Here's Lookin' at Moo, kid!

This little cow was quite interested in what I was doing. Or perhaps she was simply enjoying the lovely early morning golden light!

A DSLR camera is the best toy!

A view of Mt Shasta from the airpark in Lake California. Shot from a low angle, used the Tamron 70-300 and edited in Lightroom 4. It was very windy, but I figured that if my foreground was out of focus, the wind blur would not be too much of a problem.

A pretty one from this eve. edits in Lightroom 4 which I am gradually learning to use.

 I recommend Phil Steele training videos. He gets it!

Wildflowers

I have forgotten about blogging for months. "The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." quoth Robert Louis Stevenson.
Working on learning my camera and Lightroom and having much fun!

 Some wildflowers across the street. I really like this low point of view with background trees and sky holes.

spring shooting is the best!

A view of Lassen from Cottonwood Creek via Lake California.

Taken with my Canon EF-s 17-55 f 2.8 lens, recently purchased from the used dept at Adorama Camera online.

#WWPW Foto Fun!

A real barber pole in downtown Redding, Ca, one shot from my feet during the Scott Kelby #WWPW worldwide photo walk event on Saturday, 10-14-12. I went with members of Shasta Photo Club at 8 a.m. and we walked the downtown area for a couple of hours.

Birdbath Roses taken with Canon 50mm 1.8

Surprised to note I haven't blogged since August; have been very busy but still taking pictures. I recently bought a 50mm canon 1.8 lens from a young guy on Craigslist and have been shooting quite a lot with just that lens. It is small and light and easy to carry around; will be using it next weekend for the Scott Kelby Worldwide photo walk with the Shasta Photo Club in Redding.

Cattle Pond Smokey Atmosphere

Smokey day at the cattle pond in Lake California, soon after the Ponderosa fire roared to life. Another photo shot with the Tamron 70-300. I like to shoot landscapes in portrait orientation so I get a greater feeling of distance.

Red Sunflower with Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6

A red sunflower shot at the community garden here in Lake California. There are a lot of fires in northern California right now so the sky is actually hazy gray. This photo was taken with the Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 vc lens. I am enjoying the reach of this longer lens; the picture quality is "good enough" for me.  The lens seems well-built, Tamron offers a 6 year warranty and with rebate the cost was only $350.00.

Cutie with the Tamron 70-300 mm f4-5.6 DI VC lens

From the backyard this a.m., I love the pose of this dragonfly! Might have benefited from a deeper dof but always choices to make.  The Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 DI VC lens is "good enough"  better than I expected and I will get a $100 rebate which makes it inexpensive, too. I am not a pro photog nor can I afford the pro quality gear for the most part. But I do like background blur and dslr image quality and the ability to shoot RAW cuz that gives me more creative freedom as an artist.

Tamron SP 70-300mm F4-5.6 VC on Canon T3i

After much reading of reviews, I purchased the Tamron 70-300mm F4-5.6 VC lens and here are a couple of images I took this a.m. So far I am quite pleased with the quality of the pix and the lens as well. Many review sites are maintained by pro photogs with pro gear and it is a little hard to find recommendations for a "good enough" lens for an amateur with the entry level dslr.

Skyscape in Lake California

Smoke is good for adding some atmosphere to a sunrise landscape photo with clouds. I got up early ;^) and enjoyed the morning.

Log and Thistles in Red Bluff

Got a chance to photograph  some of my favorite things this morning, like an old log with dried up thistles. Slight cloudiness and smoke in the atmosphere made for a more delicate light than is usual in August in northern California.

Game Trail Distant Hills

I like it when the big things look little and the little things look big, as in this wide angle/portrait orientation shot in the pasture. Also I see an advantage to batch processing those raw files to keep the look consistant (which I did not do). Slowly working thru the mountain of info available re: photography today. Might keep me busy for the rest of my life...

Deer on the way to Water

Another from the Sunday walk; the river is to the right. I saw two does and their two fawns heading toward the water. One of the fawns was limping. Not many predators around, so hope it will be ok.

