Monday, November 3, 2008
Santa Barbara Lights

Click the main image for a larger view.

This is the third and last shot from our walk on the breakwater the other evening. (Actually it's 48 shots but who's counting?)

It was an amazingly beautiful evening. And I was happy to get out to the breakwater this late since I have been pondering a shot like this for a while.

If you would like a quick tour of our beautiful home, read on... The water on the left is the inside of the Harbor. The buildings from yesterday's photo of the day and the day before are just on the other side of the harbor at the left. You can see the tall white flood lights of the Santa Barbara City College field. The field of view in this image is 248° so the flags that you see at the left and the very right are acutally (more or less) in a straight line. Straight out the rock breakwater in the middle of the shot is the entrance to the harbor. And, some of the bright lights on the other side of the entrance are along Stearn's Wharf. The large bright white light further to the right is another ball field. The glow going up the mountain is the lights of the city, and you can see our evening fog rolling in especially at the right over the bright white light.

Sunday, November 2, 2008
Sunset at the Yacht Club

This was taken just a couple minutes after yesterday's photo of the day. The Santa Barbara Yacht Club has a great spot on the beach and a beautiful building. I have walked past it often and pondered a sunset shot. But I never had the timing just right until now.

Saturday, November 1, 2008
Brophy Brothers at the Santa Barbara Harbor

Click the main image for a larger view.

We were feeling like a harbor walk the other evening. And, it was looking like a nice night for some pictures. Of course I think every night is a nice night to take pictures. Even when it's raining... especially when it's raining. Looking outside right now, I might get some rain shots sometime in the near future. Although the last couple of nights it has waited until quite late to shower.

Anyway, the building at the left has, among other things, a great restaurant called Brophy Brothers where you can sit on the veranda up stairs and look out over the harbor. Been a while since I had a meal there. But I still remember the clam chowder. It was quite good. And the view is worth the trip too.

Saturday, October 11, 2008
Zia Cafe

I spent some time down on State Street again this evening. It was fun even if the number of people out that should probably not be driving home was even higher than usual. Still there were some nice people who were just interested in what the heck I was doing. This is just a couple doors down from last Saturday's shoot. A very nice colorful place. I have not eaten there in a while. (Not since my working in an office downtown days) But as I recall it was really good.

Sunday, October 5, 2008
Hotel Santa Barbara VR

This is another shot (or series of them really) from last night. It was a really great evening to take pictures. Maybe I'll Spend some more time on state street with my camera in the near future.

Saturday, October 4, 2008
Eat at Joes! VR

I've been working more on restaurant photography lately. And, recently I got a request for a print of Joe's Cafe, a local landmark. At some point early in my search through old slides I realized it would be much MUCH more fun to just go take some new shots! Any excuse to get out with my camera makes me happy. This is one of the first shots. I have a few other angles I'm working with but it is going to take a couple of trips down there when the lighting is just right.

If you have any favorite Santa Barbara spots (or anywhere up to Monterey for that matter) you'd like to see, feel free to drop me a note with the form at the bottom of the page.

Monday, September 1, 2008
Mission Rose Garden Sunset

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I really love the fountain by the Santa Barbara Mission. But most people don't realize there is another fountain across the street in the rose garden. It is really worth the little walk, especially at sunset.

If you have been around the site for a while you know that I really like the clouds in the winter around Santa Barbara. Mainly because we don't normally get much weather in the summer other than some very thick low fog in the mornings. Well, this summer has been a little different. Not much fog, I assume because it has not been very cool at night, but lots of humidity. On the plus side we have had some really nice winter-like sunsets. Of course there is one drawback. The night before last was so warm and humid I almost could not breathe. Fortunately it looks like we are starting to get a break from the heat.

Saturday, August 30, 2008
More Garden Goodies

I just couldn't decide which veggie photo I liked the best. So I put all my fovorites online and you can choose your favorite.

Maybe this weekend I'll get out and get some more panoramic photos. It sure is too hot to sit in front of the computer, maybe a nice beach breeze would help.

