Dream Tomorrow, Live Today, Cherish Yesterday

When I Grow Up...

Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm F/2.8, f/4.5, 1/50, iso 800

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Bobby?"

"I want to be an architect!"

Yes, that is what I wanted to be when I was about 8 years old. It was around this age that I started drawing home floor plans, using my grandpa's t-square and drawing board.  Of course, I always had a room in the house to work on the motorcycles I would own in the future.

Somewhere along the line, age 12 or so, I decided I just didn't have enough creativity.  I saw amazing structures, and realized that they had existed in someone's head, and then were realized on paper, then in final form.  I didn't think I had enough "art" in me. No one in the family was "artsy."

I had to move on to wanting to become a lawyer.  Fortunately, that didn't work out.

But I still love architecture, and I even like drawing floor plans, and have done so several times (including the house I'm sitting in right now).  And I'm a big admirer of architectural photography. I have said before one of my inspirations is Thomas Hawk (see this page) with his crazy-good SF images.

On my little mall trip, on Black Friday, one goal was to see what interesting architectural elements I could see and capture.  This is a view almost straight up, shooting through a big opening in the second floor, looking at the ceiling.

See what I mean? Every detail you see there was divined by an architect. Imagined, engineered, built. Amazing. I love the geometric shapes, it's very organic.  I used a Lightroom Preset called "Matt's Sin City- Dark Red" to knock out many of the tones, I wanted to have fewer tones and more emphasis on the shapes themselves.

Yes, I'm a better shooter of architecture, than a drawer of it.

When the Magic Happens

Canon 5D Mark II, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/5.6, 1/2000, iso 640

On Friday night I saw we had a clear sky, after a rainy afternoon. I was determined to go out Saturday morning if it remained clear, which it did. But it was also extremely windy.  But as I have relayed here before on the blog, Dad always said "can't catch a fish if your line isn't in the water."

My real goal was to try to get some shots of leaves moving around. Slow shutter, with some fixed background, so that looking at the image you could "feel the wind."  Well, I had no success there. It was so bright out, that I could never get a slow enough shutter for it to work.  I tried a series of images stacked in photoshop to achieve this, but it wasn't working for me.

But anyway, some "magic" happened anyway. Like this shot, and several others I'll be sharing.  And even a Christmas present! I took the shot I plan to show on Christmas day.  Yippee.

So back to today's shot then, shall we? I was just driving around where I live. I spotted a pond that I had shot before. There were nice fall colors hanging over the pond, so I parked and tried shooting them.  Hmmm. Nothing spectacular.  Then I noticed all the leaves sitting in the bottom of the pond - hey that could be good.  So I shot a few of those.  Then I remembered the time I threw leaves into the pond (a different one) and shot the leaves floating away.

I tried that, but my artificial contributions looked, er, artificial. Just clumps of leaves.  As I contemplated what to do, leaves started blowing in on their own, right in front of me.  With the wind howling, I had to track the leaves, practically panning.  I loosened the ball on my tripod head and followed several.  This was the best one. I give credit to the amazing color and "sun stars" to the amazing 180mm Macro.

Are we having a time warp here? Is this Topaz Tuesday and I forgot to mention it? This image looks heavily modified, doesn't it. Well, amazingly it is not.  About 20 seconds in Lightroom.  Click the continue link and I'll show you the pre-process look, and I'm also going to do a little mini-tutorial on Lightroom.

Blow me a kiss

Blow me a kiss

Canon 5D Mark II, 15mm F/2.8 Fisheye, f/3.5, 1/500, iso 640

I am very inspired by other bloggers, including those generous bloggers that comment here on my blog. One of my goals with the blog is to expand my own photographic horizons, and especially my "photographic vision" - to see interesting shots wherever I go. Take a look at this one and  this other cool one from blog-buddy Rian for what I'm talking about. You don't get much more of a basic subject than he chose for that second shot, eh? Yet how cool is it? Very! 

One of my good friends was headed to the local mall for "Black Friday," and she asked if I would like to go along.  Start time? 6:00 AM! But hey, we photographers have to be prepared to be out at the crack of dawn, right? 

Our mall is pretty spectacular, great architecture. So I decided I would go, a photography mission first and a shopping mission second.  I ended up with 4 or 5 shots I'll share here on the blog over the next several days, quite a nice morning.

