Picture of the Week 12-29-09

December 29, 2009

Today I took our dog Pearl out for a hike in nearby Peters Canyon. Here in California we are having beautifully clear days even though it’s supposed to be winter outside. I got this weeks picture as I was walking back to the car. There’s something about wooden fences that I love. I also love HDR, especially fake HDR, which is what this image is. To clarify, fake HDR, is when you make an HDR image out of one single photograph instead of three different images. It may be cheating but at least I don’t have to use a tripod to make sure the three images align correctly.

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Photo Info: Shot with the 5D Mark II. ISO 400 at F4 at 1/4000 of a second and the made into an HDR with Photomatix.

Picture of the Week 12-17-09

December 17, 2009

As I was walking my dog around the Tustin Sports Park I noticed a few of the trees which inspired this week’s photo. Although fall is almost over there were still a few trees that still retained their brilliant autumn colors. I chose to shoot in the late afternoon which provided me with very warm light. I also tried to do auto exposure bracketing on all my shots but it was actually very windy when I was photographing. The photo below is an HDR image and as you can see the trees in the background didn’t line up perfectly when I put the images through Photomatix. I still love how the oranges, yellows and reds blend together and it reminds me that my favorite season of the year is coming to a close.

For more non-HDR shots of the fall foliage check out the GALLERY.

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Photo Info: Shot with the 5D Mark II and made up of three images. Image 1– ISO 800 at F8 and 1/500 of a second. Image 2– ISO 800 at F8 and 1/1000 of a second. Image 3– ISO 800 at F8 and 1/250 of a second.

Pearl

December 4, 2009

I haven’t posted anything recently for a couple reasons, one is that we haven’t been taking many pictures lately and the other is a bit more unfortunate. About three weeks ago we lost our family dog. She had gone from seemingly perfect health to her death bed in a matter of a week. Mimi wasn’t even really our dog, but she had been living with us for about 4 months. Despite her short time with us her loss was very hard to take. Before Mimi, Bryan and I had never owned a dog, we were fish people. Mimi was a ray of sunshine in our life and after her passing we realized that we could never go back to being just fish people, we were dog people. As a way to distract myself from the constant pain of thinking about Mimi, I browsed around the internet for dogs. I came across a site that rescues German Shepherds and that’s where I found her. Pearl, that is, a white German Shepherd. We recently adopted this beautiful dog and she has been amazing. I didn’t bond with Pearl the way I bonded with Mimi at first, but then again Mimi set the bar pretty high. Pearl has got her own weird personality with all the random quirks that you grow to love. Nonetheless she is our own perfect gem.

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