Green Leaf 2

Since the sun is somewhat low in the sky lately, I've been noticing how it sometimes lights things up from behind if you are looking at the correct angle. Today I walked the trail around my building looking for things to photograph and I noticed how some of the leaves on this bush were nicely lit. I like how the leaf kind of glows and you can see the texture on the surface.

Lagoon

I had the idea of walking around campus at night for my weekly photo with Maxine. Well, it sounded good on paper. I thought some of the buildings would be lit up and look cool. Wrong. There is only one that I've found that looks cool at night, and I've already photographed that. So after walking around campus for over an hour, we decided to just take a photo of the buildings reflected on the lagoon. Yes, UCSB campus has a lagoon. I totally lucked out though, because this great blue heron stepped into the photo. Even more lucky, he mostly stayed still for the whole 15 second exposure! I'm pretty happy with this photo.

Leafy Texture

I've decided to revisit some subjects that I have photographed before and try to take better photographs, in order to help improve my technique. Easier said than done. I like this one, even though it was about the only I liked of the many I took. Practice, practice. 

Ghost in the Sand

While walking on the beach today, Maxine noticed our reflections in the wet sand, so naturally we both took photos of them. Mine did not turn out nearly as well as Maxine's. The reflection shows up better in her photo. 

Paragliding and Random Street Photo

Nell and I took a paragliding class today here in sunny Santa Barbara. Our great friend Maxine was nice enough to be our photographer, so if you want to see some of those photos, go to her blog here. I did not get my camera out the whole time because I was paragliding, of course. Then we went downtown and I realized that I had not taken my photo for the day, hence the random streetlight photo. I kind of like it though. 

Purple Flower

Since I was home today during the day, I decided to head out to the garden and play with my macro lens. So yeah, another flower photo. It felt good to use my macro lens and get a really close up shot. 

T-Day and Entertaining Babies

Nell and I went over to Noah and Dena's for Thanksgiving dinner. I thought this would give me some good indoor people photographing practice. Yes I did get practice, and yes I still suck. I got a lot of great shots of Simon, but they were all blurry, except this one. In my defense, the lighting wasn't very good, and Simon is one of the most active babies I have ever met. He would not sit still for a fraction of a second. So busy. Oh, and he totally stole my t-shirt. 

Lamps

First, I almost forgot to take my photo today. Second, I totally stole this idea from Maxine. She came over so that she and Nell could work on the bag that Nell is making for her. Maxine took out her camera to photograph Nell sewing, and got distracted by our colored lamp. As soon as I saw her taking photos of it, I was like, "That's a cool idea!"

Weekly Flower

Today I tried again to take advantage of the early evening light. I got out right as the sun was nearly past the horixon and kind of missed the best light. But I did manage to get a great flower shot. It's a bit dark because of the light, but I like it. I found these flowers near work last week and I'm really liking them, so I'm sure I'll post more in the future.

Petting Perdita

For our weekly photo, I wanted to photograph Maxine loving on her two adorable cats. This was a great idea, except that the lighting in her apartment is horrible, and I apparently suck at taking photos in poor lighting. I like the composition of this shot though. She is petting Perdita, (Perdita is my girlfriend...shhhh...don't tell Nell), who has really soft white fur, and is the most gentle, laid back cat ever.

Big Sur Day 2 Rain and Rainbows

Maxine, Nell and I woke up this morning to rain. Well, more accurately, we woke up to a horrendously loud torrential down poor pounding on our tent sometime in the middle of the night. Luckily the rain abated long enough for us to pack up the tent and load the car in the morning. It even let us get out of the car to take photos several times during the day. Unfortunately, because of the weather, the lighting for most of these photos wasn't very good. I did manage to catch two rainbows though! One of them was coming right out of this little canyon. If we would of been thinking, we should have ran over to the end of the rainbow to find the pot of gold. It was right there!

