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.