Mission Soledad

A serene place up The Salinas Valley.

Mission San Antonio in Black and White

So now I'm just banging away in the middle of an insomnia attack. 2:30 in the morning and I'm gray scaling photos. I guess there are worse things I could be doing :)

I liked this one for the depth. The light was very pleasing also. What a great location to shoot.

For anyone interested in going up to Mission San Antonio, do it in the fall, winter or spring. There are a few reasons for that. In the first place, the sun being directly over head in the summer makes for lousy pictures, no shadows etc. Secondly, it gets blazing hot up there in the summer.

More Light and Contrast in B&W at Mission San Antonio

It was an interesting challenge to get the exposure so that the area in the sun did not blow out. Lightroom brought back the texture in the sunny area reasonably well. I enjoy these high contrast images.

Light and Contrast in B&W at Mission San Antonio, California

This view of the inside the gate of the juncture of the wall and roof of the Mission San Antonio caught my eye. There was nice light and contrast. It just appealed to me, so here it is.

A Bunch of Stuff from Thanksgiving Weekend

The following images were made during this past weekend. On Friday we made a family road trip to the San Antonio Valley, Big Sur and Cambria. It made for a lovely variety of things to see.

Scroll down and enjoy some of what we saw.

Snakes?!

Wandering the hills and mountains of California has its, er... challenges. I found this nailed to one of the doors of the Mission San Antonio high in the Santa Lucia Mountains. One's choice of footwear needs to be carefully considered.

Candles at Mission San Antonio and Other Delights

Today was an absolutely beautiful day on The Central Coast of California. Anita, Tressa, Christine and I all headed up the Salinas Valley. We crossed the mountains to the Coast at King City. We went up to Fort Hunter Liggett where the Hearst Ranch House and Mission San Anonio are located. We explored these places and then ascended the Santa Lucia on Nacimiento Road which winds and switchbacks over the mountains to the Big Sur Coast.

That was an adventure as we climbed to about 4500 feet, most of which seemed to have no guard rails on the cliffs that dropped vertically to the canyon floors below. Beautiful and electrifying. A fabulous trip.

Once on the coast we drove south past The Hearst Castle at San Simeon to Cambria. There Anita got her birthday wish and went through each and every store. I shot a few pix in the toursty little town.

We then headed back up to Paso Robles and up the 101 to home.

A fine time was had by all.

Mission San Carlos Boromeo, Carmel, California

Playing with Photoshop a bit. This was an image I really could not do anything with as the light was behind the church. It was totally flat. Even when I equalized into a kind of painting it still did not stand out. So, I gave it a background and it popped a bit. I also learned a trick which was new to me.

Artist At Carmel Mission

This is an older film image taken at Carmel Mission.



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Here is The Praying Indian as He Looks on Site

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Photoshop Masking

I have settled in on my new template for Blogger, and I am well pleased.

I am not really big on manipulating images, but sometimes it is called for and works well. This picture is a case in point. You can see the original image and the steps I went through to get to what you see here in the immediately previous post.

Playing w/ PS - The Praying Indian

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Son Will got into PS masking, so I couldn't let him get too far ahead of me :)

San Juan Bautista Mission II

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On Friday, after one more wasted trip to to San Jose on job search (you don't want to be looking for work at 59), I stopped by San Juan Bautista Mission. It is both a state museum center with a number of buildings beautifully restored to mid-18th century and an active parish. I spent a couple hours in meditation and shooting. My soul was refreshed.

This shot, and those in the previous post, were shot in RAW. Frankly, for most of my work, JPEG is just fine. RAW is a huge nuisance whose increased flexibility is not worth the effort involved. But having said that, if you are willing to plug away at an image, I have to say you do get a better picture.

The first issue I encountered was the fact that the onboard Canon software over-saturates pictures. (I learned this from my friend Manu at San Francisco Daily Photo.) When you open a RAW from Canon, that fact becomes pretty clear when you compare the RAW image to JPEG from the same exposure.

In the Bridge RAW viewer I reduced the saturatiom in most images and made whatever other adjustments appeared necessary. I then converted the RAW to an editable format ( I prefer TIF) and saved. I then moved on the Lightroom which makes 90% of the workflow that I used to do in PS ever so much easier. If necessary, I move on the PS for whatever fine detail work is needed.

Phew! That's a lot of stuff! Cool, but worth it?

I need to know how to do this stuff for the pictures that call for it, stange lighting and the like. But for the other 90% of occasions, I see no reason to go through this. JPEG is fine.

San Juan Bautista Mission

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San Juan Bautista

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He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed!

Happy Easter to All

I was over in Carmel today and stopped by the San Carlos Boromeo Mission for a visit on the Holy Thursday. It is a wonderful old place established by Father Serra who was largely responsuble for the spanish settlement of Alta California. The flowers for the weekend services were just being placed and it was lovely.

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Monarchs Return to Central Coast

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