My idea was to be "in the moment" and just look for interesting architectural scenes, or anything else that caught my eye. "Man made landscapes" you might say.  Use the inspiration I get from fellow bloggers and see if I'm getting anywhere with expanding my vision.

As we walked by this storefront I noticed the beautiful graphic, but also how it was framed by some of the lighting/signage. So I mounted the fisheye, got down low and looked up to get this shot.

In Lightroom I added a pretty signficant vignette to black out the edges of the image. I then used a preset called "Matt's Sin City - Dark Red" which removed a lot of the colors but left the reds. In Photoshop to add the framing (wish I could do THAT in LR!), I decided to "squish" the image a bit, to increase the fisheye effect and make the main interest wider. So I did a "resize" but turned off "Constrain Proportions" which allowed me to make it shorter, but keep the same width.

Overall I'm very pleased with this. I don't think most people would pick it out as a storefront right off the bat. I like the little glow in the upper right, and the white streaks.  If you want to see the original, click on the continue link.

And hey, "blow me a kiss" with a comment!

Telephoto Macro

Canon 20D, 300mm F/4.0, f/5.6, 1/200, iso 400

For today's post I just kind of clicked through the archives in Lightroom, and came across the images of a great wildflower shoot I did with friends Stephan and Wolf.  This was back in 2005.

Back then, I had no macro lens.  But I had a technique, and perhaps if you don't have a macro this could come in handy for you.  The lens I used was my 300mm fixed - no zoom! "Zoom with your feet!" is what they say.  It has a minimum focusing distance of nearly six feet.  But at six feet, you still have a lot of magnification.

This is hard to do well without a tripod, I should say.  When you have a long lens and a tiny subject, this is very difficult to hand hold effectively.

So with your longest telephoto mounted, perched on your tripod, the idea is to get into a position at your minimum focusing distance (this is usually printed on your lens) and work from there.  As you can see I got a nice depth of field on the Indian Paintbrush plant, and a lovely bokeh to boot. It's been a while since I put up a flower image, so let me know what you think of this one.

Reflections of my mind

Reflections of my mind

Canon 1D Mark III, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/5.6, 1/125, iso 500

Thanksgiving day! You know, so many holidays are religious or international ones, sometimes Americans forget that holidays like Thanksgiving are uniquely American. Having lived in a few other countries around this time of year, I can tell you that they are fascinated by American Thanksgiving. They want to know all about the turkey and other dishes.  When I lived in Germany, this sparked a long conversation amongst many of us about the most special dishes in each of our homelands. It was quite fascinating (especially when the Chinese woman's turn came up...).

Well, as for today's picture, it is something that I have been thinking about for some time, and I created the shot this week, and I'm quite happy about it. Thankful in fact. And today being the day to express thanks, I'd like to do just that.

Of course, first I'm happy to be with my family.  My close family, and extended family, has had quite a few health challenges over the past year. Everyone survived and things are getting better, so that's a relief.

Despite that, there have been some very good times this year. And this year being when I started blogging,I have shared many of them with the Dream Tomorrow blog readers.  It's been a great year to expand my photographic horizons, not to mention my photo arsenal.

My day job is going super, and not everyone can say that, so I feel extra fortunate.  I work with a great bunch of people, and we are doing some excellent work.  There is some luck involved in our current good fortune, but also it's the result of good honest work.

AND - The blog passed 30,000 lifetime page views a few days ago!

It's a bummer to see what the country is going through, on many fronts, but I believe in the American spirit and eventually things will be set right.

Today in my little corner of the world I'm going to enjoy some cooking, some family and friends, and I'm sure it is going to be a wonderful day.  Maybe a few pictures, eh?  I wish all of you the same.  I appreciate the "blog friends" I have made this year, it's always good to make new friends!

Another Day

Another night has gone
Life goes on
Another dawn is breaking
Turn and face the sun
One by one
The world outside is waking

Morning light has driven away
All the shadows that hide your way
And night has given away
To the promise of another day

Another day
Another chance that we may
Finally find our way
Another day

James Taylor - Another Day

The holidays are upon us. They always remind us how we miss people that have left us. When I revisited this image a few days ago, taken in the Spring of this year, it said to me that there are humps and bumps, twists and turns, but the road goes on.  We have to "keep on keeping on." It is what we do.

I for one am looking forward to a great holiday season.  And wish the same to you! We only have so many, we should make the most of them.

