Union Station Los Angeles

Although the era when traveling by train was the main mode of transportation has passed, the Los Angeles Union Station is still a grand old place that seems to get some TLC. Opened in May 1939, the station is a great example of art deco architecture. Despite what people think of L.A. and that everyone gets around in a car, when I was there on Saturday afternoon there was a constant crowd of people coming and going to and from trains.

Los Angeles Union Station Slideshow

Read about Los Angeles Union Station at Wikipedia

Song Sparrow in Spring Wildflowers #2

It was almost exactly a year ago that I did this post of a song sparrow singing his heart out in the wildflowers along the boardwalk at Moonstone Beach, Cambria, CA. I actually captured two photos of this little guy and just applied the "digital darkroom" techniques I have learned over the last 12 months through my membership with the National Association of Photoshop Professionals to that second photo which is the one you see here. I hope you like it. I personally love the colors in this photo. See this photo in the bird photo gallery.

Order prints of this or other bird photos through my gallery at ImageKind.

San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park Animals

I've been looking back over the photos I took at the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park this past spring and have been putting together a set of photos of the various animals at the park, both of the feathered and furry kind. Animals make such great subjects to photograph - for a start, they are a lot less critical of how they look in the photo than are people!

San Diego Zoo Animals Slide Show

Flamingo

If you've ever seen flamingos anywhere you'll appreciate how fascinating they are to observe. They are forever bunched up in a crowd, bobbing and swaying their heads, skimming their upside-down beaks across the surface of the water in a swaying motion, or scrapping for territory with their nearest neighbor.

All this fascinating behavior, however, makes them pretty hard to photograph. There's always a lot of movement and it's hard to get just one of the scrawny buggers in the frame at a time. Case in point here. I had to do some major blurring and masking to remove the distraction of the head of the second bird in the background.

See this photo of a flamingo in the bird photo gallery

Fuchsia Photo Set

When I was growing up my father was always a great fuchsia enthusiast. He had a backyard that was crammed full of about 60 different kinds of fuchsia. It's from my years of shadowing him in his garden as a kid that I learned my love of gardening myself. The funny thing is that I have never grown fuchsias - well until recently when I bought one with a gift voucher I got for my birthday. I should really know the name of this fuchsia as I recognize it as one that my dad definitely had in his garden. Anyhow, now that it's started to flower in my garden, I had to take a photo of it and made this set. I guess I know what I can give him for Christmas this year.

Fuchsia Flower Set Slideshow Gallery

Wedding Bells Ring for Carin and Teresa

At 5pm this Monday, June 16th, gay marriage will become a reality in California. My friends Carin and Teresa are planning their wedding for August, and asked me if I could take some photos of them for their wedding invitation. I thought I'd share a handful of the photos I took of the happy couple. Congratulations on your big decision, Carin and Teresa!

If you are a gay or lesbian couple planning on getting married in California and would like me to assist with your photography needs, please send me an email.

Canon 5D on sale - Is a new model release around the corner

The Canon 5D, which is considered to fall within the "professional" segment of the camera market, is currently being offered widely for less than $2000 (body only - previously sold for $3000), so the photography blogs are abuzz with speculation that Canon is about to release an update of the camera within the next few months and is now trying to clear inventory.

The 5D was released way back in August 2005 so is definitely due for an update. If it follows its big brother, the 1D, it will be called something like 5DII. So if you are in the market for a new camera and ready to move up to a "pro-level" camera, then you have a few options to consider. Decisions, Decisions!

For a start you could wait for the new release of the 5D, whatever it will be called, so that you don't miss out on any of the new bells and whistles. But of course you will need a bigger budget for that. It's obviously going to be at least $3000.

Or you could go for the recently-released Canon 40D, the high-end "pro-sumer" (professional at the consumer level...get it?) camera that is an exceptionally good camera available with lens kit for around $1500, or as a body-only deal for around $1,000.

Or you go for the 5D at around $2000. Why? The main thing you're going for is that the sensor in the 5D is a "full-format" sensor. The sensors in the 40D and Rebel series cameras are not full-sized sensors so your images in fact suffer from some cropping. This effect is more pronounced at the lower end of your lens' focal range. Just imagine the light coming through the lens and falling on the sensor but with the outer edges of the light being wider than the sensor itself. So with the 5D you get the full focal range of your lenses, as well as all exceptional technology of the camera itself.

