Uploads from SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)

Bayshore Boats

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:28:46 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

My buddies Steve, Ian, and I were driving around the town of Morro Bay looking for a place to shoot Morro Rock that was somewhat protected from the wind, and we found this little beach below Bayshore Cliffs Park, on the east side of the bay.

The beach itself is all shells, and I know that someone lives on the boat in the foreground.

We stayed til well after sunset -- the sky never did much of anything, which was pretty typical for this trip.

Oh well. Chasing the light is sometimes frustrating, but that's why we do it.

Closer to Reality

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sun, 12 May 2013 10:29:20 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

I know I went too far with the other version of this image that I posted below, when I read this comment from my friend, Ian: who was actually there, too. i don't remember those clouds that night or was this daytime?

That made me laugh, and made me realize how easy it is to change the mood of an image with a few keystrokes, masks and sliders.

This one is, as the title says, closer to reality - but the camera's reality as we command it to be with our shutter speed, aperture, etc. And the reality was, there really was a guy who walked down the right side of the pier during the duration of this exposure, but he's not there...

Wow, this is getting deep.

But without our Mothers, we would know no reality -- so to my mother, my wife's mother, the mother of my children -- and all you other mothers out there in flickrland -- past, present, and beyond, I salute you all.

Thanks for having us, and helping us to shape and determine our own reality.

Oceano Morning

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sat, 11 May 2013 22:25:19 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Many thanks to the multi-talented Mimi Ditchie for giving my buddies and me the super secret directions to the Oceano Dunes...couldn't have been an easier way to get there. If there weren't so many environmental questions about the big oil leak that was finally discovered and remedied around 15 years ago, I'd really think about retiring in Avila Beach. But it's probably too expensive now...

Anyway, these dunes are very fun to explore -- I just wish we would have been there earlier -- or later...the light wasn't the best. But the patterns are amazing...and did I say they were fun to explore? It's really like being all alone...besides the three of us, I think we saw one other person.

Click the picture and view it large on black. It's really a lot better that way. BTW, the Pacific Ocean is right over the top of the hill -- well not really, but you can see it from there.

Avila Vanishing Point

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:55:31 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Do you see the guy walking down the right side of the pier toward the camera? No? Neither do I -- and I was hoping he'd walk faster, but he just lollygagged his way down the pier, and I was shooting with a ten-stop ND on bulb, so I waited until he passed the camera until I hit the remote to close the shutter.

Thankfully, the long exposure made him disappear without any extra post production work required by yours truly.

The one thing that didn't disappear and is kind of bumming me out about the Nikkor 18-300mm lens that cost me a grand is the chromatic aberration. Nothing I did in NX2 would get rid of it.

I love this lens, but more and more, I have been noticing said chromatic aberration on long exposures. I need to do more research to see if this is to be expected -- but I haven't had the time lately.

Anybody looking at this photo and possessing this lens, maybe you can share your CA experiences with me.

I've been using this lens 99% of the time for about the last 10 months. I love it...except for the chromatic aberration problem.

I think it's real pronounced in the two vertical pier posts on either side of the railing, but like I said, I could not make it go away in the lateral color aberration slider in NX2.

I don't know if I'm over sharpening, over saturating or whatever -- I'm past that. I do know though if I had converted the image to B&W I could have lost it. But I like the colors here, so I'm going with it as is.

And, I would love to know, however, if anyone has experienced this problem with this lens besides me.

EDITED TO ADD:
Thanks to [http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffisawyer/] for bringing up the suggestion I try PS to edit this image. I discovered that my ACR was a real old version -- 6.3 vs, the latest, which is 7.4. In the former, the 18-300mm lens isn't even listed, which is not surprising since it only came out last year.

I also checked out Nikon's answer to ACR, ViewNX2, and processed a version of this image without the majorly red tinted sky. I will post that at a later time.

Nosy

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:41:52 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Definitely my favorite live subject. She's especially easy to shoot after breakfast. All that activity makes her wanna take a nap.

Olive's Eyeball

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:35:48 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Definitely my favorite live subject. She's especially easy to shoot after breakfast. All that activity makes her wanna take a nap.

Going Up

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:20:24 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Omigod! I mean, like, I totally hate the mall! Gag me!

But I had to go there, because I'm one of those people who own an iPhone 4s, which was stricken with severe battery drainage, after I chose to update it to iOS 6.

So, I made an appointment to visit the "Genius Bar" at my local Apple Store, which just happens to be in the Northridge Mall, which was destroyed by the Northridge quake in 1994, and was closed for repair and renovation for almost for the entire first year I lived in SoCal, to see if they could help me fix said battery drainage.

