Eastern Sierra's....our California Fall Color Central


No secret most of my neighbors are transplants from "back east" and bemoan and grudge about the lack of seasons and "fall color". They just don't know where too look. LA as plenty of color. The Eastern Sierra's especially around Bishop up to Mammoth will rival anything you can find elsewhere in the country and of course you get the Sierra's as a back drop to it all. I enjoy the color and contrast between the vegetation and mountains. Can't wait to get back up there again at the end of September to soak it all in and shoot to my hearts content.

Spent a little time working some images from 2 years ago with tonemapping. I took jpeg files and converted them to 32 bit and then ran them through the photomatix tonemapping plug-in. That brought back all the detail in the shadows without the whole picture going flat. I opted this route as the CS2 filters for shadow/highlight tend to flatten too much.

After that was done I converted them back to 8bit, ran them through virtual photographer to clean up the skies and give them that old timey kodachrome look with the accentuated warm tones. I like this step as the final punch in the process as it brings back some of life in the final image that tonemapping can't do alone.

On a final note, am working on getting a spot at the Claremont CA "First Friday" Art Walk. If I can pull it of I will put all the details up here.