Santa Barbara Photos

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Santa Barbara Sunset Clouds

Click for a bigger image

What a wild evening. The clouds are absolutely amazing around here sometimes.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Fisheye Sunset at Savoy

I have been preparing more photos from an old shoot for one of my favorite clients. This is a beautiful restaurant on Figueroa Street in Santa Barbara. It is run by a really nice couple who grew up around here. With all of the huge corporations setting their sights on Santa Barbara in recent years it is really nice to see a good local business thrive!

They have really nice photos on the walls too! :-D

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Canon Perdido

I never really noticed the streetlights around here before I started taking my evening shots of the city. They are actually very interesting and add a lot to the photos. Now I try to get them in the shot whenever I can.

If you look closely to the left of the streetlight on the sidewalk you will see a couple of black smudges in the photo. Those were actually people walking on the sidewalk. The exposure was almost long enough for them to disappear completely because of their movement, but not quite.

Friday, February 23, 2007

I Can FLY!

I took several shots of this dog, but the thing I like about this one in particular is the fact that none of his feet are touching the ground. He was running far ahead of his friend, the guy to the left. Then he would run all the way back. Apparently the pace of the walk was not quite as fast as he would like.

In my case, it could be me making multiple trips back and forth waiting for The Hound. Not because she is lazy, but because when she really gets into her walk she likes to inspect every inch along the way. I experience our walks with my eyes and camera. She is all about her nose. I don't think she even pays attention to her eyes unless something out of the ordinary happens. As evidenced by the orange traffic cone that snuck up on her tonight and made her jump straight up in the air when she realized it was there.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

A Cloudy Day in Santa Barbara

Ok, not all the cloudy days are this pretty here. But yesterday was!

I like these vertical panoramas. I think they play especially well with the format of the site.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Savoy Nights

This week I had the enviable task of shooting and designing a new ad for a great restaurant in town. I love this kind of evening shot, and since the primary objective of the ad was to let everyone know they are now open for dinner it seemed the perfect opportunity for some dusk photography.

If you would like to see the finished ad, watch for the upcoming issue of Santa Barbara Food & Home or contact me for a sneak preview.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Californian Forest

This is the image in the seagull's glasses from yesterday's photo of the day.

Now before you go sending me hate mail, this is supposed to be FUNNY! The back of the card has information about our beautiful redwood forests...

"Californian Forest - Of course, Californian forests also include some of the tallest trees in the world at Redwood National and State Parks. These trees can grow to over 300 feet tall and reach ages in excess of 2,000 years. Only about 4% of the Redwoods remain since logging became an industry in California in the mid 1800s. Fortunately, most of the remaining old growth Redwoods are protected in state parks or in public land reserves."

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Sunset at the Mission Rose Garden

(click to see a bigger version)

More experimentation! This image was created from about 11 shots of the sunset. I could not get exactly what I wanted from one shot from any one lens. The only thing I had that was wide enough to get the whole sunset was a fish eye. I like my fish eye, but in this case I wanted to give more of the feeling of standing there in the rose garden watching the sunset. The distortion of the fish eye detracted from that too much.

The sheer scale of things caused some interesting problems. The full scale image could be printed easily 4 and a half feet at high resolution. And as long as I am building this kind of thing I figure why not go for full scale!?

I think I need more ram... and more hard drives.

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Harbor Light

Another sunset shot from the harbor. The evenings have been really beautiful lately. This is a good time of year to be a photographer. In fact, the only bad thing is I did so much photography work last week I did not get other things done. I hope to have many more weeks like that. :-D

Friday, October 6, 2006

Starlight Harbor

It was a full moon tonight, a really full moon. My wife read online that the moon was going to look as much as 12% bigger than other times. (The reason for this is the fact that it is near the low point in it's slightly elliptical orbit.) So we thought it would be a good evening for some evening shots.

The sun was gone when I took this, just a faint glow behind me. The glow to the left of the photo is from the full moon. And the stars are clearly visible.

This is not a new type of shot for me. But it is just about a first with my digital camera. I can usually pull this off pretty well with film, but the digital was a little more temperamental. Actually, it is just what you get used to. Now that I know how it likes to be treated, I think I'll be using it a lot more this way.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Breakwater Sunset

This evening we took a nice sunset walk on the breakwater around the Santa Barbara Harbor. The clouds were beautiful and the lights on the water made for some great photos. It's finally getting to that time of year where we have enough moisture in the air to make some interesting clouds.

