The Spanish Village

A little while ago I visited Balboa Park with other photo enthusiasts and spent parts of the day at the Spanish Village. The other day I was on my way home through San Diego and decided to visit the Spanish Village again, as I didn't have much time or energy left last time. So, here (click for slideshow) are is another set of colorful photos from the Spanish Village. If you like me like colors and different light conditions make sure to visit the village.

California Sunset

Well, how can you NOT stop whatever you are doing when you see this view and shoot such a beautiful sunset. On my way to this months meeting with the San Diego Photo Club I saw the sun setting behind the hills of Ocean Beach here in San Diego. I needed a better view so I drove a couple of streets off my route, got the shot I was looking for and then what... Where the heck was I. I couldn't find my way back to my route so I randomly drove around until I found my way to the meeting. Sigh...

Anyhow, this photo was made with the Canon SD850 IS point and shoot, all automatic, except that I pushed the colors with the Vivid mode and stepped down 1/3 of a stop, which makes great shots with this camera in most cases.

Colors

Yesterday I found a path of marching ants in our kitchen. The path lead to our ginger bread house that is still going strong. Well, the reason why it survived is actually because the ginger bread tastes really bad. On the bright side, it made a pretty colorful photo that I thought share with you. So, here you go. Looks pretty yummie, right?

On the topic of colors I think this photo will match the ginger bread photo pretty good, so I'll share that too. It's from the Spanish Village in Balboa Park, a colorful place that is really good for photography. I know that photo workshops often are held there because of it's colors.

San Diego Zoo

One of the local Meetup.com photography groups went to the San Diego Zoo last Thursday. We had no ambition spending the day covering the complete Zoo, but rather seeing the most exciting animals that was most active during early morning before it became to hot and they would just hang out in the shade.

The tigers were first on the list and the tiger did not make us disappointed. The breakfast bone was thoroughly taken care of. Yummie! At first the tiger was in a shadier area which made it difficult to shoot with my Nikon D70 (low ISO capabilities) and may fairly slow lenses. Most photos came out pretty blurry. Did anyone say Nikon D300 and a couple of fast lenses? later the tiger moved to the sun in an area which allowed us to get closer. Well trained performer.

The monkies are always a lot of fun to shoot. Just make sure you got plenty of memory cards,it's easy to spend too many shots.

There were a lot of colorful animals to shoot, these are just a few of them.














Watch my complete set of photos from the Zoo here. Thanks for visiting.

PhotoSharePodcast photo of the week

Yippee!! My photo of the rattle snake became the photo of the week at the PhotoSharePodcast.com See post below. Here is the proof (click). Thanks everyone that voted for my photo! I'm sorry I scared the heck out of some of the voters with my photos, some asked me o include a warning sign next time I post photos of a snake.

Spring colors

The canyon we live next to has absolutely exploded in various green colors. Therefore I took the opportunity to capture the beautiful scenes before they are gone. We've had a lot of rain lately and as the days become warmer mother nature wakes up slowly. Soon enough everything will dry up and the green colors are replaced by less photo interesting colors like gray and brown.


For most of the images in this set both contrast and colors are pushed in Lightroom. However, that is actually what I saw during my hike, so I don't consider the outcome being only a reflection of vivid colors and unreal light scenes in my dreams, but a reflection of reality.


This image doesn't include much of the spring colors, but I couldn't resist the obvious potential of a black and white conversion for this scene.

Thanks for visiting my blog, see you next time.

Photo contest

One of my photos has been nominated for the PhotoSharePodcast.com weekly photo contests on the Dangerous theme. Check out this cool photo podcast, and make sure you vote for this week’s photo.

Go to: PhotoSharePodcast.com

… scroll to PSP Poll (left column)

… and vote for Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnake by Carpe Lumen (that’s me in the Flickr world). I assume you can't vote for any of the other photos. :-)


I really hope I identified the snake correctly. Thanks for voting and Happy Shooting!

Velodrome

Click photos for a larger view or check out all the photos from the event here.

Went to the San Diego Velodrome to try out some high speed motion photography. It was difficult to capture the bikers in focus and make the background as I was panning. I soon realize how important it was to find a suitable background, both to color and pattern. I scouted out a couple of spots around the Velodrome that would capture the bikers in full action. It was difficult to understand how the race worked, as the bikers suddenly were speeding like crazy then just pedaled like they were on vacation. I therefore concentrated on capturing some action filled photos rather than how the actual competition went.

Towards the end they did relays, which was easier to understand and more fun to watch. If you want to practice high-speed motion photography and I recommend a few hours at the Velodrome. If you are shooting raw in continuous mode I recommend a lot of memory cards. I shot over 800 images in a couple of hours.... and how did I do this photo?

Balboa park

Spent most part of Saturday at one of San Diegos most famous attractions, the Balboa Park. Anyone visiting should absolutely spend at least a day at the park, which also includes the San Diego Zoo requiring a day by itself. The botanical house, pictured below, is most likely one of the most photographed objects in San Diego and well worth a visit. Make sure you don't forget your camera. This was the first time I attended a Meetup.com activity, ut absolutely not the last time. I came home with about 700 images that took me about an hour to edit in Lightroom and a few more hours to make the necessary improvements. Thanks to Adobe Lightroom you can shoot as much as you want without be buried in images after a day with your camera. There are tons of colorful views, historical buildings and interesting people to shot in Balboa park (click for slide show).

Archive photos

Though I would dig into my 70 GB photo archive. This is the Las Vegas Stratosphere hotel with the tower in the background, taken in April 2007. It was one of those quick snap shots. We were at the parking lot about to leave the Stratosphere and go back to our hotel when I saw the hotel and the tower against the total black sky.

Here is another shot from the same trip to Las Vegas with the Sfinx at the Luxor hotel and the laser light from the hotel in the background. It took a little while to get to the right place to align the Sfinx and the laser.