Big Sur Day 1

This weekend Nell and I went with Maxine to Big Sur, one of our favorite places to visit in California. I rented a nice wide angle lens and got some great shots. We spent the night at Ragged Point, drove down to see the elephant seals, then headed back north into Big Sur stopping at nearly every vista point we saw. Above is a humming bird I managed to photograph at Ragged Point. There were a lot of them. It's a bit fuzzy because I had to take the shot from far enough away to not scare the hummingbird, so I was zoomed way in. This is the first good shot I've gotten of a hummingbird. I really like how the background turned out so colorful. I like the photo photo below because of how peaceful Nell looks resting on the rock wall overlooking the ocean, and for the nice color. 

The elephant seals at the beach this time of year were mostly juveniles who didn't really move around much. But I managed to catch one scratching his feet. It's pretty funny to see them use their fins almost like hands. 

Below is a view of McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. The sun was pretty much in the worst spot to photograph the falls, not to mention that is was super bright, but the shot came out alright.

Still More Flowers

So many flowers, so little time. Today at work I decided to take a short break and take advantage of the evening sun, at like 4:30. Gotta love daylight savings time. Anyway, I found this flower and kind of fell in love with it. I tried a lot of different perspectives to change things up a bit, and ended up with this one. I really like it.
On a side note, today I rented a fancy wide angle lens to take to Big Sur this weekend. During my lunch break today I had a whole lot of fun playing with it, but unfortunately none of the photos came out very good. Hopefully the ones from Big Sur come out better.

Big Green Plant

These plants are all over Santa Barbara, and they're huge, as big as a large beach ball. This one is where I work, and since I didn't have much time today, I took a short break and snapped a few quick shots of it. 

Kittie with Yarn

I came up with the idea of photographing Maxine's cats playing with a ball of yarn. Well, as you can see, Perdita was totally not interested, and Elim ran into the bathroom all scared. I still think it was a good idea. Silly cats. On a side note, if the cats would have been interested in the yarn, we would have had to get more creative with the lighting or used a flash, which would have also been fun.

Red Berries

Busy day today. I took this idea from Maxine, she posted a pic of berries like these. They are all over where I work, and they are bright red, so I took a few shots. Oh, and don't eat these. 

Yellow Flower

When I got to work today and parked my car, I noticed the sun lighting up these yellow flowers nicely. I really like how this shot came out and how the sunlight makes the flower petals glow. I took this with my 55-250 telephoto set all the way to 250, so I was really zoomed in on this flower, which makes me even happier that it came out. I think I got the depth of field and focus perfect, the entire flower and stem are in focus. 

Gorgeous Sunset

Today Maxine and I wanted to catch the evening sun on some flowers and such in the garden, but we misjudged the timing so it was a bit dark by the time we got out there. Lucky for us, it was a gorgeous sunset. We found a good vantage point above the slough. Even though we had to stand on sketchy, random pieces of junk along a chain link fence, both of us were able to get a ton of great shots. I played around with different perspectives and different lenses, and I zoomed in to specific areas to try to get a lot of different shots. Oh, and not that it matters, but I didn't do any adjustments to either of these shots.

Simon and Huge Coffee Mugs

Today we visited our friends Noah, Dena and Simon. Taking photos of toddlers is a lot of fun, but very hard, they really don't like to sit still, especially if they are named Simon. I got a couple good shots though. He tried for 5 minutes or so to go between his daddy's legs. I think he eventually gave up and chased the kitty cat a bit. Then he wanted to help mommy vacuum. After that, we walked to a nearby coffee shop. Dena had a chai tea in a huge mug, so I snapped a few shots of her drinking from it. I tried to rush the shot so it was more candid, but this meant I didn't pay enough attention to the focus point. Ooops. I like the shot anyway.

The Odd One

While walking around work today, I noticed these little flowers. I believe they are lantana. Most of the flowers on this bush are purple, but for some reason a few are white. After taking a few shots, I noticed these three together with the white on in the middle, which I thought was kind of striking.  