Bodie Car Graveyard

Although Bodie's heyday was in the 1880s, people lived there in modern times too up till the time it became one of California's state parks in 1962. So obviously this was well into the era of the automobile. There's a few rusting hulks laying about Bodie, such as these in this photo. The paint is long gone on these cars, but the bodies themselves appear to have only surface rust. They don't build them like they used to, do they! I remember when my dad bought his first Japanese-made car, and my grandfather making fun of him about how thin and light the metal was. I can hear him saying "What's this! A sardine can?"

Slide show of photos of Bodie State Historic Park

Original Photo Used for Bodie HDR Interpretation

Michael Ziegler who keeps an eye on my posts, added a comment to the posting I did of an HDR interpretation of one of the photos I took at Bodie State Park in California, asking if I could post the original photo for comparison which I thought was a great idea, so here are the before and after photos side-by-side for you to see.

Mono Lake Photo Series

Mono Lake, California, sits at the western edge of The Great Basin, the expansive drainage area that lies between the Rocky Mountains in the east, and the Sierra Nevada range in the west. All lakes from Salt Lake in Utah across to Mono Lake in the west have no outlet to the sea and over thousands of years as a result of evaporation have become highly concentrated in salts.

Despite the waters of Mono Lake being too alkaline to support fish life, the waters abound with brine shrimp and alkali fly pupa which support millions of migrating birds.

Limestone towers known as "tufa" rise from the lake, formed by freshwater springs percolating up into the lake. The calcium in the fresh water combines with the carbonate in the lake water to form the calcium carbonate from which the tufas form. If you've ever been in limestone caves with stalagmites, you will recognize them as essentially the same things but formed by different processes.

In the photos of Mono Lake that I have published, you will see nature's dramatic primary color palette composed of a bright green lake and bright blue sky. It was quite a sight! I also did several of them as sepia-toned photos. And right there to the west is the very edge of the Sierra Nevada range. What a place! Get in a visit if you can some day.

By the way, if the bottom of the photos are cut off on your computer screen, did you know that by pressing the F11 key on your computer keyboard, you can hide your browser menu bars and get to see more of the picutures. When you're done, just press the F11 key again to show you menu bars again. This works for Internet Explorer - I'm not sure if it works the same with other browers.

Slide Show of Photos of Mono Lake

Read more about Mono Lake

Cyclist

If there's a crowd gathered, why not make the most of it? After all, what's a crowd for? This cyclist cruised by at last month's Long Beach Gay Pride parade making the most of the audience.

Action photo slide show

Bodie State Historic Park Sepia Photo Set

All the photos I've posted of the ghost town of Bodie have beautiful bright blue skies, but if you saw some of the photos of Bodie in the museum at the park there's no blue sky to be seen of course. They are old black and white photos and in pretty bad condition. Anyhow, the subject matter seemed to suit some black and white interpretations on my part, so here are my Bodie photos in sepia.

In early photographic grayscale developing, sepia toning was achieved by replacing the metallic silver in the emulsion with a silver compound, such as silver sulfide. The resulting prints with their yellowish tone got the name "sepia" after the color of the sepia cuttlefish found in the English Channel. Because of the smell of silver sulphide, sepia toning was often referred to as "rotten egg" toning.

Slide show of Bodie sepia toned photo set

Sonora Pass Hwy 108 Photo Set

On our recent trip to Yosemite, Bodie State Park and Mono Lake where also on our itinerary. They are both on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Range and easily accessible by crossing through Yosemite Valley and east over the Sierras via the Tioga Pass. However, since the Tioga Pass was still closed with snow from the past winter we had to skirt round Yosemite by going to the north of the park taking Highway 108 over the Sonora Pass. We were lucky here as the Sonora Pass had only just opened itself that weekend. Despite the extra time and miles added to our trip, we ended up not minding it at all as the scenery on the way was incredibly beautiful, starting with the Stanislaus National Forest and then the Sonora Pass itself. By time we got to the area of the pass it was late afternoon, the sun was getting low in the sky behind us, and the light was just perfect. We couldn't but make frequent stops to take photos.

I've posted a small set of them in the photo galleries.

Sonora Pass Hwy 108 Photo Slide Show Gallery

By the way, you might not have noticed that the url for my photo blog is now www.johncorney.com. Hopefully much easier for you to remember and type if you have to.