Icelandic Blues

We didn't see a lot of blue sky in Iceland. Most of the time the sky was solid white or light grey. Even with these conditions, we occasionally saw grey clouds become slate blue with an orange sun hidden low in the sky. The blues that did come through were striking.

I recently learned about selective saturation in Adobe Lightroom, where instead of boosting overall color saturation and vibrance, you can boost selective colors depending on what you want to bring out in the scene. You can emphasize the blue sky, green grass, even a little orange in the soil without making it look artificial. We want a picture that represents what we saw, to bring out memories of when we were there and elicit an emotional response. I want to make pictures that feel good to look at. Too much color and it doesn't look real, too little and it looks flat. Somewhere in between will make you oooh and ahhh. Remember how it looked? How blue the sky, how green the grass below grey clouds and a hazy horizon? That's what I want to see, what I want to feel. To feel like I'm there.

But Iceland isn't all clouds and rain. Sometimes the sun comes out and the sky is shockingly bright by contrast. 

Walking around Fjaðrárgljúfur I found canyons can be very challenging as far as exposure goes. The sky is bright, the river is in shadows, and there's a full range of light and dark in between. If you have a tripod you can bracket exposures to capture both the bright and dark areas, the usual method for serious photographers. If you're walking around taking handheld shots, the usual method for fun-loving vacation goers, you're limited to a single exposure and inevitably you cut something off the top or bottom of the brightness range. Either overexpose the sky to get the darker canyon, or get a properly exposed sky and canyon lost in shadow.

Since I felt the canyon makes a better picture I chose to overexpose the sky so the brightest clouds are washed out in a sea of white. There a little blue sky peeking through which I was able to bring out by boosting the blues using - yep - selective saturation. Then I nudged up green to brighten the grass, plus believe it or not I found a little orange in the soil. It pays to experiment.

Nearby at the famous DC-3 wreck, possibly the most photographed plane wreck in the world, we have a black sand beach, blue sky, a bit of orange in the sky, and yellow rain jacket. Again, I wanted to bring out the colors of the sky without altering the scene or making that rain jacket too bright. It's plenty bright already.

Sometimes nature turns up the saturation for you. I didn't have to do much of anything to this next picture. On our last night in Iceland, it was the autumnal equinox and we arrived for dinner as slate blue clouds accented a sunset behind the red roof architecture in Reykjavic, making for the perfect end to our trip.

Sketches of London

18th century author Samuel Johnson once famously said, "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

Indeed, with a small pocket camera and good pair of walking shoes, one might never tire of London.
















If one does tire, there are plenty of nice places to stop and rest, take for example the Royal Albert Hall. There's a huge lawn across the street with large stone steps and sitting walls. Just find a nice spot, put up your feet, and watch the world go by. And it will go by.

Who knows, you might even get some free entertainment. Maybe a street musician will play your favorite Simon & Garfunkle songs. How do you get to the Royal Albert Hall? Practice!

Or if you're feeling a bit more spendy, the music inside is also very nice. David Gilmour used to be in this band called Pink Floyd. He plays there sometimes.

 Everyone stands and cheers for David. Wish you were here, mate.

That's what you call a night on the town.


And then...

And then...

Kensington Gardens anyone?

It's Sunday afternoon in the park and the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain is full of children laughing and playing. The fountain is a big circuit of flowing water, some parts calm and tranquil, other parts turbulent, much like her life some tour guides might say. Children run and play and giggle and splash and tire themselves out and I like to think she would rather enjoy that.

At nightfall they lock up Kensington Gardens. If you find yourself on the wrong side of the gate all you can do is make shadow puppets until you find your way out. And you will find your way out. 

Then it's back to the pub for a pint or few. Cheers! The Mad Hatter Hotel? Couldn't ask for a more London place to stay.

Sketches of Napa in Springtime

It was a lovely early spring day in Napa, the first nice day after a long winter of cold and rain. The vines were dormant, simple rows of sticks, but the grass was green and flowers in bloom.

And so rain ponchos and down jackets were traded for short sleeves and sun dresses and two friends agreed to meet for wine.

One loved horses, one loved hiking. Both loved the fresh new weather.

And so they decided to convene at a local winery.

They drank and talked of friends and lovers, summer homes and winter blues and how today's wine was free and how lucky it all is.

It turned out to be a beautiful day.

A beautiful day for wine and conversation.

And so the afternoon rolled into evening and all was well. In nearby Lake Berryessa, overflow from recent rains drained down below the dam and into the river like someone pulled the plug on a giant bathtub. Sky and water lit up with the colors of the setting sun.

The End.

The City

You're in San Francisco. Look up.

Look around.

Look down.

Keenai - Keen Eye

I signed up for a free trial month of Keenai, the new photo storage service by Ricoh. It sounds too good to be true, unlimited storage for RAW and JPG files for $50 a year. I have a 500GB SSD that I've been filling with RAW files for a year and it's about two-thirds full. Soon I'll put this one away and start on a 1TB drive. Can I really keep a copy of all my RAW files, could be approaching 1.5TB in a few years, not to mention more prolific and established photographers with even more.

Full resolution JPGs will be nice. Google Photos charges $24 a year per terabyte and I've been restricting photo size 2048 pixels wide to keep my total files under a terabyte and the subscription cost at that two dollars a month. Which isn't bad, but I wouldn't put RAW files there, and when I want to produce a full size JPG I go back to that little SSD.

So I uploaded some JPGs, just whatever was in directories I've been creating. There's two from 2012, a tiny invisible blip on the far left. In the middle there's a spike in June and July, that would be summer in Napa. Then towards the right there's more regular activity with the tallest blip a trip to Iceland.

This isn't all my photos by any means, just a sample. Still, I was a little surprised to see my most common settings, a wide f/2.8, slow 1/40th of a second, and ISO 100. 

Now the pretty picture. Here is every camera I've used in the past five years, ranked. At top is the Ricoh GRII, followed by the heavier, more tank-like Canon 6D. The LX100 makes a fantastic vacation camera, and the Canon SL1 was my first foray into DSLR photography. Throw a couple phones and you round out recent history. Before that, for years I used the compact waterproof Sony TX10 (the photo there is a view of the clouds in front of Kilimanjaro as seen from a moving car).

It's the Saint Stupid's Day Parade!

Only in San Francisco will you learn about the First Church of the Last Laugh, that they have only one holy day on their calendar and it is on April 1st, which they celebrate as Saint Stupid's Day. Only here will you not be surprised to learn this is the 38th annual Saint Stupid's Day Parade. You will, however, be astonished at the creativity and cleverness with which stupidity is celebrated.

                

The Everyday Abstract

I was shopping for a hat.
     I like Nike hats.
          I went to the Nike store.
               I didn't find a hat.

                    I found this.