'Course the huge wild fire doesn't hurt the sunsets either. It's about 35 miles from us, but it still looked like it was snowing here one day from all of the ash.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Butterfly Beach Sunset

It was a nice sunset this evening. No clouds, but still a nice glow in the sky.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sunset Exercise

I went to the doctor and, big surprise, I have to eat healthier and get more exercise! (should have seen that comin') On the plus side, walking is his recommended way to do that. And I figure, if you're gonna walk, you might as well do it someplace nice!

This is Butterfly Beach in Santa Barbara. It is one of the less traveled beaches around here. It is not in an area that you would normally stumble on. And it is our favorite beach. So after making one good pedometer out of two broken ones, we had a nice sunset walk. Oh, I mean... we went out and got some exercise!

Friday, July 7, 2006

Santa Barbara Sunset at the Wharf

This image reminds me of visiting Santa Barbara, about nine years ago, on vacation with my best friend. When we first got here she told me that she had to warn me that I probably was not going to want to leave. She was right! But Santa Barbara was not the only thing I got attached to. Now that we live here, my best friend has also become my wife!

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Catamaran Beach

Another Santa Barbara sunset shot taken a few minutes after yesterday's.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Stearns Sunset Panorama

(click to see a bigger version)

More shots from yesterday's wharf walk. Actually, it's a combination of 9 shots. It was a beautiful evening.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Stearns Twilight

Tonight we took a walk on Stearns Wharf. It was hot and we were hoping to cool off. Of course, we were not the only ones with that idea. It was pretty crowded, but it was a nice walk and a beautiful evening.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

State Street Dragon

Another shot from yesterday's festivities! There are some really creative costumes in the Solstice Parade. This year's theme was "dreams." But, this one looks more like a nightmare.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Where's the Goose?

Today was one of my favorite days of the year! The Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Celebration. This is one of the few parades I really try not to miss.

I like the Big Dogs Parade too, but I really go to that one to spot Basset Hounds. Of course, today I was looking for the goose that produced these eggs, but they wisely must have left her at home. :-D

These eggs are called "Cascarones," and they are a Mexican/Spanish carnival tradition (they may even have roots in Italy.) It is customary to break them over your friends' heads.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Santa Barbara Beach Bums

We have not been seeing the sun much lately. But, it is a beautiful day when we do!

Thursday, March 9, 2006

Tea Time at Savoy Truffles

Earlier this week I took some shots at Savoy Truffles on Figueroa for their promotional materials. What a great place for a photographer (especially one like me who loves to eat!)

I could have spent all day just taking pictures of their cool tea cups and tea-pots!

Everything is beautifully done there, from the interior to the presentation of the food itself. You can tell they really take pride in what they do. The owners and the employees all seem like they are happy to be there. Which is very refreshing.

Monday, March 6, 2006

Twilight Mission

By request!

I had someone leave feed back who was interested in photos of the Mission Santa Barbara. (see August 12, '05)

I am developing a tool that will allow everyone to browse the previous photos of the day by keyword and various other tools to allow easy navigation. I do have the calendar, if you have not seen that, be sure to click on the link on the upper right of the screen. That will allow you to see thumbnails of the photo of the day a month at a time.

Now, on to the Mission. This is the Mission Santa Barbara “Queen of the Missions.” It was founded on December 4, 1786 by Father Fermin Lasuen. It was the tenth of 21 Franciscan missions in California. It holds the distinction of being the only one to remain in continuous use since the day it was founded. Named for Saint Barbara, and founded on the day of her annual memorial feast, it continues to operate as home of the Saint Barbara Parish. And it is a place that always makes me happy to be a photographer! Here is a list of my other images of the Mission Santa Barbara and her grounds on the photo of the day.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Santa Barbara Mission Twilight

This was a long exposure. The exposure time made the reflection much more interesting. it gave the effect of the sharpness near the bottom of the image getting blurry near the top where the water was falling from the top of the fountain.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Evening Fog

The thing that looks like a large cloud on the ground between the palm trees and the mountain is our evening fog. It is caused by the marine layer. A warm cushion of air from further out in the Pacific that slides in across the cool coastal waters. The water is cool here because it follows the pacific currents down the coast from cold places in the north.

Given the right conditions, the fog slides in as the sun goes down and will not leave the beach till around ten in the morning. Of course, in June, the fog covers the whole city and only leaves for about ten minutes in the afternoon. We call that "June Gloom".

As long as you can stay back from, or above it, it is actually very beautiful. My office at UCSB used to sit at the perfect point at the limit of the fog. I could watch it swirl outside my window, but it never really got to my office.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Courthouse Clock Tower

I'm always trying to find a different angle on my subjects. Especially ones as photographed as the Santa Barbara Courthouse. This is the courthouse clock tower... from the inside, straight up!

Cool architecture in there, but I rarely have the right film on hand to get shots of the inside. This was from my recent experiments with a rental Canon 20D digital camera.