Rock Star

Playing around with off camera flash again while JCO dances to his favorite playlist... Rock en Espanol.

Roots

My photo club assignment this month was Balboa Park/Zoo. I found that its was difficult to find and make photos in this last trip to the park. I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps its because I've been there often and have become visually desensitized to the interesting gardens and architecture. It seems a bit easier to photograph places that you visit for the first time. Or, it could be that I was in a rush with only about a half an hour of sunlight left to shoot and a large park to cover. Perhaps I should have made a plan or determined what to focus on before setting out to find "a shot". That way, I could have taken my time on one or two subjects without worrying about missing something. Regardless of what the source of the issue was, I felt rushed and unable to relax and just see. Something to remember for my next assignment.

At one point, however, after coming across these banyan tree roots (Moreton Fig Tree, I believe) in the Palm Canyon section of the park near the Organ Pavilion, I was able to regain focus. I found the texture and lines intriguing and wanted to capture that. Getting low to the ground with a wide angle (12-24mm Tokina set to 12mm) helped provide a good foreground/background exaggeration that would convey the long sinuous lines concept nicely and provide good depth-of-field. Black and white conversion was my choice to bring attention to the texture and lines without color to distract.