Topaz Tuesday - T-bird

Topaz T-Bird

Canon 1D Mark III, 15mm F/2.8 Fisheye, f/6.3, 1/6th, iso 1000

Here is another shot from last weekend's Sacramento Car Show. Although mainly a new car show, there were plenty of vintage automobiles, including this lovely lady. She must be a show winner, all cordoned off by herself.

Take a look at the exposure specs.  Obviously it was pretty dark, eh? Also, to get the fisheye effect I had to hold my camera out at arm's length. So there is just no way to get a sharp image at 1/6th, holding out at arm's length!

So then what we have is a great candidate for Topaz Adjust, because it will take care of the slight blurriness. At least that was my plan. In Topaz, I ended up with my go-to preset: Spicify.  I then bumped saturation.

I found I really liked all the background areas. Normally a distraction, I thought they really added to the image, giving it sort of a festive, celebration kind of look.  Back in Lightroom, I added the vignette to "spotlight" our subject.

Perfect vehicle for a nice fall mountain ride drive, eh? If you want to see the original image, pre-topaz, just click on the continue link.  Also, comments remain free until further notice, so blast away with the comments.

 

Glass in Glass

Glass in Glass

Canon 1D Mark III, 70-200mm F/4.0, f/4.0, 1/400, iso 250

I was cruising through a few month's pictures in Lightroom this morning, to see which ones stood out for today's post, when I came across this one.  I very much like glass, and it is fun to shoot.  Although I didn't have it in my head at the moment, I think the comment from a first time commenter, Phyllis, a glass artist, must have been lurking about.

The lovely reflections and bokeh sealed the deal. This image just had a tiny amount of crop, and a tiny bit of curves. No saturation! I like seeing all the other surrounding glass pieces in this bottle stopper. For being a max f/stop of F/4.0, this lens has some darn nice bokeh (that is the out of focus area, btw). Kind of a nice holiday effect with these colors too.

Only three more days to Turkey day, hope you all are working on some nice plans.  Comment below if you like this one.

The Wine Co-op

Canon 1D Mark III, 24-70mm F/2.8, f/2.8, 1/200, iso 400

I think I have mentioned that I'm in a little wine co-op? Myself and four other guys have small vineyards on our properties. This year we picked at the same time and began the winemaking process. Yesterday was "fill the oak barrels day."  One guy has a enormous free standing garage, so this is our production facility. The lighting was pretty cool with late fall low sun, and windows and doors all around.

I tried a few artsy shots, mainly of the barrels, like this one. The little guys are 1 gallon. We also have five and ten gallon, and the big boy there is a 40 gallon barrel. This year we didn't have enough wine to fill that barrel, but are planning to next year (that reminds me, I need to fertilize my vines).

We fill the barrels all the way up to the top, and some spills out, which is quite photogenic.  Some also has to spill into a few glasses so us winemakers can sip, swirl, swallow, and taste our creation.  Good stuff!  We think that once oaked for a few months, then bottle aged for a year, it's going to be quite good.

For this shot, I started with a Lightroom Preset called "Matt's Sin City - Dark Red" which emphasizes the reds.  A little bit of saturation and vibrance, and there we are. 30 seconds of post processing. Let me know how you like this one!

Hummingbird Tree

Hummingbird Tree

Canon 5D Mark II, 180mm F/3.5 Macro, f/6.3, 1/160, iso 1250

A different kind of image, for me, today. You know I like to try different things. This is kind of a special tree, it sits right outside the window from my desk, where I do my blogging. Its real name is Strawberry Tree. But I give it my own name, because each morning while I'm typing, it is visited by a very cute - THERE HE IS! I'm not joking, right as I'm typing this the hummingbird showed up!

Just like he or she does every morning. I always look forward to it. But I haven't tried to photograph him because the tree is in shade in the morning. I don't think he'd come around if I was standing there by the tree.

I took this shot the same morning as yesterday's spider web shot. I noticed the little buds were dripping with the overnight rain.  I moved around the tree so that I had basically no background - whatever was back there was too far away, and in sunlight, so it got completely washed out. I could see this composition in the viewfinder, and I decided to go for it - the "negative space" concept.

What I couldn't see, and actually didn't even think of, was that the buds to the left would be out of focus. This came as a pleasant surprise when I viewed the shot on the LCD. It was definitely the way to go, accident or not!

Well, today begins Thanksgiving week I suppose. We are having some friends over on Sunday as well, so I'm off for shopping and later cooking too.  I hope everyone has great Thanksgiving plans.