iPhone Photo Safari with Snapcious

I play this fun game called Snapcious.  Its an iPhone app only for now. The
game is really fun.  You submit mission ideas and other players rank them and the top rated ones become missions for you to fulfill. What is a mission, well they are photo ideas for you to fulfill with images you capture with your iPhone.  Those images are voted on by other players and you gain points with wins...points that eventually get you additional rank and perks within the game.

It launched the first of the year and I was one of the early adapters. Its actually a good tool to keep you thinking about the images you create.

Saturday, 9/28/13 was the first ever Snapcious iPhone Safari and we players met in downtown Los Angeles in the Grand Central Market and proceeded to walk the city and shoot what we saw, posting as we went sharing with other players what we were seeing, documenting and hopefully gave them an idea of the fun we were having as a group.

Piggy backing off of last weeks post, it applies for photo shoots of cities too.  Get up close for  the details and you will wind up with a diverse documentation of your subject.  I shot a variety in my little tour of DTLA with the Snapcious group.  They are all on flickr in my iPhone Safari set.

A few of my favorite detail shots from my meander in downtown LA...

Mack Reed one of he creators of Snapcious gave us all a quick tour of the iPhone camera.  I thought I knew it all, I was wrong.  I learned how to spot meter with the thing and get perfect exposures now in adverse lighting conditions.  To do it is stupid easy.  Put your phone in grid view. Tap the area of the grid you want perfectly exposed...the backlit face, the sun setting in the sky and the phone does the rest.

My only gripe with the iPhone really has to do with the iOS7 update from this week.  It makes a battery pig worse.  I started the safari with 100% battery and ended it barely 3 hours later with 20% and dire need of a charge. If I'm going to survive the LA Auto Show next month I am going to need a heavy duty external battery to keep me going while I blog on the fly and tweet out the goodies I find.

Get up close and personal

 It applies to a lot of things, with cars you pick up the details that the overview only alludes to.  With landscapes you get details of the flora and fauna that is lost in the grandiose soak it all image. With flowers you pick up the erotic from the mundane blossom.

Yup, the pic above is me.  One of only a few known to exist, especially me doing what I do best, photographing cars.  Its also me practicing what I preach, move in close for details and fill the frame with them.  In this case I was shooting the hood ornament on this classic Packard.  What a car, but look a the attention to detail in it.  Lots of art deco details that are lost in the wide shot of the entire car.  The following image is what I got from that shot.  Thanks to my friend Stephen Coleman who captured me doing what I love.

Cars...how to shoot 'em in the wild

Cars can be, but shouldn't be a challenge.  Picking the right lens helps if you are DSLR enabled, adjusting zoom if you use a point and squirt.. I shot pretty exclusively with a wide angle Canon 20-35mm for this purpose with the 70-200 zoom reserved for the detail shots.  Why this combo? A variety.

Cars benefit from the exaggerated perspective that only a while angle lens can bring to the table. With a point and squirt you have zoom ratios, move in close and zoom out to get the same effect.  It makes it all look longer and wider emphasising the lines.  The wider angle view also enables you to shoot in crowds without having to back off and wait for  a break in traffic to get your shot.

Depth of Field.  I've talked about it in the past in prior posts.  In short the greater the lens the greater the depth of field, or area of focus you get an any given aperture (f-stop to us old schoolers).  At 20mm my wide angle lens is pretty all encompassing focus which you need when up close and personal with a car.  The shot of the Thunderbird at the lead to this post if shot from a distance to fill the frame would have not only compressed the car to make it look short and squat but would have run the risk of having the front corner in focus with the rear out of focus.  Not a good thing when you are shooting something this big.

Get down low and up close and personal.  That means drop down to one knee, bend over or do what it takes so your camera is level to slight above the fender peaks.  It will yield a dramatic image every time showcasing the lines and curves that some designer spent hours at some point drawing out.

