Day 363- Goats with a Job

Just about everyone in town loves these goats! This is a small part of a herd grazing on a hillside in Benicia.  The town hires them to clear the hillsides of grass, thus preventing grass fires.  They are a big hit with the children; many times my first graders would start their day at school reporting on where they had last seen the goats, with special status given to those who had them near their house that day.

I won’t go into the headache I had deciding which processing option to go with today. Let’s just say I tried them all and settled on a black and white conversion, emphasizing the seriousness of their mission. . .

 

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Day 355- Cold, Foggy, and Bleak

For today’s topic, transportation, my husband and I went down to the waterfront, hoping to capture tugboats escorting a tanker through the fog, or perhaps a fishing boat. However, it was such a foggy morning that we could only see the water by the shore. I ended up snapping some photos of sailboats at the marina and adding a little texture to give some contrast to this bleak image.

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Day 336- Color

A month or so ago, we took an all day drive to see some fall color.  Now I see it everywhere.  One brilliantly colored group of trees clustered around a parking lot catches my eye every time I drive down the hill from where I live.

My challenge for today was to take a photo while on a walk. When I saw the topic early this morning, I thought of those trees. I didn’t want to walk a mile down the hill and then back, so I drove down there and walked around.  Since this is such a small town, I immediately got a text from a good friend asking me why my car was parked down at the bottom of the hill. . .

Later today, I took another walk with my new iPhone.  I am trying to get proficient with its camera, because next week I will have carpal tunnel surgery and may have to resort to using the camera phone to take photos for a few days.  The iPhone actually does pretty well, as long as you are careful focusing and don’t get super close.

However,  I chose a Nikon photo for today.

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Day 333- Hearts on a Fence

Tuesday morning is my volunteering time at the school where I taught for 23 years. Today I planned to go out after school to look for a fence to photograph for my Flickr group’s challenge. When I stopped in the teacher’s room to say good-bye, I noticed colored leaves climbing the fence outside and knew I had found my photo of the day. In twenty shots, I had three good candidates for my photo- and I chose this close-up of sweet heart shaped leaves on the fence.

f/6.3, 1/100, ISO 250, 85mm

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Day 331- R is for Railroad

The Flickr group challenge of the day was to photograph something starting with the letter R.  I set out on this foggy morning to photograph the refinery, but the fog obscured much of the view.  While driving around the area, back and forth over the train tracks, I remembered that railroad started with R! I used a sepia treatment and some texture to give the photo a vintage look.

f/10, 1/80, ISO 250, 18mm

But this afternoon, I decided to play some more- and did an HDR version.  Which one do you like best?

 

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Day 316- M is for Melinda

What would I do without my Flickr group giving me ideas for photographs?  I have been very dependent on them lately! Today’s challenge was to find something shaped like the initial of your name! I walked around for awhile looking for configurations of leaves and branches that would somehow be shaped like M’s, and then the lightbulb went off in my brain! I already HAD an M photo from last year! Our church was remodeled, and I had taken a photo of the front of the new sanctuary- which features stained glass windows in a pattern that forms an M!

Now of course I couldn’t use LAST year’s photo- that would be cheating!  Happily, we had a class at church today, where I was able to get this shot.

f/10, 1/125, ISO 250, 26mm

I am back to trying out Back Button Focus again! I set up my camera to focus with the AE/AF lock button instead of the shutter a couple days ago, but I am hedging my bets. The D7000 has some custom user settings, so I have one of them set to Aperture priority with regular half press shutter focusing, and I ended up taking photos both ways today.  This shot was one I took with the custom user setting, but the BB focused photos came out fine too. I just liked the sunflare best in this one.

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Day 312- Connections

Too bad that today’s ODC challenge isn’t Hard Light again- I had plenty of that when I went out today to shoot photos at NOON (breaking one of the first rules of photography). The theme is connections, hence this macro of links of chain, which I found down by the waterfront.

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Day 308- Pointed

The Subaru had to go in for servicing in today, so, while we were waiting, my husband and I drove around looking for things that were pointed, today’s Flickr group challenge.  I took photos of roofs, gazebos, Mt. Diablo, fence pickets, and even my husband pointing at me (I posted that one to the group- loved it!).  I am choosing this bird (with a pointed beak) on a street lamp as my photo of the day, with a little texture added for no good reason (except I felt like playing with Photoshop).

f/5.6, 1/3200, ISO 200, 200mm

Textures: Kim Klassen’s break free and scratches, very reduced opacity, applied to sky

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Day 307- Capital of California

Benicia was the capital of California- really! Just from 1853 to 1854- but the capital building remains. It is a California State Park, and, because of the budget crisis, is slated to be closed.  A local group is fighting its closure, so there is hope that this beautiful building will remain open for school children and the public to view and appreciate this little piece of history.

I took bracketed photos, which I merged in Photomatix for an HDR image.

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Day 306- Waterfront

Walking along the Petaluma waterfront today on my way to lunch with my friend, Joan, I managed to get a few shots of the midday sun shining on the river. Since I joined a Flickr group called Bokeh Wednesdays, it seemed like the perfect shot for today. I have been practicing my Photoshop skills, inspired by my friend Carol‘s enrollment in a Photoshop class, and downloaded a few free actions yesterday from CoffeeShop. I decided to use Creamy Chocolate B&W on this one; I like the brown tones mixed in with the black and white.

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Day 302- Chasing Fall

We were on a mission today: find some fall color before it disappears!

We ended up driving almost all the way to Tahoe today until we finally found fall foliage. None of my photos do justice to the gorgeous golden yellows contrasting with the dark evergreens, but I liked the way the late afternoon sun was hitting this beautiful aspen.

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