Thursday, April 30, 2009
Storybook Castle Sunset

Click on the main image for a larger view.

One more shot from the mountains. And, if I had to choose, I think this would be my favorite. I really like the way the wall frames the stairway.

Update: If you have Flash installed, the full 360° view virtual reality image of Knapp's Castle is now available online, here.

Monday, April 27, 2009
Sunset over Knapp's Castle

This was one of the last shots as we were starting our walk back to the car from Knapp's Castle. I had put most of my camera gear away at this point and just looked back as I was walking away.

For a test shoot I ended up with quite a few images that I'm really happy with.

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Knapp's Castle Sunset Panorama

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This is another one of the "test" shots from the hike up the mountain the other day. Well, OK, actually more of a drive up the mountain followed by a half-mile hike on a nice trail. Regardless, it was a beautiful evening! These two shots were exactly what I had in mind before I got there. I still have some ideas for a later evening shot or two, but I'm going to have to find some warmer clothing before I go back up for that.

Friday, April 24, 2009
Knapp's Arch Sunset

For the last couple of months I have been contributing a "Photo of the Week" to a local news site, Santa Barbara's Blog. Yesterday a request came through them for a shot of Knapp's Castle, the ruins of an old mansion that burned in the forties. It is just over the peak of the mountain north of Santa Barbara overlooking the Santa Ynez valley and Cachuma Lake. For the last year I had been trying to get up there to get some photos, so I was happy to get up there and take some test shots. The intention was to just check out the location and plan for equipment and timing. But, I'm pretty happy with the test shots. I'm still going to try to get up there again soon, but it's hard to beat a couple of nice shots on the first pass.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Stearns Wharf in the Distance

This is the shot I was looking for when I got yesterday's photo of the day. Well sort of anyway. I was thinking this might be a nice angle a little later in the evening once the lights are on in the buildings on Stearns Wharf. Maybe next time I'll get out there a little later. And as I type this the evening news is calling for more clouds next week. I better start making some space on my hard drive for more photos!

Monday, January 26, 2009
SBCC Stearns Wharf View

Saturday was a beautiful day. We had the opportunity to wander around and enjoy the sunset. Which is one of the things I like to do as much as possible this time of year. This was the view from Santa Barbara City College just a bit before sunset. Sometimes my images are totally controlled and I have a plan for exactly what I'm looking for. In this case I stared with a shot from the pathway that you see. The streetlights were not very interesting looking. But after I got what I was looking for I took a walk around to see what I might be missing. I thought the path looked nice so I got a few shots, but even then I did not notice that the lights were already on. It was only after I got home and looked through the pictures that I saw the glow in the lights and decided this was one of my favorite images.

Thursday, January 22, 2009
Sunset Clouds to the North

The clouds were amazing this evening. If they were not so thin and wispy I would have been looking for a tornado shelter. Many interesting waves and swirls, even a few small wispy cones. They started to break up even more as we tried to find a good place to take my new camera for a spin. My 20D took it's 40,000th shot last evening. It is far from done with it's useful life, but it is time to send it for a professional cleaning.

This shot is facing the mountains, North from Goleta beach. The sun was doing some interesting mottled things through the fading clouds at the horizon. This was in some ways a better show than the actual sunset in the west.

Sunday, December 28, 2008
Pacific Grove Sunset

This is from a couple of nights ago. It was a beautiful evening. Of course right at this very spot the wind was almost strong enough to knock me over at one point. But it was still very beautiful. I'm posing it a bit late (it's not actually the 28th anymore I know!) but I do have a bunch of trip shots to get online. Unfortunately the trip was too short with too many cool things to do. With a couple of projects going now that we are back in town, I'm keeping my system busy processing photos. But I'll get new things online as fast as possible.

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.

Friday, September 12, 2008
Santa Barbara Harbor Sunset

Well, Monterey was amazing, but it is always good to be home. This is one of my favorite places for an evening walk in Santa Barbara. Walking out the breakwater is one of the best places to enjoy the sunset. And if you turn around from where I took this photo you can see Stearns Wharf across the opening of the harbor, and watch the sailboats come and go. Of course if you have Flash installed you can see for yourself here. Just use the "up arrow" to zoom in.

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.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Carmel Architecture

The clouds in the photo are actually not much further away than the roof of the building. In fact if you look closely you can see that the peak of the roof is actually in the haze. The afternoon fog in Carmel was beautiful and swirling, almost like a time lapse video of clouds. We spent the last few days there and they were all cool and misty, which is a nice change from the heat at home lately.

Carmel is one of the best places I know for an afternoon walk. Of course, you should probably wear your hiking shoes since the main street gets a bit steep at places.

Friday, June 6, 2008
Alice Keck Panorama

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A couple days ago I was working on a particularly difficult statistics problem. (mmm math what a concept.) In the midst of my preparations to fling my computer out the window my wife suggested a nice walk at Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens. Or as we like to call it... Alice Keck Park Park.

The clouds were beautiful and it was a wonderful evening. I wish I could say I came home and solved the problem right away, but at least I got a lot of really beautiful shots out of it. And I was much happier continuing on my statistics project.

Oh yeah, I've also been tinkering with some other images that are not my own. I have not been able to figure out how to get my own camera there yet so I had to work with what was available.

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.

Monday, January 21, 2008
Moonlit Tree

This evening I went out to take some test shots for my current project. The moon was doing some beautiful things with the clouds so it got me a little sidetracked. But that is always lots of fun too.

Friday, January 18, 2008
Shorline Sunset Panorama

Click the main image for a larger view

As I have mentioned before, there are very few places you can see the sunset over the water in Santa Barbara. Our coast faces the south for the most part. But there are a few small sections that give you a glimpse of the setting sun.

This is a combination of thirteen shots covering more than 200°. My intention was to shoot an entire 360° image. In the end this particular set of images caught the best lighting to bring out the beautiful texture of the clouds. But it did not quite make the full circle.

If you like the panoramas, you should check back. My wife got me a couple of nice tripods, and one will be perfect for a panoramic head I have been drooling over... er, I mean carefully considering investing in. :-D

Friday, December 14, 2007
Sunset at 1525 State

When the evening sun does beautiful things like this I find myself wishing I could drop everything and take pictures. Today I had a busy afternoon of meetings and appointments, fortunately one of them was with a new client so I just happened to have my camera handy. I think the wispy pink clouds really add a lot! Not to mention the cool bus tail lights that came through at just the right time.

This is a combination of five images in what is called a High Dynamic Range Image, mostly used in this case to pick out the details in the bright spots. One of the interesting things about one of those bright spots is the color of the sign. That lovely green is the way film (or in this case a digital sensor) sees fluorescent lights. As they ummm... "encourage" us in California to use the CFLs my evening shots are going to get a lot greener, supposedly in more ways than one.