Anecdotally yesterday I was at the 23rd Annual Street Rods Forever car show here in Monrovia.  There was an old dude (isn't that the kettle calling the pot black) who had a DSLR on a tripod.  With a moderate length lens.  He would go from car to car and set himself up for his shots, not unlike what I did here, but at a distance of maybe 10 feet and would sit on a stool crabbing at people to get out of his way.  How rude, gives photographers a bad name.  In a crowd you gotta be mobile and as unobtrusive as possible.

Don't be afraid to take multiple shots of the same car from different angles and perspectives.  Don't be afraid to deviate from straight on.  Stand up tall, shoot with the camera tilted to fill the frame, this view can add a feeling of movement and power to the car.  Try to get from behind as well for pictures, its not always possible because of parking or thats where the owner stashed his chairs and cooler to sit out the show, but try.

Take several shots of the car, not just the big picture with the whole machine.  Zoom in for details.  Those details are what add character to a car. Either it was done by the designer back in the day when it was just a dream or by some customizer who thought it would add something to the character of the car.  Could be the logo in pot metal, the arc on a fin or wheel well or a sticker added by the gear head at the end.  Its a signature piece that makes up the whole.  Those details also make interesting images.  Those details were sweat at the design stage, show them off now.

I rarely shoot a car head on unless its part of a series of images to illustrate the entire car.  Often I grab 3 shots with only 1 at the head on level.  I find the images that illustrate the dimensionality of the car as a sculptural piece are much more effective.  Varying angles and frame just add to the story of the car and goes beyond mere documenting what it looked like.  

My only gripe here is that owners of hot rods in particular, but nicely restored car owners do it too, is that so much was put into the mechanics of the car they want to show off the engine.  To do that they show the car with the hood up!  Nice for detail pics of the engine, but that gaping maw sure ruins the looks of an otherwise nicely sculpted machine.  You can ask them to drop the hood and some may do just that, others will look at you like you are speaking in tongue.

The big tip here is to shoot lots from a variety of angles so your photo sets tell a story of the car(s) you chose to focus on.  Even if you are taking a couple of some generally interesting cars using these tips you will have stand out images that are different than simply cataloging what you saw.  At yesterdays show there were over 200 cars there, I shot maybe 3 in depth as outlined above, the rest that got my eye, about a 3rd of them I took a couple of shots varying perspective and angle so I would have enough to remember the basics. 

Enjoy these images, they do get larger if you click on them.  If you want to see them in their jpeg large from you can check out the entire set on flickr.  

Life instuctions

I play an online game called Snapcious.  Its played with your iPhone or Andoid with the Snapcious App.  Its pretty simple to play.  Winning is about bragging rights and not much more.  You open the app, search the missions  and shoot, post and you are done.  It even gives you the option to post to other social media sights like facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest etc.,.

One of the missions this week is "life instructions".  I thought about doing something cheeky, then opted to go with verbalizing my thoughts and snapping a pic of the screen.  There you go, my 5 points to having a happy life.

Ont the topic of life, been busy of late.  Did a commercial shoot for a realtor friend of mine who was in a bind.  Was quite pleased with the results.  I did flash and natural light, the latter is far more artsy in my not so humble...  The link to see what they chose HERE.  A sample of my favorites :

I've also been busy with SoCalAutoBlog and blogging.la of late.  Both keep me busy with adventures and photo ops.  I mean cars and Los Angeles does it get much better for adventures?

I also did a fun commercial shoot for a website that a friend of mine is doing the marketing work for its new web site.  Citadel Exploration is the companies name.  My mission was to make oil wells look pretty.  I did quite well. The shoot encompassed 2 days of shooting.  The first was a complete and utter wash out, literally as it poured buckets on us.  Who knew it rained heavy in SoCal in spring!  The camera got really wet and I wound up having to shoot the second day all in manual mode as the metering somehow lost its ability to control shutter speed.  Argh...at least I knew how to go old school exposure calculating from ASA (now we call it ISO but that's a whole different story) the shutter/f-stop calculations for zone and pulled it all off.

