Towers in the Mist

I took this picture at another of my favorite places, the Bolsa Chica Wetlands.

It's a small area of wetlands, restored and preserved near an oil field.

I love it because it is a place where I can go and be still. The only way even to see sting rays, sea slugs, or busy little fish swimming is to stand very still and watch, letting ones eyes unfocus ever so slightly so as to see under the water.

I love it because during the late spring and summer the air is full of terns, circling, wheeling, yammering, and yelling at one another but very little troubled by the humans.

I love it because it is within sight of a major highway and is still dotted with oil wells and is fully alive and set apart in its own space.

I love it because it is full of plants with names like "pickleweed," "saltwort," and "bladderpod."

I love it.

On the day this picture was taken, a heavy mist had come in from the beach. It was shadowy and silent in this world of water, and the birds were quiet, waiting for warmth and light.

I followed one of the paths inland, and in a very little while I had left the fog behind and found myself walking on a warm, sunny day. Birds sang, the breeze blew, and I could hear the cars on the road.

A few steps later, I turned around and found that I was reentering the white, chilled, still unknown place.

A Few of My Favorite Things

The current batch of pictures up in my ArtID gallery were all taken in the Huntington Beach Central Park, one of my favorite places.

For one thing, one of the two best libraries in the world (in my own humble opinion, and based on an admittedly limited selection) is there. Libraries are always nice--after all, they have BOOKS in them, lots and lots of lovely free books--but this one adds plenty of plants, fountains, large windows, and a downstairs coffee shop to the list of admirable qualities.

The other reason is the park itself. It is large, big enough that it takes a long time to walk around even the one half, the half with the library in it. It is peaceful, too, and extremely well landscaped. There's plenty of smooth, green grass for picnicking, but there are also wilder areas, areas where the trees have been allowed to twist together and where the undergrowth hides rabbits and squirrels. Birds claim twigs and trees for their territory, squirrels dig in the gardens, and lizards sun themselves on the rocks.

Every time I go there, I find new peace.

Extreme Photoshop

The trouble with extreme photoshop edits is that they are just so much fun.

Trees

One of the things that frustrated me to no end when I first began to take pictures was my inability to capture trees.

Oh, I could take pictures of trees, and they would look like trees, but there was never anything in the image to say why I had taken the picture: Why that tree and not some other? What made it special? I kept getting images of leaves, bark, root, and sky all stuck together, but never anything that said "Tree."

Now, I finally think I'm starting to get it. The trees are beginning to show up as individual personalities, as groves, as single, knotted elders, as shapes against the sky, as trees.

Of course, perfection is still out of reach, but that is what makes it fun.

Still Playing with Photoshop

Some more moody trees, again just because.

Listening with My Eyes

Someone once looked at some of my pictures and said that I was "listening with my eyes."

I'm not entirely sure what she meant, but it is true that, at least at this point, taking photographs means slipping into another mode, one where I'm concentrating on seeing almost to the exclusion of all else.

I usually have to take a couple of "throwaway" pictures when I set out, just to warm up.

And I can't do it and talk with someone else, not very well anyway. On walks I take with other people, I tend to take one or maybe two pictures at most. The dog, on the other hand, makes an excellent companion. She doesn't talk much and is quite happy to stop and sniff things while I take pictures. She doesn't always understand why I stop when I do--I may pass up several delightfully smelly trees before I pause at some not very interesting grass, but she's quite cheerful about the whole thing. And, sometimes it pays to stop when she wants to and take a look around.

It turns out that I can't listen to music on walks, either. I've been out a few times this week with the MP3 player, and even though the music is familiar, I still didn't end up taking many pictures.

So, yes, I guess I am listening with my eyes.

Photoshop

I have long standing love/hate relationship with Photoshop, one that has only deepened as I've taken the photography class this semester.

Consider the following pictures--or rather picture. The first has not been photoshopped at all--it's what came out of the camera. One is pretty much "normally" photoshopped, that is, the color and levels have been tweaked a bit to bring out what is there, but nothing has really been altered--it looks like what I saw and fairly faithfully reproduces a pleasant evening in the park.

