LowePro Sunset

Recently, I have been exploring the Santa Clarita valley and nearby areas for locations to shoot sunrises or sunsets. The Santa Clarita valley is north of Los Angeles and is the location of the city of Santa Clarita, the 4th largest city in Los Angeles county. The Santa Clara river, for which the city and valley are named flows west from the San Gabriel mountains meeting the Pacific ocean near Ventura, California.

The sunrises and sunsets can be spectacular when you have clouds move in from the west (the typical storm pattern) into the valley. With the last un-channeled river in southern California running through the valley, one would think there would be many opportunities for great images. But the city of Santa Clarita alone has over 100,000 residents and all of these people need infrastructure: roads and freeways, gas stations and markets, movie theaters and amusement parks, etc. So finding a location that favors natural elements over man made ones is difficult.

LowePro Sunset

In trying to avoid scenes with roads, markets, cars and the like, I have been searching for locations above the valley floor. Central Park, sort of located "centrally" hence the name, is the largest recreation area within the city boundaries and supports many activities. It is the location of many cross country running meets because it has flat areas and hilly areas making for interesting course layouts. Adjacent to the park is privately owned land that overlooks the Santa Clara river. In hunting for locations, I had seen these hills and wondered how to access them. Using google maps, I found a way to access the private land using part of the cross country course that originates in Central Park.

The sunset on the evening of February 11th, 2012 looked promising and I decided to try to shoot the sunset from the private land. I grabbed my camera bag and rain gear (it spit for a minute but rain was never an issue) and hiked south from Central Park. The good news is that when I finally got on the top of the right hill, I was rewarded with the view that I wanted. The bad news was that this was the private land I had been seeking but it had been graded and stripped of vegetation in preparation for building houses. I am not sure when the grading occurred (it was likely before the current housing bust) but the land is slowly recovering. At some point the housing market will recover and the owner will build out the houses with the side affect that the views from these hills looking out across the valley will be limited to a few people. Because the land had been graded and the scrub brush is slowly recovering, there was not anything interesting to use in the foreground so I improvised by using my camera bag.

In the meantime, I was there, set the aperture at f/8 and captured a few images. I had been in this general area one other time and did not relish hiking out in the dark so on that occasion, I left when there was still some light and as a consequence I missed it when the sunset "exploded". This time I brought a flashlight and waited but the sky never went boom. It was still very nice.

Image particulars: Canon 5D MKII, EF 16-35mm/f2.8L II lens at 16mm and f/8, .6 sec, ISO 100 using a Kirk BH-3 ball head on a Gitzo GT2541 tripod.

The image, LowePro Sunset and others are available at my website.

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Look at the Trees

There are a lot of things to keep in mind when trying to take a memorable photograph. Obviously, you need to consider exposure. An incorrectly exposed image won't convey the story. But when  you think about exposure you can't consider it alone because exposure affects the depth of field which in turn affects the composition. So start with composing the image and let that determine the exposure. With that in mind, I frame the elements that I see in front of me. What is the "message"? What am I seeing that I want the viewer to see and then how do I put the pieces together to capture that.

Ok...you see some elements and their relationship. These elements are things like foreground objects to draw in the viewer eyes, mid-ground elements that might be the main subject and then elements at other points that frame the image. You set up your tripod and camera, "place" the elements in the frame, decide on the depth of field to emphasize (or not) some elements, set the exposure and click away. You look at the back of the camera and the histogram looks good. Success!

Then you get home and look at the image on your computer and you notice something. Things don't look right. Oh cr@p! You sit there thinking...damn, I thought I leveled the camera/tripod. Oh well, Lightroom/Photoshop to the rescue! Simply use the cropping/straightening tool to find a level line, adjust the image, crop it so it's level and done. But then you look at those results and something still doesn't look right. What's wrong...hmmm...the trees don't look right. Why are the trees leaning left? Don't trees grow straight up (they do except under certain conditions)? Why are the trees leaning left...why are the trees leaning left...well you cropped the image...hmmm.

Here is the image that caused me to write this blog. 

I (essentially) did what is described above and found the image did not look right after "straightening". Why...because I did remember to level the camera and tripod when I composed the image. The original image is correct and the ground in the background is slanted. Bear in mind that with a wide angle lens, objects on the edges of the image will keystone so you need to look at elements in the middle of the image. And the trees in the middle are upright.

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Syncing LR3 with My Website and FlickR

For a few years I used Adobe CS4 with Bridge for my image processing. Essentially I cataloged my images by folder and name. Well a friend of mine forwarded me a link last "Black Friday" (November 25th) with a deal on Lightroom 3 and I took the bait. After working with LR3 for almost 2 months now I am a fan. I have altered my workflow to use LR and not Bridge and beginning about mid-December, all new images have been imported into LR as the beginning of my workflow. It has taken a little bit of work to get used to the publish support in LR. But once I downloaded the plug-ins created by Jeff Friedl and got my mind wrapped around a couple of concepts, I realized I had been working way to hard!

So what about all of the images I had prior to the LR3 purchase? Well...that is an on-going project. I decided the first thing to do was to get my website and LR3 in synch and I completed that task in December. The next thing is to get the photos on FlickR in synch with LR3. Getting the photos synch'ed takes some work and is a little tedious so I am slowly "chipping away" at the rock. Here is one of the latest images that I synch'ed up.

 This is a Western Bluebird I photographed in December 2010.
Image particulars: Canon 5D MKII, 600mm/f4 lens at f4 and 1/2000th of a second, ISO 400.

This image and others are available at my website.

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Changing Weather

It's been a weird winter all over California. I live a little north of Los Angeles. Our annual precipitation, measured from July 1 to June 30, averages a little over 14 inches. The total rain this season for Los Angeles is about 3.76 inches. That is about 8 inches below normal for this time of year.

Last weekend we had a low pressure system move in bringing a little rain (and awesome clouds) with normal temperatures for this time of year (highs in the low 60s). But that low pressure system moved out and by Thursday, there were highs in the 80s in various southern California locations (and 77° here on Wednesday, see the previous blog entry). Well the weather is changing again with a high pressure system moving in bringing high winds (called a Santa Ana wind). The weather service has issued wind advisories for gusts to 45mph where I live (and up to 75mph out towards Palm Springs) along with a red flag warning for fire danger because of low humidity. By January, the red flag warnings are a thing of the past in most years because we have had enough rain to dampen the brush on the hillsides.

One of the side affects of the Santa Ana winds is that whatever clouds were around are pushed out leaving clear skies. So instead of "looking up" for a subject, I looked down and realized that I could capture some nice images of a backyard flag in motion. I hope you like it.

Image particulars: 50mm/f1.4 lens at f5.6, 1/10th of a second with an ISO of 50.

This image is available at my website.

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Snow Day!

The New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO releases a seasonal ale at this time of year called "Snow Day". It is an American Dark Ale, dark in color with a creamy texture. It has an alcohol content a little over 6%. It's common for craft breweries to release winter seasonal ales with a little more kick to "fight off the cold". According to the New Belgium Brewery website, they started brewing "Snow Day" in 2003 after inspiration brought on by a 2 day snow storm.

Well...the hight temperature at my house today was 77°F. Seemed perfect for a "Snow Day" and so being thusly inspired, I captured this image. 

If you'd like to see a larger version, you can visit the picture at my website.

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