Friday, August 29, 2008
Carmel Doorway

When I was taking this photo last week I was thinking of the last time I took pictures of this doorway. I was really surprised to find out it was more than three years ago. I need to get out more often!

Thursday, August 28, 2008
Treats from the Garden

The tomato on the right is the same on from the other day. It's a variety called a Garden Peach The yellow one on the far left with the green stripes is a "Banana Legs".

The ones that did not make the cut for the modeling job made a delicious Chili. It's been a good season for the garden, even though the tomato plants have generally not been very happy this year.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Alice's Hibiscus

It has been a good summer for Hibiscus. So good in fact I could not be sure where I took this. One day I shot some pink Hibiscus at Alice Keck's garden and a day or two later I shot some very similar Hibiscus near Butterfly beach at the same time of day. Good thing I was using my digital camera, I could check the date.

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Theresa Ann

Another shot from our recent wanderings at the Santa Barbara harbor. It's a nice peaceful scene, but just to my left was a popular restaurant on a balcony overlooking the harbor. There were lots of people around waiting to get in and having a good time. Next time I'll get an image that includes the restaurants.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
Santa Barbara Sunset Harbor

We spent a couple of evenings walking around the Harbor watching the sun set this week. I think I could take a walk at the Harbor and the Wharf every night with my camera and never get bored. Every evening when I get home each photo that I love gives me the ideas for three more next time.

This one was partially inspired by another vertical panorama I took at the harbor almost two years ago. It was later in the evening when I took that one, and you can see the stars. But at the time I wondered what it would look like from the other direction with the sunset sky. Now I have my answer!

Monday, June 9, 2008
Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens Gazebo VR

When I posted the image of the day on the sixth there was a little disapponintment that it was not a 360° image. Well here it is! Takes a little more time to build this kind of image.

Of course, this is across the lake from the other shot, in the gazebo. This is one of my favorite spots in Santa Barbara. If you are new to the site and like the 3D images be sure to check out another one of my favorite Santa Barbara spots.

Saturday, May 10, 2008
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish 360° view

Back to Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Montecito. This was actually the first image I took with my new panoramic tripod head. But as I mentioned in an earlier post it took me a bit of time to finish all of the shots and in the time it took the light had changed quite a bit. I did not think I was going to be able to stitch it together right. But now that I have had a little practice I was able to get it to work.

Of course that brought up some new problems. The image is so large I kept getting "Hard drive full" errors. Strange seeing as how there was 500 gig of space. In the end I realized that the format of the hard drive only allows a maximum of four gigabyte files. Yeah, it's a big picture... ten feet wide actually.

Saturday, April 26, 2008
San Simeon Sunset

This was taken the evening before my VR Highway 1 Sunset, just a little further up Highway 1. If you turned around from where we were standing you could almost see the top of Hearst Castle in the hills.

Of course if you looked to the left... and I apologize in advance for ruining the tranquil California sunset day dream you're having right now... there were a bunch of Elephant Seals. And they were quite loud and very comical. I'm sure I have a few shots of them to get on-line soon.

Now back to the regularly scheduled day dream... Right up the road, a little closer to the lighthouse is a scenic point that has less seals, and when we were there they were just laying enjoying the evening sea breeze. One had her flipper over her baby like she was hugging it. So if you'd rather picture yourself there that would work too. :-D

Saturday, April 5, 2008
Cottage Inn

So in the process of stitching the images together to make the panorama of yesterday's image there are a nuber of stages along the way. (Or, to be technical for the cartographers out there, different projections). Taking the flat images to represent a spherical view of the world and then projecting them back on to your flat monitor is not unlike making a flat map out of the round globe. Of course, along the way there is room for a little bit of creativity.

Friday, April 4, 2008
Cottage Inn

Well, there were some technical difficulties with publishing to the site so I'm sorry for the wait! I have quite a few images that should be posted in the near future, but with several big projects and tax day (what fun!) it has been hard to get to the maintenance of my site.

