12. March 2010 by Friedhelm.

I photographed this bird yesterday on my daily exercise walk. I saw the bird first sitting on the fountain with a truck in the background. I decided to take my chances and walked around the bird until I found a contrasty natural background. One of my photography teachers always told me that the first consideration for a great image is the background. I follow his advice and I got rewarded with many great shots. Camera setting: focal length 200mm, f5.0, 1/800sec., ISO 200.

Enjoy and have a great day!

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4. January 2010 by Friedhelm.

I love to photograph with my super wide angle lens. To create this image I had to hold the camera almost to the ground and shoot upwards. Notice the shadow that I incorporated into the composition. Camera setting: f8, 1/500sec., ISO 100.

Have a great time with images and enjoy photography!

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31. December 2009 by Friedhelm.

Yesterday I was photographing in and around Carmel, CA. Like Yosemite National Park the California Coast is always fascinating.  Great photographers, like Ansel Adams in Yosemite and Edward Weston on the coast, have created here their images. It is a great privilege to see and photograph the places where they have worked.

I photographed this image last night after the sunset. The deep red colors in contrast to the blue ocean and clouds intrigued me. I used a 200mm lens. My camera setting: f16, 1/4sec., ISO 400.

Enjoy and have a happy New Year!

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21. July 2009 by David.

When I took this photo I was awed by the deep colors. I didn’t like the sky but wanted to keep the rocks on the right side.

Sometimes a photo doesn’t work in the standard formats, 4×6, 5×7 or 8×10. In this case the sky was grey and doesn’t add to the seascape so I minimized it by cropping most of it out. But the size is no longer standard. What I created was a border around the photo using the ‘canvas’ function in Photoshop, it’s also available in Photoshop Elements, and can probably be achieved with programs like Picasa. I haven’t tried Picasa but if anyone is interested I’d be willing to give it a go and let you know how it works.

When this photo is printed out as an 8×10  (the black outline) it will have a white frame around the center photograph, and from a distance will appear to be matted. It will also fit in an 8×10 frame.

Or you can spend some time and fill in the dead sky with clouds, maybe I’ll show you that photo later, this took about 5 minutes, the clouds a LOT longer.

If you want some more detailed instructions just drop me a line at     dtooz@sbcglobal.net

Keep having fun

Dave

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20. July 2009 by David.

Looks like the scales on some kind of reptile or maybe the extreme closeup of an exotic cactus. Wrong, it’s actually the eroded hillside just south of Carmel. Not exactly the type of photo you would expect if someone said they were taking photographs around Carmel. I was just driving along seeing what I could see and came across this.  I like the texture and the otherworldly look.

Keep clicking

Dave

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19. July 2009 by David.

Though everything around was pretty dry this spider web was able to catch the morning mist at Point Lobos State Park (which might be closed because of the State budget crisis).  I liked the sky and contrast of the tree behind the web itself. The owner of the web wasn’t around but if you look closely in the lower right you can see the pantry is stocked.

Keep clicking

Dave

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18. July 2009 by David.

I went to the Monterey/Carmel area on Friday and Saturday and found this very determined bee. I used an extension tube that I mentioned in an earlier post. It allowed me to get up close and personal with the flower and bee and was still able to maintain a pretty good depth of field.  I jazzed the background up a little in photoshop to improve the contrast and make the subjects stand out better. I have a few more photos from my little venture that I’d like to share with you over the coming days.

Keep clicking,

Dave

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13. February 2009 by Friedhelm.

Clouds, Coast and Carmel are a wonderful mix. Almost every landscape photographer wants to include clouds in his/her picture. The famous Ansel Adams set up his camera at a certain spot and then he jsut waited, not just for the right light, but also for the clouds to appear. I was lucky. When we arrived at Carmel the clouds were just there.

Happy shooting

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26. January 2009 by Friedhelm.

Yesterday David pointed out the importance of the background. The background makes or breaks a picture and one of my photography teachers pointed out that he considers the background first.

During my last visit to Carmel, CA I saw this small tree with incredible colored leaves. I photographed them a few times then I noticed that there was a store behind the tree with insight lights. I decided to use the lights as part of my background. I opened my lens as much as possible to blur the lights and photographed the leaves. The background lights added a nice touch to the leaves.

Happy Shooting!

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