Luckily, I made the appointment for first thing Saturday -- 9:10am -- which means the mall is technically closed -- 99% of the stores are dark -- except the Apple Store, which is teaching workshops and being geniuses for morons like me who can't figure out the technology at that time of day, and function at the closest to their prime after a cup or two of joe.

Again, luckily for me, I had backed up everything on my phone, because I just had a sneaking suspicion that in order to fix my battery problem, they would have to wipe my phone of everything I had on it. Here's one thing I wish you could answer for me though, genui -- if everything I have on my phone exists in the mysterious cloud, why can't you restore it back to its prior state in the store?

Come on, technology, work with me here!!! I mean, if someone like me, a semi-geezer with decent computer knowledge has these questions, can't someone really smart figure out how to solve, or at least answer them?

Anyway, as I was leaving the mall with my totally restored, yet naked iPhone, I saw this escalator, which I must have ridden at least dozens, if not hundreds of times in the last 18 years. It wasn't even operational yet -- except by someone willing to exert the kinetic energy required to climb the notched metal stairs which lead to an arched ceiling and even more failing retail outlets, and more importantly a second story escape hatch to the outside world.

To make a long story even longer -- when I got home, something didn't work right, so I wiped my phone again, and restored it from my own computer -- an lost the cool iPhone photo I had taken of this escalator. So, I went back the next morning, which was a Sunday, at about the same time, and found this area of the mall equally deserted.

I don't know who the architect is, but I was struck by the cool symmetry of this area for the first time ever when it was devoid of humanoids.

Add a cool Lightroom preset, and Bada Bing -- here it is.

Sorry it took me so long to cut to the chase...

Blue Gold Sunrise

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:19:06 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Or as I'm now calling it, the sunrise that almost wasn't.

The prior two days my buddies Ian, Steve, and I had less than spectacular light on our little jaunt up California's Central Coast.

The night before we were at Morro Bay; we found a really cool place to shoot at Bayshore Park, but the sky was double blah -- hazy and no clouds. After shooting way past the blue hour, we hit the road back to Avila Beach, but stopped first to have a great steak dinner at McLintock's in SLO.

And because we were heading home the next morning anyway, no one was feeling excited about the prospect of getting up early to shoot blah skies again, so we kinda thought we'd blow it off.

I woke up around 6:15, looked out the window, and saw something I couldn't believe. Clouds. Red clouds! @#$%*$#@!!!!!

Fortunately, the beach is a short two blocks for the condo, so I threw on my clothes, grabbed my gear and yelled at the other two guys as I blasted out the door.

I could see no reason to give myself a heart attack by running -- I mean the red was quickly fading, and I don't like to run anyway, seeing how I already hold the title of World's Slowest Human -- but by the time I got there, it had given way to gold -- so I was able to catch some cool reflections in the wet sand.

Cal Poly Pier Dawn

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:11:10 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

The small town of Avila Beach at the edge of the San Luis Bay along the Central Coast of California has three piers – Avila Pier, along the town’s main drag, the Harford Pier, (which technically is part of the town of Port San Luis) a 540-foot-long wharf built in 1873 by John Harford, and one of the few upon which you can still drive a car; and this one – now called the Cal Poly Pier, and home of a marine science education and research center. Oddly enough, its name doesn’t show up on most internet maps I’ve seen either -- including the flickr map, either.

Believe me, though -- there is a pier there.

It was originally a wooden structure built in 1914 by the Pacific Coast Railway Company, and first used to ship dry goods. By 1922, it had become a major oil port and shipped Santa Maria crude to destinations around the world. The port also was used to offload diesel fuel and gasoline. Tankers docked at the wharf, taking in crude and other oil products pumped in from the San Joaquin Valley. At its peak, 2 million barrels of oil were being loaded onto ships each month.

Union Oil of California (Unocal) purchased the pier in 1941, just in time to supply the Pacific Fleet with oil for World War II and built a huge tank farm on a hillside overlooking the town. Winter storms demolished the wooden pier in 1983, and the company spent $27 million to rebuild it in 1984.

In 1988, Avila’s Front Street was discovered to be contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbon caused by pipes that leaked into the soil beneath the town, and ended up becoming one of the biggest environmental disasters in California history. The extent of the problem was discovered in 1989. County, state and oil company officials battled for 10 years before Unocal agreed to pay damages and excavate the town. Finally, in 1998, the petro giant began its $16.5 million environmental cleanup effort – tearing down about five city blocks including the heart of the town’s small commercial district. The beach was closed off and the contaminated soil was excavated and backfilled with clean soil; much of it from Guadalupe Dunes, some 16 miles south.