A few days ago we were in Pismo Beach for a project. When I went out to get breakfast the morning fog was just breaking up. I thought about skipping breakfast to take pictures, but I finally thought better of it so I would have some energy for the drive home. (Besides they have REALLY good waffles.) The timing was perfect though. This was right after breakfast. All of the clouds in this shot are actually wispy remnants of the morning costal fog. They are almost close enough that you could reach out and touch them. Not 20 minutes later the fog was back thicker than ever.

Sunday, March 16, 2008
Santa Barbara Harbor Sunset view from the Breakwater

Another beautiful sunset and another massive image. If you look closely you can see stearns wharf in the image off to the right. (if you have Flash 9 installed, you can use the up arrow to zoom in)

Saturday, March 15, 2008
Santa Barbara Courthouse Clocktower View

This was the same day as the recent Mission shot. It was also the day of the grand reopening of the Granada theatre on state street. That is what the giant tent is for in the gardens in this image. Aparently the reception was at the Courthouse. I actually thought of taking a shot of the Granada, but apparently it was not a priority to get ALL of the boards off the windows before opening night. Of course, those were the office windows and they were probably not very noticable after dark. At any rate, it was a fun day of shooting!

Thursday, March 13, 2008
Stearns Sunset

I have learned to make the most of the clouds when they come out around here. during the summer we just have haziness and fog. Most of the rest of the year it's clear and blue. But as I have said so often on the photo of the day, the clear blue skies don't make for much of a sunset. But the evening I took this shot was just amazing! We almost did not go since we were getting out a little too late for the sunset. Turned out to be a better image with the stars in it anyway!

So now that I have the VR functionality down I thought I would take the time to fine tune the process. I created this image and recreated it from the 120+ individual shots that make it. This is my fourth complete revision, after trying out about ten different programs for different parts of the process. I can now confidently say there is no substitution for hard work. (I'm hearing my 7th grade english teacher in the back of my head asking me if the computer I did my homework on did the work for me when I pushed a single button) Maybe some day, but we're still not there yet. Quite to the contrary, with each new advance in computing power you just get more room to find a new level of creativity.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed making it!

Thursday, March 6, 2008
Queen of the missions in HDR VR

Ok, still taking a while to get these images together this way. But after taking all the time to build the VR interface I could hardly wait to use it again.

I got the opportunity today when the clouds started to get interesting. We dropped everything to try to get some nice images. Turned out to be a busy afternoon and an amazing sunset. This is the first of several nice images that will come out of the adventure around town today.

The clouds look a little ominous, but they were fast moving and quite beautiful.

Sunday, March 2, 2008
Highway 1 VR Sunset

If you have Flash installed in your browser, click and drag on the image once it loads, you should get a pleasant surprise.

This image has been quite a few days in the making. I had the good fortune to be in Cambria (north on the coast, 'bout half way to Monterey) last week around sunset and I just happened to have my new panoramic tripod head with me. Seeing as how I don't have a good fish-eye for my digital camera, I used my widest lens available. To get the whole image it took 36 shots. Of course, the difference shooting into the sun, and away was more than a single exposure setting could handle. So I had to take three separate exposures and combine them into a High Dynamic Range Image.

From that point, I just had to see how far I could push my computer. Rather than scale the images down I wanted to see just how big I could make the image. In the end the 108 images combined into a two gigabyte, 240 megapixel image. I figure it would print nicely at around twelve feet wide. I spared your internet connection the full size image. But as I mentioned above, users with Flash should be able to experience a nice point of view. I can tell you the VR interface gives the closest experience to actually standing there taking the photo I can imagine.

Enjoy, and please let me know if you experience any difficulties with the new interface.

Thursday, January 10, 2008
Our Lady of Mount Carmel

My intent was to get some nice sunset shots of this beautiful church in Montecito. I was a little late, but it was still a nice night.

If you tilt your head to the left and use your imagination a little you can make out half of the constellation Orion rising from behind the church.