This is what a drought looks like folks

This morning I was all set to walk along the San Gabriel River.  A lovely stroll along the river is what I envisioned.  Didn't happen.  The Azusa River Wildnerness Park in Azusa was closed because of mudslides 2 weeks ago, and to add insult to injury it was a high fire danger day so they didn't want us anywhere near the brush.

But I did take a drive into the canyons along the river today.  I was absolutely gobsmacked by how low the waters was at the dams.  One day in particular, the San Gabriel Dam, an earthen dam, was so empty all that was left was muck, flotsam and jetsam and general debris in the bottom.

For those of you not in the Los Angeles Area, or California, you probably aren't aware that we are in a severe drought.  Its been several years since we've had "normal" rainfall and our dams are really showing it.  This year we are down something along the order of 2/3 of "normal" rainfall which explains the pathetic condition of these dams.Doesn't bode well for us down the hill that rely on this water to recharge our aquifers.

I'll try next week to take a walk along the river in the Azusa River Wildnerness Park.  Again

These images were shot with my EOS60D.  They are photomergrned into panoramas with the help of CS5.  They click to embiggen.  If you want the full megapixel view check out my SGV & SGR set on flickr.

A little orton...of an area now burned out.

Concurrent to the Station Fire that wiped out so much of the Angeles Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains there was the smaller Fellow's Camp fire that did damage as well to the forest. I'll be heading up there in a day or so to see what wild flowers and other green has returned to the area. When I was last up there, much of the west side of the river was burnt to the ground and nothing but ash, but that was January before the rains really came in hard and washed stuff away.

Hopefully there was enough rain to ensure the wild flowers and stuff returned this spring. It will be many years before this view looks the same. Maybe I shall get a pic from the same vantage point and post as a comparison in the coming days? Maybe.

View from the River

The little stroll into the world of Black and White continues. Now to find a paper that will give the prints justice and be archival. A trip to Swain's in Glendale is like in order for a paper run.

Fresh Snow in the San Gabriel Mountains

The snow came down low(ish) during yesterdays storm. "Ish" as in about 2,500 feet which was not quite low enough to get me into real snow for shooting this morning.

I shot this with the B&W option on my EOS 20D, maximum file size for best detail. I opted to use the "red" filter option to darken the sky to increase the contrast with the clouds and snow details on the distant peak. That filter option made the green of the plants in the foreground darker in tone as well to further accentuate the bright white of the clouds and the snow.

This image is show on CA Highway 39 near where it is blocked off with barricades along the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. Aside from the stunning mountain views, this stretch of road is one of my favorites to just get in a car and "drive" and enjoy the twisties.

Bullitt and San Gabriel Mountains - perfect mix

If you follow my antics and rounds you show know that a I blog about all sorts of stuff.  I love adventures, add in cars and it gets to be even better.

This weeks addition to the old experience bucket is a day long drive in a Mustang Bullitt.  Long story short.  In July I got to spend sometime in a 2010 Camaro.  I was impressed and said when it launches the base Mustang will be a gelding in comparison.  Ford didn't appreciate it.  They dropped me a note and let me know I was probably a little harsh and offered up a GT500 to prove the Mustang still has it.  No GT500's exist right now but they had a Bullitt.  They asked if I would settle for that.  HELL YESSSSS!!!!  Full story on what I think about the Bullitt will be up on metblogs later today.

The image was shot up on the Angeles Crest.  I can tell you that the Bullitt was made for that highway.  No stress, no fuss, no constant shifting, just pick a gear and carve up the curves on the twisties.  Lawdy be...if I could get rid of the Dad car I'd opt for the Bullitt.

Anyway what better way to illustrate a surreal day than HDR?  I shot this frame overlooking downtown LA from up on the crest bracketed +/- 2 stops from average.  Photomatix was used for the HDR file generation and tonemapping.  The final image was run through virtual photographer to heighten the saturation a bit more.  

