California Wrapup - Dress Rehearsal versus Reality

I can't believe it's been a month since I left for California! This tells me two things:

1) Time flies

2) I need to get back in touch with my creative self

How did I do on this trip? My goals that I'd set were:

1) Avoid the literal shots

2) Look for the details

3) Understand my themes

4) Incorporate my sister

5) Property shots

I didn't do too badly, really. Here are some examples of pictures that met my goals:







The only goal I didn't meet was incorporate my sister, now that I think about it. There really wasn't an opportunity that made sense. And I'm okay with that. I feel my greatest area of improvement was in avoiding the literal shots, understanding themes, and bringing out the details. These were definitely nicer than beach pictures I'd taken in the past. I'm therefore happy with how I did.

I'd also thought about stock photography options. I need to think about that, too - and make the time - but I need to get out and shoot more, too, and bring more ideas and work to this blog.

I need to start focusing on my creative self again. It has been difficult, given work and my social responsibilities. With fall around the corner, though, I am hoping to be inspired. And that's what I'll cover next time - fall and some of my plans.

California Trip - Daytime Shots - Dana Point and Coronado

California weather is definitely interesting. One minute, you have clouds and fog. The next minute, you have sun. I opted to shoot in both sets of conditions. Today, I'll cover my adventures with the sun and with harsh shadows.

Let's face it, I've never been great at handling the light. However, I think I'm improving. Here are what I consider my top shots during this trip:







The first two have several common elements: I set the ISO as low as I could, I used my wide angle lens, I used my polarizing filter, and I strived to make the water shots more interesting by including other elements of interest - in this case, the plants and colors. To shoot these, I "squatted" and stayed low.

The third picture's settings were the same, but I used the angles and curves as my areas of interest. I stayed on a gorgeous property and wanted to highlight the building in some manner.

For all of these three, I debated making them lighter (because I know they don't show too well on PCs), but I really liked the richness of the colors, so I left the pictures as is. The full-sized versions are the best way to view these, as a result.

The second three were situations where the sun was at its harshest. My polarizing lens really didn't save me for the first and third pictures, but it did for the second. My approach was to make the most of it, and to highlight the contrast as best as possible, without creating too many distractions. Hopefully, I achieved that goal.

Settings: White Balance - Sunny, Aperture Priority (f-stop of 6.3), wide angle lens.

Tweaks: Minor ones, mainly involving brightening some of the shadows, or increasing the exposure overall.

Next time - cloudy day shots (which pose a different set of challenges).