Old Log in the Pasture Photo

On Sunday I went for a walk in the pasture by the river. It so reminds me of being a kid when I loved playing in the woods and fields. But now I have a nice camera to go with ;>)

Winsome Web

Beautiful webbing on the porch makes a soothing high-key photo. This was taken with the Canon t3i and macro lens 100mm 2.8 L. Going out to take more pictures NOW!

Foto Filter Turkeys in the Yard

Had some fun in photoshop with an image I took with the p&s yesterday. Yep, those are turkeys in a neighbor's front yard. The graphic pen filter gives a nice texture to the b&w image.

I decided to take my lightweight nikon L110 on my morning walk so I could exercise and take photos too. This camera is ez to use and has a long zoom, but it does not have manual settings so ya point, ya shoot and ya fiddle in photoshop. I was very surprised to see that the Canon zoombrowser ex software readily imported the jpgs from the sd card. Cool!

Lake California Fireworks

Out here in the country we have our own fireworks and celebration day on a weekend near the fourth of July. ;-) I had some trepidation about taking photos cuz it is a bit difficult to get those bright bursts recorded against the black sky; but, yay! I managed to get some reasonable shots for my first time.

Elements+ add on

Oh what fun it is to play...la la la! An add-on for pse called elements+ from simplephotoshop.com available here which I found thru photokaboom.com makes available a channel mixer in any version of elements. and a bunch of other stuff I haven't played with yet.
In other news, I got 4 Ansel Adams books @ the library today, The Camera, The Negative, The Print and The Eloquent Light.
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Hay Bales and Trees Acrylic Landscape Painting

Hey look, I made a painting from one of my recent photographs taken near the Equestrian Center in Lake California. This is 8" x10" acrylic on multimedia artboard, which I used for the first time and quite like! Fast and fun work using Chroma Interactive Acrylics.

Shasta Daisies in Shingletown

I went to Shingletown with my Sis yesterday and the fields were full of Shasta daisies. Then I found a tutorial on using a displacement map to add a custom border in Photoshop that works in Elements 9. Double the foto fun!

Mama Osprey

Better light this a.m. for capturing flying birds; also a lot of wind made her hover rather than swoop right in. Seems she is bringing a twig for the nest, tho the kids are getting pretty big now. These are the best photos I have gotten so far of osprey.

Using the circular polarizer

I got some practice in with the Hoya circular polarizer on the 18-135 mm lens. With the lens turned 90 degrees from the sun, turn the filter a little bit at a time with your finger until you see a difference in the image in the viewfinder or lcd. yay! it works.

It's a rainy day...

We had a rainy, haily afternoon in Cottonwood. I was so excited to get photos of the rapidly changing weather, including a double rainbow! But, umm, I changed my lens to the 18-135 zoom so I could get some wide angle shots and did not notice that the IS switch was turned to off. And my keys were in the house, my tripod in the truck so I did not use it either; consequently many shots were too blurry. Luckily photography is not my bread and buttah...

Sutter Buttes and Tomatoes

Sutter Buttes from Arbuckle, hazy atmosphere. In the foreground, a field of tomatoes; don't know what the middleground trees are. Shot this on the way home from Davis where I saw my college sophomore son in a play called "Dinner". Life is abundant.

Sunset in orange and purple

Taken from the N campground trail. I used to call this Cottonwood Creek, but I believe it is a part of the Sacto River which splits and rejoins itself.

Cottonwood Seeds

Cotton on the tree. I have not taken the good lens off my camera yet; it takes such beautiful photos. There are some wide-angle shots I will go back to get later. Reading Scott Kelby's Digital Photography Book 4, he suggests higher sharpening of the raw files and I am trying it.



 Canon gear, t3i+100mm f2.8L macro.

Cloud rainbow

Now and then we have these circular rainbows in the clouds; my sis hollered @ me to come out and get a photo. Also see the cotton bits floating here and there.

Sundown in Lake California

Sweet! from across the street, handheld, the Canon 100mm f2.8 IS macro lens. How I love this lens; I wanna marry it, yep. It takes beautiful landscape photos.

