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Showing posts from January, 2012

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Week 5 GPlus Project 52

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This this wee's theme was eye, and though I had originally thought I'd try to get a shot of an animal's eye, life was busy enough to force me into taking a semi-self-portrait. Converted the unsightly image to black & white, then brought back the color of the eye. I kind of wish I had blue eyes, or any other color but brown, but such is life. Cropped it so there was less of me and more eye, and there you go. Is it one of my favorites? Nope, but it works, and is slightly more interesting than the original out of camera shot. You can view this, and the rest of my Project 52 photos here .
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Waterfalls Revisited (Photocentric)

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It's been a little busy this week, so I didn't have much of a chance to get anything other than my Google+ Project 52 shot that I posted on Monday . I did literally revisit the nearby waterfall as kind of an "Oh yeah!" moment. It has been raining a bit lately, and I wasn't really equipped to be scrambling over slippery rocks, so I got a couple shots from a safe viewpoint. I'm hoping to get back there this weekend, if the weather permits. If you look at the water now, as compared to the last time I shot it  you can see the recent rain has made this fall a little more powerful. Without a tripod I wasn't able to try and blur the water, but I'm not sure how well that would have turned out anyway. Click to see larger
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Week 4 GPlus Project 52

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Click to see larger Four weeks in, and so far so good. This week's theme was "up", which was badly timed with the weather we had this past week: hard rain. I knew what I wanted to do for the shot, but wasn't sure how it was going to come out in practice. As the rain kept coming down I was beginning to start coming up with plan B, an inside shot. But I was drawing blanks for a site that had an interesting ceiling or interior for an "up" shot. Thankfully Saturday saw an opening in the weather long enough to get this shot. Technically this is three shots, as it's an HDR.
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Horse of Thirds (Photocentric)

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Picking up where I left off last week, today's post is another "reject" from my Google+ Project 52. Actually I think I like this shot aesthetically more than I liked the shot I chose. For starters I liked the subject more so than the bird from the submitted shot. I also liked the colors more. I did HDR this shot primarily to get more texture out of the horse's fur, but I don't feel it was overdone, though of course I realize I'm not in a position to judge that. I ended up not choosing this shot because I went with the more obvious example over this one, and I'm glad I did. Perusing some of the other entries for the theme I was left uncertain if some of them qualify. This exercise was enlightening as I think I discovered that the EVF (electronic view finder) doesn't cover 100% of the taken picture. When I originally took this shot I had the horse's eye right on the intersection of the bottom horizontal third and the left third of the picture. Bu...
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Week 3 GPlus Project 52

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Click to see larger Of the list of themes for the Google+ 52 Project, this week's was not expected to be difficult. Rule of thirds was the "theme", if you can call that a theme, and it's easy enough to show it, but I was having a hard time getting a shot off that I liked.
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Tech Stuff

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CES, the Consumer Electronics Show has come and gone. In the past I followed this closely to see what's coming, and check out the new tech. The problem with this show though is that nothing gets released anytime soon. If it comes out in 6 months that's considered quick. This year I paid only a little attention to CES. The "big" thing this year are smart TVs; TVs connected to the internet. Apparently 3D is being put on the back burner due to there not being a whole lot of content available and the need to have to wear stupid glasses while watching. The only thing I was hoping to see were color e-ink screens. There were a couple out there, but nothing that's coming out for mass production in a Kindle or Nook. Probably the coolest thing I've seen, and the one I look forward to adding to my house is Samsung's Smart Window. Check it out:
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Drops of Winter, Rejected (Photocentric)

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So my Thursday posts might be home to what I call my reject photos from the Google Plus 52 Project. These won't necessarily bad photos, but photos that I didn't feel worked for the current theme. Last week's theme was winter, and before I got to shooting I had a couple ideas for it. My favorite idea required a hard frost overnight, then taking some macro shots. Well the weather didn't exactly cooperate, so I was on to plan B. This shot was plan B, water droplets on an evergreen tree. I rejected the photo because it didn't really convey winter to me. It seemed too warm. I like the shot, though. The faint spider webs, the large drops, and the detail of the green was kind of neat to me. In fact when framing the shot I didn't even notice the webs, or the drops that were on them, so that was kind of neat to see when I was going over them. I did a little processing work on this in Adjust, primarily some detail sharpening, and the border. I'm not sure how I fee...
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Week 2 GPlus Project 52

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Last week's theme for the Google+ 52 project was Winter/Summer, depending on what side of the equator you're situated on. Winter in California has been difficult to photograph as there is no snow, and temps have been in the 60's with sunny cloudless skies. Initially I had hoped to capture an early morning frost that had been fairly common over the last month, but of course this last week there was none. I had captured some water droplets on an evergreen tree, that might make it to Thursday's post, but that didn't convey winter to me. I was getting worried by Wednesday when I had no potential shots, and even worse, no ideas.
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Treetops (Photocentric)

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In case you missed my earlier post , I'm taking part in a photography project for 2012 over on Google+ . Every week there's a new theme and we have some 7 days to plan, take, and if necessary process a shot. For more manageable for me than those 365 projects going on. The fact that there are laid out themes and a group of over 400!! to help motivate me I'm hoping to get through this. So what does that mean for this space? Basically I'll be trying to post a minimum of two photos weekly. Then one from the project and something else either from my archive or from an unrelated shoot. Today's shot is my first HDR shot of the New Year. The tree tops are a fixture in the backyard, and I took this shot of them on a lark. It originally came out looking very dull, which is fitting since it was a dull day light wise. HDRing it brought out the color of the trees and was a real start contrast from the dull grey of the clouds. Other than a little noise reduction on the under ex...
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Happy New Year

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Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's eve. This year, 2012, I have a couple of goals or projects (not resolutions) I'm hoping to achieve and will probably be chronicled on here, or on Google Plus. More than likely a little of both. Last year I posted 93 times to this blog, and this year I think I'll be improving on that.
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Popular posts from this blog

Running... Again?

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  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca...
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