Cable Cars- Two Ways

Our hotel in San Francisco was right off Market Street, so I didn’t have to venture far to get the ultimate tourist shot- cable cars!

In color:

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Toned black and white:

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I took a long time editing the original image in Photoshop. There was some cloning out of traffic barriers and some slight Glow filters applied. But then in Lightroom, I ended up cropping out some of the area I cloned and converting the image to black and white. Sometimes I just can’t make up my mind! Lonnie likes the color version better; I prefer the black and white. Different strokes!

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San Francisco Architecture- Then and Now

THEN:

The beautiful and ornate Southern Pacific Building (completed in 1916) was right across from our hotel at the corner of Market and Embarcadero. This was taken through the window in Carol’s room.

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NOW:

This reflections in this skyscraper seemed to create a column of Japanese Kanji running down the side of the building- fascinating!

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Floor with a View

My husband had a meeting in downtown San Francisco last week, so I accompanied him for a (very) quick getaway, which consisted of one day and two nights. My friend and photo buddy, Carol met us there, and she and I had a great time visiting and walking around the Embarcadero area with our cameras.

Lonnie went to get ice shortly after we arrived, and informed me that he had found THE shot- and it was right down the hall.

THIS is what he found when he looked out the window at the end of the hall:

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We were on the sixteenth floor, right across from the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge! Yes- a great view indeed! Carol had mentioned that she wanted to do some night photography, so I was happy that the perfect view had been found- right down the hall- even though it meant shooting through glass.

Carol had brought an extra tripod for me (one of her old ones, which is exactly like mine), so we set up at the window the next night for some fun night photography.  Trying to lean the tripod with camera attached flat against the glass and keep it there without slipping, in order to prevent reflections of the hallway lights during long exposures, was a challenge for me!  I managed to take a dozen or so shots- and most had reflections and less than tack sharp focus. The above photo is one of the better ones (but I did have to clone out some reflections).

A beautiful city by day- and equally beautiful at night!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Layers of Colour

Don’t you think colour looks better than color? One of my favorite quotes is “Keep calm and fake a British accent,” so this is in that spirit (nothing to do with Brexit. . .).

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The above is from last week’s trip to the Grand Canyon. The hazy sky desaturated the colors, which I brought back with Lightroom’s Dehaze brush and some other adjustments. THEN I added a very slight adjustment with Topaz Glow, which is such a cool little plug-in- it does things I don’t know how to do otherwise. Very fun! The frame is from On1 Effects.

 

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Junior Rangers!

We are having a major heatwave, so our two days at the Grand Canyon were punctuated by frequent stops to refill water bottles and stand in the shade. The highlight of the trip was the boys being sworn in as Junior Rangers by a close family friend of theirs, who is indeed a big important ranger at the Grand Canyon.  The boys completed all the required pages (at different skill levels) of their official Junior Ranger books and then were sworn in front of a small crowd of curious tourists. They already have badges from Yellowstone, but this particular badge was significant because of the friend that did the ceremony for them. A sweet moment! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of them wearing the badges. . .

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And here is a shot of the canyon (I’m amazed it’s as sharp as it is, since it was too hot to carry a tripod and the railings were too hot to lean on to steady the camera!):

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Melinda3 Comments