What was once a funky little blue collar beach town, has seen property values sky rocket and become a much different place from what is was in the 60s; a place where a retiree on a fixed income could find an affordable home just yards from the beach.

I may not have all the facts here correct – I’ve lived in California for two decades, and just visited Avila Beach this weekend and heard this story from my buddy Ian – so I did more research when I got home today.

Fascinating story – where was Erin Brockovich when you needed her?

Cool town, too – I hope to come back and get some more interesting skies one of these days.

Cousin It's Colony

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:57:01 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

President's Weekend in Yosemite. Crowded. Dusty. Warm. And in some places, like along the river in the shade, you could find patches of old, dirty snow.

I love these tufts in the winter. They remind me of Cousin It from the Addams Family.

We had some time to kill before we ventured over to the Cathedral Beach Picnic Area to shoot Horsetail Fall, so we decided to check out the river, and found these hidden gems.

Leave It To Las Vegas...

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:14:57 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

to do it Vegas style when it comes to medical research and treatment facilities.

I'm a big fan of Frank Gehry's work -- the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, being my favorite.

The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas is definitely Gehry -- but surprisingly enough, there's really nothing else in Vegas quite like it.You could say some of the buildings in the City Center area of the strip are Gehry's influenced, but this is the real deal. It's off the beaten path when it comes to Vegas -- away from the Strip and in the relatively new Downtown area, Symphony Park.

I wanted to shoot it at night because of photos I had seen of it on the web. A Sunday night to shoot this area of downtown Vegas is ideal -- it's like a ghost town there -- and it was only around 9pm. Talk about rolling up the sidewalks.

Not everybody likes it. One critic described it like this:

"It seems to say: This is your brain on Frank Gehry. If I had a problem with my brain, I would not be reassured arriving at this place."

That's brutal.

On the other hand, it has one of the largest Alzheimer's research programs in the country, as well as treating patients with Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and MS.

Love it or hate it, it's undeniably Gehry, and totally Vegas. I'd love to see the inside in person as well.

Merced Lines and Light

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:05:39 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

The start of the long President's Day weekend in Yosemite was clear, dry, dusty, and...crowded. Not unexpected, either. So since we had a few hours to kill before heading over to the Cathedral Beach Picnic Area to set up and wait to see if Horsetail Fall was gonna do its thing, we drove along South Side drive looking for good places to shoot the river.

While I don't remember exactly where this location was, it fit the bill. The way the sun hit the portion of the river and lit up the bottom combined with the reflections of the trees looked interesting, so we spent a couple of hours here, looking for something out of the iconic.

My friend Steve, really nailed it with this one. Click the link to check his out.

Rocks 'N Reflection

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 19:46:36 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

This is from the day we started at Valley View -- as we turned and the folks from Aperture Academy kept going. We caught up to them here at Cathedral Beach. Another HDR.

Cedar Breaks Sunset

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:52:50 -0700

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Last year's big road trip included Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Lower Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, the the Annular Solar Eclipse, Willis Creek Canyon, and first, but not least, Cedar Breaks National Monument, that officially wasn't even open.

A whirlwind to say the least. And lots of driving - over 2000 miles, give or take -- I actually can't remember right now, but I'm sure I have it written down somewhere; maybe even here on one of the images I've posted on flickr.

Well, with the exception of the eclipse. I didn't really get anything of it that I liked -- and lord knows I shot a million shots of it. There was a lot of lens flare -- even with, or maybe because of, the solar lens protectors I bought.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, this is an image from that very first night -- Cedar Breaks National Monument, some 11,000 feet above sea level in southwest Utah -- just a few miles from Brian's Head Ski area -- which was officially celebrating its off season when we were there.

It had snowed that morning, and while there are just small remnants of the snow in this photo, the ground was still very saturated.

This is one of the few HDRs I've ever processed that I actually think works. No big patches of noise, or garish unrealistic colors.

HDR for me, is always such a crap shoot. I very rarely seem to expose my bracketed shots so they work.

Perhaps I should learn how to do it correctly. I think the key is three exposures -- and not a great deal of variance in the shutter speeds, but I could be wrong.

LACMA Angles

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 22:05:26 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Working on the weekend sucks.

After all was it not the powerful lyrics of Mike Reno, lead singer of one of Canada's favorite sons, Loverboy, that exclaimed "Everybody's Working for the Weekend?"

"Yes," I hear you saying, "yes, it was."

So from my point of view, it just seems so wrong to have to work on those last two days of the week, especially during my favorite time of the year.

