New Territory

Took a recent trip up to Georgia from our home in SW Florida to seek out mountains (one of the things we really miss after moving from Northern California).  And we had a great time.  Mountains not as high in the area we visited as in the Sierra Nevadas, but still mountains are nice.  So here is the first image I processed from the trip:

Minnehaha Falls

This is the Minnehaha Falls in Rabun County, Georgia.  We stayed in Clayton, Georgia, which is in then northeast part of Georgia and is beautiful.  More images to come

Discerning Eyes

I almost always run my finalized images by the lovely eyes of my wife, Michele.  I appreciate her input and she often leaves a viewing to look for a place on ours walls for the new picture.  This is a new one she's currently working on where it should live. 😊

Portland Harbor

This was shot on a foggy morning in Portland, Maine, on our New England car tour back in 2015.  It sometimes takes a bit f time before I see what I want to do with an image.  After color correction I used NIK HDR Efex Pro plug-in for the contrast and structure I wanted.  I also had to clone out some spots and weird shadowing above the tops of the foreground posts.  I also created an additional fog effect in Photoshop to give it a little more density and better color.

From the Archives

Every now and then I go back through the archives of my master photo files to see if I can resurrect an older image.  Usually I'll try the image using new Photoshop skills I've learned or to use a new plug-in filter.  This is such an image:

Wine Barrels

Here I used NIK Software HDR effect with individual channel adjustments and contrast adjustments.  I find it often rewarding to look over older images with new knowledge of what can be done in the digital darkroom.

Digital Art III

I've written before about my beliefs when it comes to digitally "painting" photographs, and this is one of my favorites:

Impression, Tulips

This is one of the first pieces I made.  I created this using Corel Painter and it took quite a bit of time, mostly due to the fact that I didn't really know what I was doing.  But it was a lot of fun experimenting and see what all I could do with it.  It is indeed hand "painted" by creating an overlay of the photograph and painting using a Wacom tablet and pen.

Winter Light

I don't really do Christmas pictures other than phone shots for friends of our tree, etc.  But here's a winter shot:

Winter Light

This was shot several years ago outside our vacation home in Graeagle, CA.  It was one of those spring vacation weeks where I played golf in shorts on Wednesday, it snowed on Thursday, wet ground on Friday and back on the golf course in shorts on Saturday.  Mountain weather, don't ya know.  One of the things my wife, Michele, and I miss about living in Florida.  But we plan to visit the mountains of North Carolina come this spring.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

San Francisco

I lived in San Francisco for 40 years, almost to the day.  I moved there to finish college and stayed.  I loved being a San Franciscan. I also shot the heck out of it on video and film for a company I was a partner in called Cityscape.  This was a hotel TV network which broadcasted a tour of San Francisco and surrounding areas to major hotels in the city. And strangely enough, when I got back into still photography, I did not shoot a lot of stills of the city I loved.  But here are a couple I like:

Greetings from San Francisco

Fishermen's Wharf

Now that I've been gone for 2 years, I kinda regret not shooting more.  I had several ideas about images I wanted; fog in an alley, the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, sunrise, and after the tights went on; Coit Tower, North Beach (in the fog, of course).  But I kept thinking it had been over done and I had done enough moving pictures to satisfy my desires.  I guess maybe not.  So hey, who knows.  I ain't dead yet!

Sometimes You Get Lucky

One morning, while still living in San Francisco, I got up early and went over to Treasure Island in the S.F. Bay to shoot sunrise on the San Francisco Ferry Building.  Waiting for the light, I got into a conversation with another photographer further down the road.  Facing to the left of my intended target, I started feeling the warmth of the sun on my left cheek.  I turned around away from the Ferry Building and saw this:

Masts at Dawn

These are the masts of boats in the Treasure Island Harbor with the Oakland Hills in the background. And had I not been looking in a direction where I felt the sun, I might have missed this.


After shooting this, I did turn back to my intended target and got a shot I like very much as well:

San Francisco Ferry Building

Just goes to show you, sometimes you get lucky.  But you have to pay attention, look around and manufacture your own luck.