Apparently I Like Red Leaves

I keep trying to take a really close up shot of sunlight coming through a leaf. This isn't as clear as I'd like, but it's the best I've done so far. Practice, practice. 

Sunset from Work, the Benefit of Daylight Savings Time

As I got into my car to drive home today, I noticed this nice sunset, so I grabbed my camera and snapped off a few shots. This is the view from where I work, looking west towards the Santa Barbara harbor.

Blue Smoke

For our weekly photo, Maxine came up with the idea of photographing the smoke from a burning incense stick. This turned out to be really challenging, but eventually we pulled it off. Unfortunately for me, we sorted out the best lighting after I had taken my photos, so Maxine ended up with a much better shot. See her photo here. We lit this with my small LED light. For mine we pointed the light from the direction of the camera, for hers we pointed the light from behind the incense. I was surprised that the smoke came out looking so cool, so I think I want to do something similar again.

Red Leaf 3

This read leaf is just outside the window from where I work. I walk by this bush every day and notice the leaves, so today I got my camera out. There could be more photos of these leaves in the future of this blog.

Farmer's Market and Evening Sunlight

Today we decided to go to the local farmer's market, so I took my camera with me. Sooo much color! I took a lot of shots, but the lighting was either full sun or shade, or both, so it wasn't as easy as I thought. But, after looking at the shots I took, I now have a lot more ideas for photos, so maybe another visit sometime. 

Later that evening, my photo buddy Maxine and I decided to take advantage of the nice evening lighting and photograph some flowers and leaves and such. The lighting was beautiful, but for once none of my flower pictures turned out very well. Luckily Maxine noticed some fun leaves on a tree with interesting shadows. A few of these shots came out OK, but I really need to work on my focus and depth of field. Speaking of which, I found another rose bush with super thorny branches, so I played around with different perspectives and depths of field and came up with the shot below. I took a ton of these shots and had a lot of fun.

Lots of Butterflies and a Huge Flower

Today Nell and I went for a walk with Maxine to look at the butterfly preserve near us. The butterflies were kind of far away from us so I had to use my telephoto, and then zoom in on the photo a lot. As you can see though, there were a lot of butterflies. On the walk back I noticed the flower below. It's as big as my fist, and pretty cool looking, so of course I took a few shots. 

The Scenic Drive

Today as I was driving home, the way I do every day, I just happened to see this nice scenic view between the trees, so I stopped and took a few shots. 

Fun Shadows

This evening Maxine and I decided to make use of a bare white wall and have fun with some shadows. My original idea was to take photos of cats and their shadows, but of course the cats had other ideas. Then we decided to make our own wacky shadows. As it turns out though, both of our cameras had a hard time focusing on a flat wall, so the photo is a bit out of focus. 

Fenced In

Today I walked around work looking for something different to photograph. I noticed that the evening sun was casting interesting shadows on this chain link fence so I tried some close up shots to try to capture the shadows. I like this one because it gives a somewhat interesting abstractness to a rather mundane subject. A more specific point of focus, like a bug on the fence or something, would have added to the photo, but you just can't find an interesting bug when you need one.

OMG! I posted the rest of the Red Rocks pictures!

Today Ritwik and I got up early to catch the sun rising over Vegas. I was able to get quite a few great shots. The one above is my favorite because the sun is just peeking over the distant mountains. On the hike back I took some close up shots of a joshua tree. 

Then I drove around the park to photograph the morning sun on the mountains. I got quite a few good shots, but I had to narrow it down to just this one.

Once I got back to camp, we set out for some climbing. We went to a sport crag that we had seen on the first day. While everyone was climbing, I spent a little time playing with my camera and found this desert flower with some striped rock behind it. I like the tree-like look of this plant. 

Then Nell and Ritwik decided to do battle with a beautiful, hard climb on an overhanging arete. The sun was in just about the perfect spot and I got tons of great shots.