I love March and the madness that comes with it -- the crown jewels of the College Basketball season -- the conference and NCAA tournaments.

This year, it's especially hard because I will work at least the first two weekends of the month, and quite possibly even the third -- while the dance for the Big Dance and its 64...er, 68 contestants gets into full swing.

If you don't understand a word of the previous two paragraphs, and what it could possibly have to do with an image of street lights against a blue sky, don't fret, I won't bother to explain it. You probably wouldn't care anyway.

Anyway, here's the deal. There is a display of street lights in front of the Los Angeles County of Modern Art, along Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile -- and I have wanted to shoot them for a long time.

So last Sunday, I decided to take my camera with me, hoping I would have a chance when I finished working to drive by the museum on my way home, and at least check out the display.

Little did I know when I got there, that the lights would go on shortly after sunset. I had left my tripod in the car, because I just wanted to snap some quick images with hopes of going back again sometime when it was completely dark.

But I was happy to catch the lights as they went on, and wandered around trying to get different compositions of the lights against the dimming sky.

I like this one -- what I like about it most is the fact that one of the lights is burned out -- ruining an otherwise perfect weekend; for which, Loverboy's Mike Reno knew, everybody was working.

Not The Subway

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:41:54 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

The problem is when you go on a week-long road trip to Utah and Arizona and try to see Zion, Bryce, the Grand Escalante, the Grand Canyon's North Rim, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Lower Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and a total eclipse, you're not gonna have time to see it all, and something's gotta give.

Due to the crowded conditions even as early as it was in the season, Zion was the one that got shortchanged.

We did hike to Upper Emerald Falls, (or Middle, I can't remember what the farthest one is called) but there was barely a trickle in any of the falls, and I considered it a major disappointment. But this area reminded me a lot of photos I have seen of the Subway -- (and judging from the scale, I think it's a lot bigger with the person in the lower right) even though we didn't even get close to the Narrows...

I gotta go back to Zion in the fall one of these days --

Snow Cone

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:23:00 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

There was still snow in Yosemite a couple of weeks ago, and it was surprisingly deep in spots that don't get much sun. I found a couple of frozen drifts that were at least a foot deep.

This is the "Snow Cone" at the base of Upper Yosemite Fall, which, as the name implies, is formed by the falling water that turns into ice and snow when the temperature is freezing or below.

Although you can't tell it from this vantage point, it has been recorded as high as 400 feet -- by none other than John Muir himself.

Reached Explore #205 on Monday, March 4, 2013. Thank you all.

Lines, Light, and Curves

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:29:11 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Taking a break from my Yosemite stuff while looking for photos for a project my wife is doing.

I found this one from Willis Creek Canyon in Utah taken last year.

I couldn't get over this fantastic place. Around every corner was one fantastic formation after another. There are actually about five corridors that wind through Willis Creek, which on this trip was running extremely low. There's also a water fall in the one of the corridors that is beautiful when it's flowing, but unfortunately on this trip, it was barely a trickle.

It's a slot canyon, but as you can see, it looks much different than the more famous Antelope Canyons right across the border in Arizona.

Valley View Red

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:18:12 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

Dawn at Yosemite View Lodge. In the lobby, The Aperture Academy gang was gathered, keeping warm while their gear was being loaded into the bus. We debated whether we should follow them but they beat us out of the parking lot. Once we were inside the park we caught up to them,and while they kept going east on Southside Drive -- we turned left and cut back to Valley View.

As we were getting out of the car, the sky was starting to turn pink. Just enough clouds to make it magical. It was icy, even though there wasn't a whole lot of snow left on the ground.

Not that many other photographers there, either -- maybe a half dozen or so, which was a welcome change from the circus the night before at the Cathedral Beach Picnic Area to shoot Horsetail.

Light, Fog, Movement

nobody@flickr.com (SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com)) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:39:16 -0800

SheldonBranford (RichGreenePhotography.com) posted a photo:

I drive along this stretch of the "rural" San Fernando Valley almost every day...hard to believe that its only about a mile away from one of the busiest freeway interchanges in the nation -- where the 405 and the 101 meet.

It's the entrance to the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Area, part of a 2000 acre flood control basin, and managed by the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department. It's also sometime home to more than 200 species of birds -- from Canadian geese, and pelicans, to hummingbirds and many others.

A lot of TV shows also film "rural" scenes on location here -- there are always crew trucks parked along Woodley Avenue, just north of Burbank Blvd shooting shows like Raising Hope and The Office on this stretch.

For the FOX PHOTO CLUB GROUP DISCUSSION - "What is That?"