Sea Colour

There always seems to be something going on along the coast of California. I thought this captured the essence of some of it.

Golden Skies

Winter skies in California can be very dramatic. I love the always changing drama they provide, and not man made drama. Nature loves to show off!

Scale

To convey the size of the Golden Gate Bridge I included a couple of familiar items, such as the tree and building. We can relate to the scale of these everyday and commonplace items and contrast that with how massive the bridge tower really is.

Street Art

Street art is a reflection of the environment and community within which it is found. It is an expression of hope and dreams, or despair.

When I ran across this vibrant drawing, I liked what it had to say.

On the water

Different lenses will give you different effects. This view was the result of using a telephoto lens which compresses space and changes the proportions of items. If I had used a wide angle lens here, the result would have been much different and the view more expansive.

The Parade

What is it that you are trying to capture in your images? An integral part a local Summer Solstice Parade is music. I wanted to capture the vibrant energy of it. How do you do that with images? I'm not sure, but I'm working on it...

Cropping

One of the nice things about digital photography and Photoshop is that it's much easier to crop your images. While it's still good practice to fill the camera frame with your composed image, you will often find a need to crop images to eliminate distractions and add impact.

Where and when to crop is up to you, but you should get a feel for it with time. Just think about what your subject is, and how to best convey that.

Photograph a few images around the house. Something that is of some interest, use different compositions and fill the camera frame as much as possible. Load your images into Photoshop or some other image editing program and then play with the cropping tools to see if they can help make your image stronger.

I'm not suggesting that every image needs to be cropped or should be. Cropping is just a tool that is a available to you. I rarely crop, but in the case of this Lotus Flower cropping gives this photo the punch I wanted that would have otherwise been missing.