Enjoy the image.  Do click it for a slightly bigger version...and note you can even see downtown in the fog.  More images in my flickr Bullitt set.

Rattlesnakes sure put a damper on things...

I took a run up to the West Fork of the San Gabriel River and Canyon late this morning just for a break from the gray skies of the LA Basin socked in again with June Gloom. Very nice day for a hike and to enjoy the warm sun up in the mountains. The downside is that every rattlesnake and its young'ns had the same thought. It is just no fun walking around when all you see is those critters, or worse hear them but don't see them. Ended my visit short as I was not dressed appropriately for meandering around snake country.

I did however have enough time before discovering those critters to get out a bit and enjoy the sounds of the river rushing over rocks and the winds whistling up the canyon.

HDR can go so many ways. Real or Surreal. Today I used it to fill in the shadows with detail normally lost when shooting realistic landscapes. Short version is I shot all today with the Canon EF Ultrasonic 20-35MM, mostly at max wide angle for the all encompassing view and distortion in angle to get as much of the scene as possible. I used Aperture mode for the metering, f16 and the camera took care of the 3 images +/- 2 stops to get me the Raw files needed. After running through Photomatix, CS2 and Virtual Photographer I dumbed them down and resized to fit here.

Enjoy 3 views of the West Fork of the San Gabriel River Canyon.

And here we go...the results from yesterdays hike up in the San Gabriel Mountains in the Alder Creek Canyon Area. Nice place to spend a sunny day! All postprocessed in HDR, Photomatix Tone mapping and Virtual Photographer. Enjoy!

Playing Hooky and So Cal is a good place to do it...




It was one of those days, overcast "June Gloom" early for the season and I needed sunshine. Luckily a very few minutes away is the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest Highways. The mountains trap in the clouds when we have on "onshore flow" or winds blowing off the ocean into the basin leaving us foggy or cloudy depending where we are.

Rather than the usual tasks I played hooky this morning. Dropped my favorite 80's mix CD in place as there is no radio in the mountains and off I went. Simple route with stops to shoot. Up the 2 to the Mountains, a quick left onto the Angeles Forest towards Palmdale, across the bridge and right after the Mediation Temple you make a right onto Upper Big Tujunga and a right onto Angeles Crest and a few short miles on that you are back in the city. There were lots of detours, some places I haven't found the names yet googling, others such as Alder Creek Canyon can't be missed. Of course fun old tunes make zipping through the corners and the uphill swoops even more fun...its all in the rhythm.

Anyway, shot it all in HDR, post processed with Adobe's Photoshop CS2 and the Virtual Photographer. Great tools to capture one of my most favorite places to roam! Hope you enjoyed them.

Learning is fun, a walk in the woods is better

I'm still learning the range of capability HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Working in the digital realm has so many advantages and the tools out there just increase how fast and how varied you can make the final image.

Today I hiked up Monrovia Canyon, in the San Gabriel Mountains above my house. I debated a bit then left the tripod home. I figured I'd try standing really still and where possible brace against trees or rocks. I was too lazy to bring the tripod and knew that the 2 foot wide ledges I wanted to shoot from wouldn't have the space to have a tripod fully extended. Wish I had brought it as there were many shots that I took where there was just enough movement that the multiple exposures needed for HDR were too far out of registration to be workable as a straight forward photograph. (Call me a bit anal but I want to be able to nail down HDR before I start pushing it further...makes retracing steps easier when you fully understand a process).

Today's shooting was in a location where the sides of the canyon were in shadow with either very dark granite sides or near black Canyon and Coast Oaks with the creek and near white skinned Alders in the sunlight. Difficult to shoot in, even more so when you are working in a medium with a narrow contrast range such as digital (or ?chrome silver based films).

So while I sort through my images I have one of the first I finished posted for right now. This morning it was really foggy and starting to clear when I hit the canyon. The sun had just started to crest the ridge. Leaving areas in intense sunlight with others still in shadow. There were areas where the fog remained which HDR helped better define details like the line between fog and clear sky. HDR really captures the clarity and saturation of color the way a single exposure, even when done well in RAW.

