Even with cheap disk space that seemed wasteful and because my computer is in desperate need of an overhaul, the less time I spent waiting for Photoshop the better. 

So I finally broke down and bought a book, it has turned out to be the best purchase of my insanely successful photographic career (aside from Lightroom, of course).  The book is Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3.  This book has filled in the pieces to the puzzle that I never knew existed in my mind.  It takes you step by step and simplifies each section of the all-powerful ACR4.  I now do 90%+ of my post processing directly in Lightroom and PS is reserved for special cases like panoramas & HDRs.  The LR & ACR combo is unbeatable.

From one hand it can spit out technically impeccable jpegs, sure to appease even the pickiest of istock noise & artifact nazis.  On the other hand you are free to make your creative vision come to fruition with the entire suite of adjustments available at your fingertips. 

Below are some of the more "artsy" images that I have created solely in LR (click for larger view).

I especially like the control you can get into with the grayscale conversion, makes it possible to give the photo a real textured feel that has eluded me in the past.

US Open 2008

One of my all time favorite photography-for-fun outings is going to the US Open of Surfing that's held every July in Huntington Beach.  I managed to get there around 6:30am and find plenty of free parking, which is nice as by early morning the place is positively packed.  This was the first time shooting any sports with my 40D.  While squeezing the shutter and firing off 6 frames each second is fun, I made an effort to shoot single frames at the peak of the action.  I still managed to fill up 8 gigs worth of CF cards in a few hours and called it a day before I got too scorched.

Local HB'er Brett Simpson was the crowd favorite, made it all the way to the semi finals but Tim Boal managed to just squeak by 12.0 to 11.93.

The final heat had Tim Boal and Nathaniel Curran with Curran pulling off the win.

Full gallery from Sunday can be found here:

US Open 2008 - Hutington Beach, CA

San Francisco Trip

Just got back from a long weekend in San Francisco and had a blast.  Got to break in my new 40D and 24-70 2.8L glass.  This was a non-working holiday for sightseeing and hanging out with family, still managed some good shots in the limited time we had.

 
This was the view out our hotel room window.  We stayed at Villa Florence on Powell right by Union Square, nice rooms but pretty noisy.

Fort Point lighthouse right underneath golden gate bridge.

 

A 7-shot panorama stitched together in CS3.  Full-size file is roughly 81 megapixels.

3-shot vertical panorama.

My absolute favorite panorama.  Thinking about getting a 60x10 canvas print for my big empty wall.  I think it would look best on a fotoflot but at such a thin ratio they only go up to 30x5, which is too tiny.

I took a variety of these around union square one evening and this is the best by far.  I really like how still the people are in the center with the craziness around them.  6/10 @ f22

So many pictures, so little time.

It's been a crazy and exciting couple of weeks, still trying to catch my breath and get caught up with post processing & uploading. 

First, there was my first trip to Big Sur.  Originally planned to go their for a friend's wedding but decided to make it into an extra long 4 day weekend.  So much to see there, need to go back for an extended trip and just focus on photos, every turn in the road is a new opportunity.  I managed to get up for sunrise every morning.  I had rented a tilt-shift lens to get more practice with panoramas, some were successful, others weren't.  Here are some of my favs.

 

 
Sunrise from Lucia Lodge

Sunrise on Sand Dollar Beach

Pacific Valley bluffs

Limekiln State Park

 
Limekiln State Park

The setting for the wedding was incredible, in the forest with a nice bridge and running stream.  Proper exposure proved to be more challenging than expected because of lack of light under the trees, was equipped with the 24-70 2.8L lens but wish I had brought the 50 1.8, good thing I was just a guest.  Got a couple breaks with the sun coming through the canopy and smoke from campfires added extra ambience.

Immediately following this weekend was the fires that filled up my entire week with obsessive shooting, see previous post.

The following weekend I drove down to Yuma, AZ to hit the dunes as a favor to a friend.  There was a meet up of 1/5th scale R/C car enthusiasts.  I'm still an r/c dork at heart so it was interesting, but entirely too hot in the desert.

This weekend took some conceptual shots for stock usage, we'll see how they turn out.  Next weekend off to Maui for 8  days, boo hoo.  I keep promising to pack light in the camera department but don't know what will happen.  It would be a shame to leave the 100-400 at home and miss some freak giant waves at jaws.

Brush Fire in Irvine

We got home last night from our Big Sur trip shortly before this fire broke out. I resisted the urge to go out and shoot that night because I was beat but decided to get up early to see what I could see. Since my previous brush fire pictures are some of my best sellers in iStock I thought it would be worth it.

It's been my experience that it is much easier to find a place to park and just walk to a good location rather than dealing with the traffic and road closures. I initially parked in the shopping center at the corner of Sand Canyon & Irvine Blvd. I was walking across the street in front of a barricade when the officer manning it asked if I was there to take pictures. Considering I had my tripod with 400mm lens slung over my shoulder I thought it a silly question. I told her I was and she said if I wanted to go get my car she would let me through the barricade to get closer. What luck! I unknowingly fooled her into thinking I was some sort of professional.

Once inside the protected area I drove for about a half mile before foolishly consulting another of Irvine's finest on where I could go. He asked to see my credentials (doh!) and when I couldn't come up with any made me turn around, which I did with my tail between my legs. Next time I am in such a situation it is key to pretend like I actually know what I'm doing there.

I retreated back down Irvine Blvd and grabbed some sunrise shots through the smoke. They opened Irvine back up a few minutes later so I went through and turned down Modjeska Cyn. right into the heart of Portola Springs. This entrance was blocked off about 10 minutes later so I got lucky and was able to get up close & personal with some fire and got a face full of smoke & ash.

More Santiago Fire Pictures

Hummingbirds

I recently started trying my hand at hummingbird pictures. These little devils are so fast it's hard to get a good clear shot. Initially I was juicing up the ISO and shooting wide open to get the fastest shutter speed, then realized that there is a much easier way. Shooting around f8 I set my 430EX flash off to the side and try to stick the shutter somewhere in the 1/200 - 1/300 range. I have been experimenting with a couple different methods and so far have had the best results using rear curtain synch. The hummers seem to get spooked by the flash and/or the loud shutter on my rebel XT. If they are sitting at the feeder and I take the pic they flap their wings a few times. The pictures that are captured are funny looking with the wings sometimes covering their eyes or head. With the rear synch the flash fires and freezes them with wings fully extended.... Usually a much more interesting pose. Although they seem to be getting used to the sound and having me so close so sometimes they don't react at all to the shutter.

Our feeder is hung in a nice spot, shaded in the afternoon sun but the tree directly behind it gets full light. Shots with the flash are filled in nicely and the background has good exposure as well. This afternoon I came up with some of my sharpest ones yet.




Full gallery can be seen here:
http://scottvickers.smugmug.com/gallery/3547976