The big bonus in this?  Well I got a new camera.  An EOS 60D that I'm just now getting the hang of using in manual mode.  The old EOS 20D is gonna get fixed then be a spare/backup as it still produces stunning images at 8 mega pixels which is more than enough for real estate and commercial shoots that will be web based.  Big stuff..the 60D will rule as it can go easily 4 FEET by 6 FEET!

The commercial stuff is fun and it pays the bills...the art stuff nourishes the soul.  Its all good, now I need to go create some art.

Laguna Beach's Sawdust Festival

Us artists are really an interesting breed.  We love to create art and show off our art.  We like to sell it even more.  But sheesh, take a picture and they come unglued.  As if a photo can even replace the real deal.  I don't get it, but then again I'm not in the no-photo mindset. This placard or similar WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach yesterday.

I'd have some pics of the niftiness that is the Sawdust Festival but honestly its not worth ruffling feathers to make a point.

What is the Sawdust Festival?  ITs a gathering of 200 artists that live in Laguna Beach, and only from there that sell their art from tiny, often 4X6 spaces within a square block area.  They charge admission.  ITS hugely popular and traffic in and out of Laguna Canyon is a challenge.  I'd suggest a xanax before you make the drive but you really need your wits about you with that traffic.

Parking is a bigger challenge, lots charge as much as $20 for a part day close to the event.  There are some cheaper lots, $7day, and metered parking 25cents/10 minutes around the Sawdust Festival.  Generally the cheaper the rate the farther you have to hike to get there.

Buy your tickets online and save yourself the hassle of a line there.  Its not free, but if you can't spare $7.25 a head I know you can't afford the art in there that can costs in the thousands of dollars.

Once in its sensory overload.  Its all quality art and fine crafts.  Not a piece of crap in the place.  Prices start from uber affordable note cards at a couple of bucks each to the aforementioned thousands for original paintings, sculptures and furniture.  I even walked away with ideas for future art projects so it was an afternoon well spent.

Palm Springs Art Museum...gem in the desert

If you follow my other blogs, you know that my time of late has been devoted to commercial stuff punctuated with a lot of family emergencies that have really interfered with my fine art pursuits and blogging in general.  It hasn't stopped me from getting out and enjoying art and doing some fun stuff.

On the 12th the lovely Mrs and I celebrated our 24th Anniversary and we did it without kids for a few days R and R in Palm Springs and the desert.  Love it out there.  We go every year, and not always alone, but always have a wonderful time.

This trip we paid a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum as we've heard its a really nice place and they had a Picasso and impressionists exhibit.  The latter as you recall influences some of my arty stuff at times.  The exhibit was small, but beautifully curated and focused.  Even had one of his minotaur line drawings that I remembered from my college Art History days...that's going back a while.

They also have a very lively set of permanent collections that they rotate about.  A must see is the sculpture gardens off either the cafeteria or side exhibit hall on the lower levels. Its surprising and awe inspiring.  Some  are bold with color, others are bold with line and form only to carry them.  The blown glass "boulders" among the cactus are just plain fun.

We visited the main campus of the Palm Springs Art Museum.  In digging through their web I learned that they also have a secondary campus located in Palm Desert only a few miles away.  When we next visit the area we will hit the  Palm Desert venue to see what they have new and different.

More pics of our visit from the areas photography were allowed can be found on Flickr in my Palm Springs Art Museum set.

Deets: Palm Springs Art Museum  101 Museum Drive, Palm Springs CA 92262

Lovin' the iPhone panorama feature

Click to embiggen and get the full picture.  Its pretty amazing, not the image but the tool to capture.

The iPhone panoramic feature is pretty awesome tool.  You simply select it from the options bar, and rotate smoothly, keeping the arrow on the line and you get a seamless panoramic image.  Just like this.  None of that sloppy image blending from photoshop, this is really a wonderful tool.  I use it often.

I've done a few others, but this is my favorite image so far.  Love the desert sunsets.  Loved better how the iPhone program seamlessly addressed the changing exposure from where the sun was setting to the already darkening horizon.  Yummy.