Not the Solar Eclipse

Sadly I did not have the glasses or solar filter for looking @ the sun and taking photos. It never seemed dark enough to risk it; I need my eyes! I love my camera! So I took some trios of photos with different exposures at the airstrip a few blocks away to process as hdr. I found a free program and instructions at wikihow while perusing an hdr flickr group and here is my first attempt. The cloud actually looks like a jet over the little plane on the airstrip.

Clouds in Red Bluff

I love clouds, and taking photos of them, too.

Osprey Mom

I was focused on the nest; camera on tripod, when the mom did a flyby to check on the kids. She didn't land, just flew back towards the river, hunting I suppose. Shot near my home in Lake California.

Porch lites

Some of our solar nite lites. About a 30 sec exposure to develop the starry look.

Last Class Shoot Red Bluff

Met with the photo class last eve in Red Bluff to do a night shoot. Bob Grace gave us lots of support and told me how to do light trails, what fun! Will definitely do more of this...
The class is over, but has given my photography journey a great start!

Sunset in Lake California 05-09-12

 I shot this last night @ the entrance pond; thanks to Bob Grace's photo class, I am developing some confidence with image capture. This old dog CAN learn! Arf, arf!

sundown and barb wire

Took some photos this eve down by the entrance to Lake California. Having a lot of fun learning to use my Canon t3i.

Homework in Red Bluff

My photography class is nearly over; next Sat is our final shoot. The homework assignment was to do a recon of the area in downtown Red Bluff and I got it done last night. I am particularly fond of window reflections photos; this was taken across from the post office.

My shot at the supermoon

I rented a
sigma 70-200 lens from Crown Camera to shoot the supermoon last night. I had gone out the night before to practice shooting the moon and realized my canon 18-135 just wasn't going to give me enough zoom.  Fyi the Sigma ex apo dg 70-200 f2.8 macro hsm lens weighs 3 lbs! fortunately it came with a tripod collar, a uv filter and a nice case and bonus! Crown Cam is not open on Sunday so I get to keep it until Monday for the reasonable price of $20! So, yeah, I will do some more shooting with it today. This is definitely the best image I have ever shot of the moon, tho I am struggling with post processing. I have Photoshop Elements 9, Canon's Digital Photo Professional that came with my camera and I downloaded a trial of Lightroom 4. Lr will probably be the winner, but I don't get how it works yet...

Photos from Lake California

Evening fun in the grass at the airpark in Lake California.

Cottonwood sculpture

 One of the metal sculptures that line our main drag in Cottonwood. I call him "Cal"; don't know if he has another name. There are some "dogies" and a little dog, too. My photography class is going out on an early a.m. shoot on Saturday which I am looking forward to but a little nervous about.

foto fun @ the creek

Yesterday I went to nearby Cottonwood Creek to practice shooting water.  So nice to have a couple of days of good weather; this spring has been rainy, gray and dreary. Reminded me of my childhood days to go play by the creek; but now I have a good camera to go with ;>)

picmonkey.com

I used a new online picture editor called picmonkey.com to process this ordinary photo of tulips into something different.  Heard about this site thru picnik.com which is soon closing.

teehee it's me

I set the timer and went around in front of the lens; focus was incorrect but once processed looks ok. Got the free version of Perfect Effects and used framing and toning from their presets. Too much fun!

Blended photos

Found some great instructions at photokaboom.com to blend photos in myriad ways. The site owner is a photog teacher in nyc who gives well-detailed instructions for ps elements. My kind of fun!

Rain in the hills around Lake California

Yes, I love the dimensional feeling you can get when adding vignetting; tho I have learned in photography class that this is a fault of shadow from the lens hood or similar. As an effect to bring the center forward it works well from an artistic standpoint imho. This photo is of a recent stormy day here in Lake California; I was shooting from the east side of the air strip.

Clouds in Lake California

I love to see those wonderful big puffy clouds; this scene was shot near the airstrip in Lake California where big sky views are possible. The Canon t3i is quite enjoyable to use!