Carmel by the Sea

A short trip to Carmel by the Sea brought us a bunch of great pictures. i've put in a couple here that i absolutely love. a third is a photo that my wife took of me.

it is the haunting ambience of the photo that i love. haunting but beautiful. i guess i'm a sucker for paradoxes and my taste for photos sort of give it away.  here, the mist rises in the horizon, but it is brighter than the photo would suggest. but squinting into the distance, against the bright sun, brings a very contrasty picture that did not overwhelm the natural mist and overcast sky. the silhouette of the crowd provides just the right accent. this is unedited and straight out of jpeg.

xc_m©2009

still in that photo shoot, i tried a bunch of tricks to highlight the fog. many times i've tried to take a picture of fog creeping in, only to get a flat photo with really low image quality, and no fog. i found a good trick (and i'm not telling) and here is the result.

xc_m©2009

unedited

my wife held her own as well; a silhouette shot that's among the prettiest in our collection. i think she's getting the hang of the camera and is establishing her own style. she seems to be doing well with portraits so we're looking to get a longer lens. hope it gives us more of this:

xc_m©2009

unedited

Getting Good Shots

Got a chance to shoot birds this weekend. always had trouble getting them sharp. this time, with the help of a friend's telephoto, i finally got a good bird shot i always wanted. but my kit 18-55 didn't disappoint either, landing me some pretty good gulls in flight. here are some of the fowl pictures from Christmas weekend:

xc_m©2009

xc_m©2009

                                          

this one is a lucky shot that shows the good side of making do. while shooting on some craggy bluff on the pch, i couldn't quite address the backlight. but gulls were hovering just below me when i saw a man picking rocks by the shore. its seemed a long shot then, but the timing proved lucky. i call it "there's a puny little man":

xc_m©2009

and here's my money shot. it may not be much to a whole bunch of you but i am a big fan of cheap thrills. to my surprise, when i zoomed max into the picture, the details were still sharp. i thought this might be what they mean by tack sharp. its the first fauna shot i got that made me completely happy. its at 250mm zoom f11. never realized i could get a nice bokeh at this f stop. shows you what i know.

xc_m©2009