Snowy San Gabriel Mountains

Snowy Southern California!

I took this photo of the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains this past Saturday looking north across the San Joachim Marsh in Irvine, a few minutes walk from my home.

This image can be viewed in the U.S. Landscapes Gallery

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #1

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert #1

Here is a series of interpretations of the one photo I took on a trip to the State of Sonora, Mexico at Chirstmas time 2002.

While driving the toll road down the state early in the morning the sun was just coming up. The mountain in the foreground was beautifully silhouetted and the clouds were full of energy and drama. I had to stop the car and take a photo.

In this series I have made various interpretations of the photo ranging from startling color, through sepia, to black and white. I hope you find something that appeals to your taste.

Click here for Sunrise Over the Sonora Desert Series

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #2

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert #2

This sepia interpretation brings forth a lot of the drama and energy in the clouds. They appear to be boiling.

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #3

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert

Beautiful cobalt blue sky and gold clouds set this interpretation apart.

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #5

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert #5

A sepia interpretation of the image.

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #6

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert #6

This interpetation was done with sepia and purple tones.

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #7

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert #7

Blue and natural tones

Sonora Desert Sunrise Series #8

Sunrise over the Sonora Desert in Blue

Old Petrol Pump

Driving up the Wanganui River road in New Zealand last March I noticed this old gas pump (petrol pump as they would say there) at the side of the road. What a forlorn memory to days gone by it made. Of course it has high photographic interest because it is so incongruous. I sits in the grass for a start, and has no structure around it. It looks so out of place. For whatever reason, it has been let be. The gauge dial is in gallons, which tells you it's at least 40 years old since New Zealand adopted the metrics system in the mid-60s. How amazing that it still stands there, slowly rusting, and with lichen growing on it. For its age it actually is standing up incredibly well. I love the sky in the background too. It adds some real drama to the photo.

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Bonsai Tree #4

Final interpretation in this set of 4 studies of a bonsai tree at the Japanese gardens at the Huntington Library in Southern California.

Bonsai Tree #3

Number three in a set of 4 photos of this bonsai tree at the Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library Gardens in San Marino (near Pasadena), California. This photo is done with a sepia effect.

Bonsai Tree #2

Second in a set of 4 studies of this bonsai tree at the Japanese gardens at the Huntington Library gardens. I applied a blue filter in this case. The grey in the weathered wood actually had a lot of blue tone to it before I even applied this filter, and you can see the blue hue in some of the other photos in this set too, even though I didn't apply a blue filter to them.

Bonsai Tree #1

My latest from my recent trip is this set of 4 variations of a photo of a bonsai tree at the Japanese garden at the Huntington Gardens. I have used different cover overlays in this set. Hopefully there's one that appeals to you.

Study of a Agave at the Hungtington Gardens #3

In this study of the agave at the Huntington Library I first of all created a black and white image, and then I layed over top a layer with the image from the second study of the agave. I used a soft light blending mode and also placed a black to white gradient at 20% opacity over top.

I don't that this photo looks its best as this small jpeg version. Make sure you click on the image to see the larger version at least. The full-size version I created these jpegs from looks pretty cool actually, and will print quite nicely I believe.

Study of a Agave at the Hungtington Gardens #2

This is the second of three studies of this agave at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, CA. In this case I used a blending technique in developing the photo that used "color burn".

You can see the original photo by scrolling down to the bottom of this post of the agave at the Huntington #1.

Study of a Agave at the Hungtington Gardens #1

This first study of an agave comes from my recent visit to the Huntington Library botanical gardens. You can see the original photo from which I created this and the other two versions in the following posts by scrolling down to the bottom of this post.

In creating this image you'll see that I first of all cropped out a lot of the distracting background so as to focus just on the agave.

I then selected the remaining background and darkened it. I found that the new Quick Selection Tool that comes with Photoshop CS3 worked perfectly in this case since there was a nicely defined border along the edge of the agave; the tool was able to find this edge easily.

I saved off the selection of the agave(Select>Save Selection) in case I needed to work with the selection again and also for what I was going to do in the following images. I wanted to essentially make the remaining pieces of background between the agave "leaves" black, but if I were to just simply fill those areas with black it could look unnatural, so first of all I actually blurred these areas using Lens Blur and then filled them with black and lowered the opacity down to something like 80%. This way these parts of the photo don't just look like they were cut out and blend into the background.

I did some adjustments to levels and layers as I always do, and then I made a copy of the merged layers and in this case changed its blending mode to Luminosity, also adjusting the opacity and fill levels a little. Essentially they are the steps I used in the "digital darkroom" in creating this photo.


The original photo of the agave.

Agave Study #2

Agave Study #3

Aloe Blooms #2

Huntington Library Gardens Aloe

Shot with HDR bracketing, set of 3, 2-ev steps, at 100 ISO.

I actually took 9 exposures in groups of three. The second and third sets I manually set the f-stop up 2 stops for the second set, and down 2-f stops for the third. This was in an effort to get greater dynamic range, but I found it doesn't really create any noticeable difference, not to mention the fact that in many cases it introduced extra blurring and alignment issues with the HDR file. So I'm sticking to just the one set of 3 exposures from now on. Which is good as it means fewer images to store and deal with.

Agave and Cacti at the Huntington

This photo of a long agave flower stalk (actually known as an "inflorescence") was taken at the desert garden at the Huntington Library gardens in San Marino, CA. The image is an HDR photo composed of three exposures at 2 EV shifts. 100ISO.

I like how this turned out quite moody. The overcast in the sky created a nice gray background that the greens stand out well on. And of course the aloe and cacti make for great interest.

Blooming Aloe and Cacti

This landscape of aloe and cacti at the Huntington Library gardens makes me think of something very primeval. Just where are the dinosaurs?