The second has been far more drastically altered. It's now a somewhat psychedelic sunset, no longer peaceful, and no longer much like the evening on which I took it. It's fun, but where does it fall on the scale of things? Does it even qualify as a photo any more or is it something else ("digital art," a term I'll figure out one of these days)? Or does that take more drastic changes still? Is it "Art" or just scribbling with crayons (metaphorically speaking)? I had fun making it, but it definitely no longer reflects "what was really there."

Added to that, of course, is the whole printer-computer relationship: When printed, none of these will look quite like what they do on screen, which means I'll probably have to tweak some more.

Not Just Roses

Yes, we grow things other than roses in the garden.

Also, I'm finally starting to figure out how to use the Macro setting on my camera. One thing I finally figured out: It will not work on the Auto setting.

Some More Pictures from Out and About

This is sea lavender--unless, of course, it isn't.















Looking down.














No description needed.

Serendipity

A photo from my files.

*******

Sometimes we plan.

Sometimes, things just work out right.

This was a bit of both.

I had the camera, I went on the walk, I was looking.

I wanted to get the butterfly, a bee, and a flower all in one frame.

But I could never, ever have gotten the bee to rear back just so, or the butterfly to turn its antenna at just that angle.

I wouldn't have thought to ask, even had I known how.

I love it when things come together this way…

Notebook Photos/Lab Time

I spent most of this morning & part of the afternoon in the photo lab messing around with pictures.

They have lovely, lovely Apple computers dedicated just to pictures. And, they've a marvelous pair of printers & printers & monitors are calibrated to work together. This does not mean that pictures always print out the way I decide I want them; I've used a lot of paper & spent a lot of time asking the lab instructor questions.

Like any really marvelous machine, the printers themselves are complicated and confusing. I keep thinking I've figured everything out and then learning about a new menu I need to look at. There are, for example three different places to tell the printer what kind of paper it has, and if they don't match, neither does the picture.

It's great to be in there, though, fooling around with images and watching other people do the same & discussing pictures & picture changes.

It's not something that, even a year ago, I would have thought to do, much less enjoy.

New tools, new skills!

One of the recent assignments in my photography class was to take pictures with light in mind, particularly to think about its color.

This involved doing things like getting up at 5 AM and taking the dog for a walk to see the morning light. Well, I saw the morning light. She smelled the morning smells, and a good time was had by all.

It also meant getting my patient brother to "talk" on his cellphone for a long time while I tried to photograph the light reflecting off his face; that wasn't so successful in terms of catching the light, though I got a couple pretty decent pictures of him.

And it involved driving out to the pier on a drizzly night in order to take pictures of the light there. I brought a tripod and an umbrella along, both for the camera.

I still feel pretty self-conscious walking around with a tripod; this was the first time I had taken it anywhere, but really, no one seemed to mind, or mostly notice, save for a couple of very polite people who wanted to know if it would be ok if they walked down the pier to get their dinner, or would it spoil my shot?

Overall, I enjoyed the assignment itself, and I'm delighted with the fact that, as a side-effect, I finally learned how to control shutter speed. It's always seemed so arcane and incomprehensible before.


I took this on the "auto" setting. I like it, but the way it turned out color-wise was pretty much up to the camera. I'm not really sure why it's greenish. Over-compensating for the yellow light, maybe?

Incidentally, I learned that night that "auto" trumps any preprogramming done. I have to use one of the other settings if I want the light etc. to go my way.




This is, I think, a one second exposure--maybe a bit longer, I can't check while uploading the picture itself. I do know it wasn't much more. 10 seconds, for example, produces a glorious golden glare and not much else.

The camera's on a tripodand the light is set to "Daylight" which apparently translates into "Record the light the way it is, not as white" (something else I've recently learned).











Also at the longer exposure time.


















Starbucks at night. Tripod in use and shutter speed adjusted.












Raindrops on the car window.

I hadn't really looked before.

Shutter speed adjusted. (Told you I was having fun!)