Metering is everything...the gray scale matters

The hardest thing in the world in my not so humble it to shoot "snow".  Even on an overcast day the gray scale covers the gamut from complete black to absolute white.  Ansel Adams was a master at capturing the gray scale with his "Zone System".  It was all an issue of deciding what was the magical 18% gray and metering to ensure he had detail across the board, then developing the negatives to ensure it happened.  The Zone system in short was one where after you shot the film to expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights.

This image was from my archives and dates back to November 1975.  I was then very much into Adams and his zone system.  I metered off an 18% gray card  that came with my Kodak Professional Photographers Photoguide.  I still carry it today to meter off of in extreme situations when I am shooting on film.  (Yes, I still do my own B&W silver work AND I refuse to call it "analog photography" like some hipsters I know).

So what about the world of digital photography?  You can still use the zone system.  You set your ISO on your camera and use manual settings.  The setting will come from the exposure details given to you from a handheld meter focused on a gray card.  Use the recommended exposure settings from that reading and et voila you are working in the zone system in the digital world.  If you are not sure how to set your DSLR on manual, you can always set it to bracket shots 1 stop apart and shoot of the cameras average meter in semi-auto mode.

Enjoy "Ozark Farm". The original was shot on Tri-X, developed in D76.  The negative was scanned to positive with an Epson V600 Photo scanner.  It does click to embiggin.

Endeavour flies over L.A.

Today was one of those rarefied days in Los Angeles where everyone was consumed by the same event.  No, it wasn't another high speed chase on the freeway and city streets, its was for the fly over of the space shuttle Endeavour as it makes its final flight.

At the recommendation of my friend Susan Kitchens I went to the Gabrielino Trail head in Altadena. The spot was pretty spectacular.  It was at the edge of a tall arroyo overlooking the Hahamonga Park and watershed with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus on the opposite side.

The first spotting of the shuttle was when it was making a circle over Universal City or Griffith Park around 11:40AM.  It whet the appetites for the some 500 souls that gathered on that ridge to see the shuttle for more.

10 minutes later we got another view of the Endeavour atop its 747 carrier as it flew to our south over the Rose Bowl and began its slow turn back around towards us.  Gasps of "There it is" and "Here it comes" were shouted as we got glimpses of it through the trees.  Then finally it began its low and slow approach.  As it got into clear view the crowd roared with cheers and applause.  It was something to behold, all those souls celebrating as it flew overhead.

These images were worked from RAW files with the help of Adobe's CS5 raw processor.  Its funny how the color of the sky varies from shot to shot as it progress from an easterly view to that of a southwestern view as it slowly circled above us.  Its all about color temperature and reflectivity of the sky and clouds above or it flew through.

More unprocessed jpegs can be found in my flickr set.

Couple o'Panoramas

Recently I got to take a guided tour of Pasadena's glorious City Hall given by their retired PIO Ann Erdman. What a gem she is.  City Hall was opened to the public in 1927.  It was the first ever building done in the "California Mediterranean" style.  The architects blended old Italian style (you see it in the domes) with that of the California Missions seen in the courtyards and arched hallways.  They were given the mission to show "strength and abundance" to symbolise the new City Hall.  I think they did well.

Sorry gentle readers for the lack of postings.  The migraines returned as mysteriously as before, not sure of all the triggers, but the meds I was on quit after just a few weeks so we are back on the hunt for an elixir that will work.

Both panoramic images were produced with the help of Adobe's CS5.  They will get bigger with a click.

A set of images is also on flickr.

A little fauxtography

I was thinking the other day about the old timey Instamatic and Polaroids, they managed through cheap optics to vignette the skies in the corner so they were a tidge darker which lent to helping frame the center of the image.  Simple task in CS5 to duplicate.

Here I started with RAW images.  Upped the clarity, vibrance and saturation so you got the look of the old Kodachrome or Polaroid films.  Then I opened the image.

