Mystery Factory
A picture of the sunset over Redondo Beach’s yacht clubs. The factory in the middle of the image has been a mysterious factory for me. We rode our bikes there and there wasn’t a single sign that indicated what was going on inside, even google maps names every place around it but not it! Satellite view makes it look like a water/oil refinery?? I’m not sure what was going besides (more…)
Blanket of clouds
Back in February I went to San Clemente with a friend of mine, neither of us have been and we decided to check it out and while at it take some pictures. One of the main photography objectives for me was to take a shot from under the Pier around sunset! Out of the blue a blanket of grey clouds came from the pacific and I knew that opportunity was gone. We decided to call it the day and head back to the car, as we were heading up the hill I turned around for a last view of the Pier and saw the blanket of clouds and I had to take a picture 🙂
Foggy sunset
A cold & foggy sunset taken at Torrey Pines State Beach back in August of last year. The haze/fog was so thick that it covered the bottom portion of the sun, had I waited a few minutes longer for the sun to set then the disc would’ve completely disappeared!
Reflecting Back
When the water recedes around sunset, it creates a nice glare on the sand that makes it act like a mirror. I tried to get the seagull to look right though the lens but it wanted to keep a safe distance from me, so I ended up taking an image of it reflecting back 🙂 This was taken back at La Jolla Shores.
Royal Poinciana
A picture of a Royal Poinciana tree in San Clemente from our day trip back in February of this year. Thanks to google I was able to do a search with the image to figure out the name of the tree and from there I was able to look up what I wanted to find out about it. It originally came from (more…)
A Day at the beach
Spent this Saturday at Laguna Beach, shooting my friend’s new born baby girl. While doing that we were also watching a CBVA tournament. I’ve been to previous AVP events and I really struggled with keeping the players in focus, I thought I’d try a few shots while the tournament was going on. I told one of the players that I’d share the pictures here, so here they are:
Starting out the series with the shot that made us approach the player, we thought she would at least like to have this one:
This was earlier in the day, she immediately stood out with her vertical and power.
Anticipating the serve
This was a new game that was much closer to where we were sitting.
I set the AF to AI Servo, I focused the center point on her shoulder blade and kept her in focus throughout the serve! I find that when AF is set to AI Focus the motor tends to go crazy trying to focus on the subject if they stand static for a period (which happens a lot in sports). I was actually impressed that I never lost focus of her through all that wire:
And while all of this was going on, the dolphins came by 🙂
If the players want a copy of the image without the watermark, contact me and I’ll email you a copy
La Jolla Cove Sunset
One of favorite images of all time, its also one of my most popular on flickr. Just thought I’d add it to my blog.
Parisian Lamp
Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L @ 28mm, f/9.0, ISO 200
This is another picture from that Gardens in La Jolla. While I was taking this shot, I noticed the lamp and I thought it was made out of marble or something of that sort so it would be a great HDR opportunity with all that extra texture. After taking my initial set of brackets I got closer to the lamp & composed for it with a slightly low point of view, to give it that standing huge feel, specially with a wide angle lens! To my disappointment it wasn’t made out of marble but some cheap plastic, can you tell?
The name? for some reason those lamps reminded me of Paris and all the Art Nouveau lamps on its streets like this one. Not quite the same in California now is it? 🙂
Sunset between the Americas
Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L @ 16 mm, f/8.0 , ISO 160
I don’t know why but the shape of the clouds looks like the American continents me! The sun is setting right where Mexico is 🙂
The way things used to be
Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L @ 29mm, f/5.6, ISO 200
This is another one of those La Jolla jewels… not sure how old this house is but must be at least 40 years old. Its a lot bigger than shown here as the wide angle lens effect does its thing 🙂 I went with 70s look with this HDR just to keep the theme as “old”, just trying something a little different. The original image is actually quite clean and I chose to add noise to it to help with the aging effect.
Technical:
– 3 RAW Images [-2,0,+2 EV] merged into Photomatix
– LOTS & LOTS & LOTS of adjustments in Lightroom!
Emergency System
Canon 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L II
Today’s diptych tells the story by itself: when there is an emergency call the fire department. 🙂
Coming to an end
Diptych: Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L II @ (L: 35 mm, f/2.8, 1/ sec, ISO 200) (R: 24mm, f/11, ISO 200)
I believe the winter (if there is such a thing) in San Diego is over. Pretty soon this tree will be full of green & life.
This diptych is also a good example of when to use HDR & when not to use it. The image on the left didn’t really have such a wide dynamic range (the variance from brightest to darkest spot wasn’t drastic) so a single exposure did it for me. Compare that to the image on the right where the camera sensor couldn’t capture the full dynamic range with one exposure, I took 3 brackets [-2, 0, +2 EV] and produced an image that looks much closer to what our eye would’ve seen. Here is the single 0 EV exposure, look at all the details in the shadows that was lost but the HDR process was able to bring back, the trick is obviously not to overdo it to the point that it looks like a painting that has no highlights and shadows.
0 EV Exposure
Special Education
Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L II @ 16 mm , f/16, ISO 200
Continuing with my series of shots from UCSD, this will probably be the best image I produce out of that photowalk. I still can’t believe that this what UCSD students have to deal with, its true that the scenery is gorgeous but lets be honest, I don’t think I could’ve passed anything if I had the ocean this close to me! Since I’m using a wide angle lens here the far looks a lot further than it really is, the beach was literally a 3 minute walk down. Needless to say its a great campus to just walk around on a beautiful day.
On more a technical side, I went with a really small aperture to emphasize the sunburst effect and keep most of my scene in focus.
Technical:
– 6 RAW Images [-3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2 EV] merged into Photomatix 4
– Lightroom adjustments
– Topaz Adjust on the whole image and set opacity to 50%
– More Lightroom adjustments
No way out
Canon EOS 5D MkII, EF 16-35 f/2.8L II @ 16 mm, f/16, ISO 200
Believe it or not this is a dormitory for UCSD students in San Diego!! Yes they have a tough life over here, specially if you compare them to the dormitories in Toronto where I went to school. Lets just say there is no comparison!
I thought the tilt would add to the effect of being trapped, as if you are falling into a sinkhole… all lines seem to naturally lead your eye to the locked gate.
Technical:
– 6 RAW Images [-3,-2,-1,0,+1,+2 EV] merged into Photomatix 4
– Adjustments in Lightroom
– Topaz Adjust on the whole image, brought down opacity to 50%
– More adjustments in Lightroom
2 Rivers Photos 
