The beach was lovely last week, worth the difficult traffic to get there. Sorry about the smudge on the lens. I hadn’t realized it was there. It’s not too visible in these, thankfully!
Have a great week.
Blog
A smoky sunset
The fires burning down around Big Sur made our skies smoky, and this made the light near sunset soft and kind of pinkish orange. I had to dash outside and try to capture that light.
I had to stand at an angle to capture this because I was casting a huge shadow.
The bricks were really pretty just on their own.
The Big Sur fire is not under control yet, but today’s cooler temperatures helped the massive effort a little bit.
I wanted to share what I thought was an excellent article in the New York Times. The authors did a lot of research, interviewing survivors of the people recently lost to terrorism, and I appreciated getting to know a little bit about the victims. Though this is tragic, I found it uplifting to have a tiny window into these lives, to have their faces in my mind, to think a bit about their beautiful normal lives as I go about my own.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-victims-reporting.html
For some reason I think the most about “[a] farmer, Bunu Modu, [who] managed to escape after militants in his village tied him up with plans to kill him — he had been running a little Islamic school with 10 pupils under a tree.” I find that Mr. Modu was running a school under a tree quite beautiful. There are many little slices of life in the article and helpful graphics.
Have a good and safe week.
Tahoe sunset
I cropped these various ways. Which is your favorite?
Happy Friday
Half mast Monday
Have a peaceful week.
Loving the new lens…
…and Sleeklens actions. Okay, this is my favorite, for which I didn’t use any actions. I just cropped this. I’m so happy I can now get all the painted houses in one shot! Hm…it definitely looks better on a wide screen, LOL.
Here are some more shots for you.
Some new images
I have a new wide angle lens that I love, but I put my camera vertically to get the water tower and the image was so crooked I had to crop massively to straighten it, so now it looks like I had a very narrow lens indeed, LOL! Still, I love the image.
I worked on it for a while in Lightroom, then redid the image using the Sleeklens Landscape Adventure actions that Leanne Cole demonstrated on her blog. I don’t remember what I did. I think I went through HDR before I did any actions. I like being able to see the houses and HDR processing allowed that. The homes are so cozy, but I really wish they had their lights on. I guess no one was home yet because it was a week day. Although it was getting late…since the sun sets around 8:30 PM right now, here.
This next one I redid on my own, after watching the Sleeklens action demo but before I bought the package.
Culvert over Tahoe
Here’s the original of the culvert that I showed last week.
This is one I processed with Sleeklens Photoshop actions that I’m really happy with. I think. Let’s see how it looks on the blog…
I find it pretty yummy looking, much better than the original.
Then I played with this one. The sky color is a little purple, but I still kind of like this one.
I feel that the actions are helping me work with images in new ways. They have some freebies for Lightroom that I’m also playing with. I think that my goal as an artist is beauty. I like emotion and meaning too, but I need people or animals in the shots to get that. Maybe I’ll revisit my church in Reno and see what I can do with that with my new tools.
Well, I have to go outside and work on the garden now. My birthday is this week. I saved up two birthdays and Christmases for my new lens. We bought the lens last week because it was on sale. It’s a Sigma 10 – 20 mm. I’m really glad we bought it early because it gave me a chance to go out and practice. Now I know not to tip the camera to portrait on the tripod because I can’t level it that way. I’m really glad to know that because on my birthday we are going to San Francisco for an early dinner followed by a photo shoot. I can’t wait. I want to take pictures of buildings and I’ll probably do some night shots of the Bay Bridge. Oh, I also discovered either big splotches on one side of the lens, the filter, or (hopefully not) the sensor. I think it’s the new lens, so wish me luck on getting that cleaned up. I find it difficult to get rid of the spots even with the spot removal feature of Lightroom.
I’m so regaining my enthusiasm for photography, and that makes me happy.
Have a great week!
Photos from the mountains
Well I don’t know about you, but I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, with the weight of all the families suffering from this week’s murders, here and abroad, hanging over me. However, I did get out of bed and worked on the garden, which cheered me up. After being informed and figuring out a constructive way forward, it is good to work on beauty.
I also have developed some images from our hike last week. These are from the top of Squaw Valley.
I believe there is hope for positive change in the world, and that’s what I’m focusing on. There is a time of introspection and awareness, and then a positive constructive action will present itself.
May you have a hopeful, peaceful and safe weekend.
A tangle of trees
I took more than 400 photos on our hike at Squaw Valley yesterday, but only had time to process one for you, LOL!
Happy Fourth of July.
Nicci Carrera 