Glider Port

This month's assignment was another location : Torrey Pines Glider Port in La Jolla, not to far from my work. I was very lucky that on the day I decided to go snap some pictures, there was some tropical moisture passing through creating interesting cloud patterns and crepuscular rays and made for a beautiful sunset. Hopefully I captured some of this beauty.

I decided that the main subject of this session was going to be the sky and I was ok with allowing the paragliders to be dark or even silhouetted. My approach here was to set the camera to manual exposure mode and exposed to protect the highlights. In other words, I took several test shots while monitoring the blinking overexposed highlight warnings on the LCD. Once the blinking is just limited to the a very small porportion of the highest highlights or completely gone, I lock in the exposure and shoot a series of shots. Of course, light changes fast in these situations where the sun sets behind dense clouds, so I adjust accordingly when I sense the scene get lighter or darker.

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.

Zack Arias - Transform

Insight into the mind of a photographer. Check him out at www.zarias.com.

I'm inspired by this video and his amazing photography to continue on this life-long journey to learn how to create impactful and insightful images, even though I feel that there is still a long, long way to go.

San Luis River Bike Trail

We took a nice afternoon bike ride on the San Luis Rey Bike Path in Oceanside, Ca. This is a nice, flat ~7 mile ride from the near the San Luis Rey Mission to Oceanside beach. What I really liked was the absence of cars...exclusively for bikes, skates, and pedestrians. There's parking at most of the cross streets. We parked where the trail crosses Douglas Drive.

JCO enjoyed the ride from his trailer. His comment after the ride: "Estoy cansado" (I'm tired)...perhaps from watching me pedal :)

Sopa de Zanahorias

After weeks of patiently planting, watering, weeding, thinning his carrot plants, JCO finally reaps a bountiful harvest. Time for sopa de zanahorias (carrot soup)!


Ingredients: Carrots, celery, onions, garlic, chicken stock, bay leaves, cumin, salt and pepper and a blender. Yummy!

Breakwater at La Jolla Cove

Some images I'm thinking about sharing for our next photoclub theme: La Jolla. I spent a little time shooting before work at the La Jolla Cove before work on an overcast morning.