October Color

Last week, Lonnie read a feature in our local paper about the beautiful fall color to be found at in Watson Woods, the riparian preserve by Watson Lake, only a mile or two from our house.  We drive by it every day, so we decided to go over there and see what we could see.

The photo below shows one of the first scenes to catch my eye- what photographer can resist reflections?

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Here’s another version of the same scene- with intentional camera movement for an impressionistic view.

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We walked until the mid afternoon heat started to catch up with me (why was I wearing long sleeves and a vest?), and then we stopped to soak in the atmosphere before walking back to the car.

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Bay Bridge(s)

I’ve been a little obsessed with multiple exposures lately- both in camera and in Photoshop.  Here’s a double view of the San Francisco Bay Bridge at night, with some distortions and reflections adding to the unreality of the image. The double exposure was created in Photoshop, rather than in camera.

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Keys . . . and Twigs

The theme for my AAUW photo group today is Locks and Keys. I selected several past images of padlocks to bring, but then I decided that, since I wanted to play with my Lensbaby Edge 80, I would take a couple photos of keys to bring as well.

After taking a few shots of keys spread out in different configurations, a small branch I have on my shelf of props caught my eye. I ended up hanging keys on twigs, and came up with these two images:

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When I was all finished shooting, I combined two other images in camera, which I then converted to a split toned black and white in Lightroom. What looks like an added texture is actually the garage floor!

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Ruby’s on the Pier

While we were in Newport Beach, we would walk every day over to Balboa Pier, and on our first day we split a chocolate- banana milkshake at Ruby’s- yum! I said I wanted to come back in the evening and get a shot with it lit up, so the next night I brought my tripod along as we walked over at sunset. Our son, Matt was with us, and wasn’t too enthusiastic about me setting up my tripod on the pier just to take a photo of the diner. I wanted to wait until it got darker, but ended up snapping my shot right after the sun went down. No, we didn’t have dinner there. 😦  But Matt did agree it made a good photo when he saw the edited version. 🙂

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Beachiness

We have just returned from a quick trip to Southern California to visit our son. We walked on the beach with him at sunset, and I grabbed this quick shot when I saw silhouettes against the orange sky. I think the fellow on the far right might be taking a selfie!

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Shimmer

A view of beautiful late afternoon light shimmering on the trees caught my eye during our stay at Oak Creek Canyon. Somehow the straight out of camera image didn’t match my memory, so I had fun turning this shot into a little photo art piece that looks nothing like what I saw, but is interesting in its own right.

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Yellow Impressions

We have an assignment in our photo group to emulate an old master. I think he means Ansel Adams or Edward Weston- or perhaps a painter.  I’ve been contemplating trying Georgia O’Keeffe- but, when I took this photo of a field of flowers near our house today, I thought of Van Gogh.

This is actually two- or three?- photos of the same field. One was a standard photo, and the other a multiple exposure/intentional camera movement attempt. I layered them, using parts of each, and then did some editing in Topaz Simplify and Impression at low opacity. Fun!

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