Sunset Photos

I spent this 4th July holiday weekend in the San Bernadino mountain range near Lake Arrowhead with a group of friends. The place we stayed at had a deck on the upper level that faced the north-west so we got a great view of the mid-summer sunset. I've just posted 3 sunset photos I took on the night of July 4th, and also started a sunset photo gallery that includes the one I used for the Sure to Rise series, "but sans-JC". See them all in the Sunset Photo Gallery.

Sure to Rise Series

A lot of my friends are sure to get a giggle out of this series knowing of my Catholic background and now lapsed status. And who would have thought an excursion on Friday night to attempt some shots at the full moon rising over Irvine would lead to this. I went out at about 7:30pm to make sure I could find myself a spot to take my moon shots, and of course the sun was still setting, so hey, gotta take a photo of the sunset of course. So when I was looking at the sunset shots this afternoon I noticed the rays of the sun, and a good Catholic boy of course automatically sees visions from his past of resurrections and fiery hearts. So here we are with a series of photos with the resurrected Christ in a fiery sunset.

The "Sure to Rise" name comes from the marketing tag line for New Zealand baking powder maker, Edmonds. The company is a household name in New Zealand and famous for its Edmonds Cookery Book that can be found in the kitchens of probably almost every New Zealand home. The cover of the classic Edmond's cook book and the cans and packages of Edmonds baking powder all feature the sun's rays to give emphasis to the "sure to rise" qualities of the product.

So now you have the answer to the deep psychological mystery of this series of photos.

See the series at the Sure to Rise Slideshow

Greeting cards, prints, and custom framing are availabe for these photos from my Sure To Rise gallery at Imagekind

ExperienceLA - Issue 226 (Reinterpretations)

Just a quick toot of the horn here. You might recall my recent photo series from LA's Union Station. I submitted one of the photos of Traxx Restaurant to the Experience LA group at Flickr and was "chuffed" to see in today's weekly Experience LA Newsletter that my photo was picked as "photo of the week".

Bryce Canyon Fantasy

And now for something completely different. In this month's edition of Photoshop User Magazine, Bert Monroy gives a lesson on adding a starry sky to a photo. I thought I'd try it out for some fun and to learn some new tricks and used this photo of Bryce Canyon in Utah that I took a couple of years ago.

Bert is a master of digital art. I went to a training class given by him in LA last year and was just blown away by what the guy can do and as I felt overwhelmed by his mastery of Photoshop and the sheer volume of information he was passing out I kept thinking to myself "What the hell am I doing here"! Bert paints with Photoshop in the same way an artist paints with a brush. He only takes photos of his subject matter to act as aids to memory and for sketching his work; his "paintings" are made completely with Photoshop.

At the time I took his class he had not long finished his masterpiece of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority (Damen can be seen on Bert Monroy's website). He told us that the months and months of painstaking work (about 2000 hours in all) that he put into this huge 40x120 inch digital painting left him feeling like he never wanted to do anything like that again.

Anyhow, my piece of fantasy art looks rather rudimentary, but it was fun and I learned some new things. (See larger version here)

If you want to learn more about using Photoshop, I recommend joining the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. As part of your membership you'll get the Photoshop User magazine, which is always jammed full with Photoshop lessons for beginners to advanced. Click here to join NAPP

Yellow Day Lilly

I splurged on a new Canon 5D recently and took it with me to get some practice shots when I was walking my dog the other day . I spotted some yellow day lillies and took this shot.

Flower photo gallery

Unframed or framed prints of this photo of a yellow day lilly can be purchased through my gallery at ImageKind