I have learned the hard way, for the last time....you can't hand hold a camera and get 3 exact framed images. Add in the wind causing ripples in the leaves, your registration gets out of whack way to fast. Tripods are a must, no matter the weight and difficult terrain.

Anyway...Monrovia Canyon Morning...I shot it all RAW. The HDR image was post processed and saved as jpeg, low res for your viewing here. The jpeg side started as a single raw image, post processed to get it as close to the HDR as possible in the mid-tones and converted to jpeg at the same low res for more of an apple-to-apple comparison. The RAW image for both middle range of the HDR and the one labled JPEG was the same file....the average metered exposure for the scene.

Enjoy....

Wow...HDR by Photomatix works

I spent the day, well until about 1 when I needed to head down the hill, shooting with HDR in mind. Recall if you will HDR means High Dynamic Range and Photomatix is a program that allows us non photoshopCS2 types to explore that aspect of digital imaging.

To a large degree this program is pretty idiot proof (and yours truly needs all the help he can get some days). It does take a lot of finesse to get images that don't have a lot of ghosting or odd highlights at tone boundary's. As time goes by I'll get a better understanding on what hdr can or can't do. The finesse will come as I work with the program and learn its limitations better.

Today's project was to go out and pick through situations that are buggers to shoot, high contrast, shadows in naturally dark objects and highlights on very white objects all in the same scene. A digital camera I've discovered has a narrow range of contrast it can handle not unlike silver based chromes (aka slide films like ektachrome). So up into the San Gabriel Mountains I went to shoot in the worst possible conditions for extremes of contrast to see what HDR could do.

After a little exploring the other day it is painfully obvious that if you are to avoid any problems with ghosting and registration you must shoot with a tripod. Something I have only rarely done as it prevents me from easily and quickly bouncing around to get just the right angle and framing on a subject. Its a personal preference, kind of like a chihauhau type pooch...I have to bounce around freely and a tripod slows me down. That aside, it is invaluable when shooting with HDR in mind so I worked with it.

I used the recommended 2 f-stop bracketing from recommended exposure value which is the default in photomatix. I shot them in RAW which is a format where all the detail in the scene is preserved in its raw or "as shot" state by the camera with no compression which produces very big files. Fortunately the EOS20D does the bracketing automatically so once in place is bang, bang, bang on the shutter release and its done.

For Alder Creek I took the 3 exposures and used the "Shadow and Light - enhanced" tool to blend the 3 RAW files into one image. I saved the file then opened it with Photoshop and did my post processing for color balance and contrast cleaning up. I was impressed with the final image.

For comparison purposes I took the RAW file with average metering, adjusted it with Canon's "Digital Photo Professional" and adjusted the white balance to neutral then adjusted the brightness which then was converted to a jpeg for editing in photoshop. The final adjustments were then to refine color balance, saturation and contrast.

The differences in Shadow detail and highlight detail while preserving a natural luminosity was very good with the HDR image. HDR also did a very good job in keeping highlight detail....look a the detail in the extremely light gray alders in the background. Both involved the use of the base EV RAW file and somewhere along the line the HDR file lost some of the color richness to the simply converted RAW to JPEG used in the comparison. In this image at least the richness in the red/browns was lost in the HDR conversion more so than the blue/greens. Not that its objectionable, but my penchant for wanting deeply saturated color does make me question how much I am willing to trade for expanded gray ranges in the final image. Something to ponder and explore.

What I do see in all of this is that it will be very interesting to see how this expanded range will work into my impressionist images on watercolor paper. Also a few of my old loves, antiquated interiors and night photography may be the areas where HDR may have its greatest impact.

While I ponder it all, look at "Alder Creek" in its Base EV and HDR conversions and enjoy them on their own merits.