With the image opened up I created a layer.  Then I used the oval tool and created an oval that went nearly all the way from top to bottom and edge to edge.  I right clicked and selected invert.  I right clicked again and went to the feather edges and went for the max feathering of 250 pixels.

The next step was to go down to the lower right corner and use the brightness tool and drop the brightness down until the corners began to darken...to taste by a factor of -50 to -75.  I then used the merge visible.  Et voila (that's rough French for "and there you have it") a knock off of an old Polaroid or Instamatic Kodachrome with a digital camera..

These images btw were shot out at Joshua Tree National Park over the weekend while hiking on Fathers Day. See why I said I need to go out there and spend more time there?

Few more panoramic images from Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree National Park is a magical place, but then again I feel that way about most of the desert.  It takes special critters and plants to survive out there.  And each is so uniquely adapted to the harsh environment that they are so unlike what you find in the rest of the country.  Very cool stuff there Maynard.

In CS5 for reasons I don't understand you can't do even basic manipulations and corrections to a panoramic image.  You need to save it as a jpeg then do your image corrections.  In this case as I shot late morning and colors were starting to desaturate and such I needed to do some color correction and tone correction in order for them to pop a bit better.  From the PSD image I saved as a JPEG then did my corrections then resized for this blog...yup they have size limitations.  You can click to get bigger images to get a bigger sense of space of Joshua Tree.  The place is quite spectacular and not devoid of life at all...contrary to one one would think of a desert.

Can't wait to get there for the wild flowers while they are in bloom next spring!

Coming out of a post-migraine hangover

And its a doozie of a migraine hangover, will spare you all the gorie details but the last 6 months I have been battling non-stop chronic migraines that with the help of a talented neurologist over at Kaiser I finally have a handle on controlling them.  Needless to say the near constant headaches put a crimp in the creativity. To celebrate I took a little day hike out into the desert.  Specifically we hiked around Joshua Tree National Park not far from where my daughter and son-in-law live in Twentynine Palms, CA.

Each of these panoramic images were post processed with the help of Adobe's CS5...no I'm not getting CS6 any time soon as 5 works just fine for me.

I'll post more images in the next few days of the area.  Can't wait to get back out there to shoot more.  Would love to shoot the wild flowers when the are in bloom in the spring.  It would be really nice to watch a sunrise or sunset among the red/orange rocks as well.

A meme too funny not to share...

Click to embiggen...but this is really funny.  I have to admit more time is spent in post processing, even with a fast PC and CS5 than I get to do actually shooting.

Just to brush off this blog a bit...

Wow, its been busy around here since the LA Auto Show...keeping up with it all has been a challenge.

This weeks adventures took me to Detroit for the North American International Auto Show. What a show it was.  This was all courtesy of Acura who sees the value in bloggers and like what I do here and at So Cal Auto Blog. 

The panoramas here were done with the help of Adobe's CS5.  This program does a pretty admirable job of blending multiple images into one giant shot. It isn't perfect and for reasons I don't understand it will blend some like these examples then completely is thrown off with others that it can't blend.  Anyone have an idea why it is so inconsistent with the combining of series shot  into panoramas and not with others?

The Auto Show is made for HDR images

I've made mention in the past that HDR, High Dynamic Imaging is one way to control contrast and get details in the highlights and shadows beyond what a normal DSLR can capture.

Since it is a bracketed exposure set to capture highlights, mid-range and shadow as "perfectly exposed" when you get around to generating the HDR file you have complete detail across a much broader EV scale than what you can get with just one image.

Both of these are HDR images that I post processed with the help of Adobe's CS5.  The Top image, that of a Cadillac ELR that is set for production in the next few years was done more with a surreal touch whereas the Mustang GT500 was done with a more realistic blending.  Both work for their own reasons.  Both will show up in publications around the web.

I have on flickr an entire set devoted to the 2011 L.A. Auto Show HERE.

What I did Friday night...

Yup we saw Cyndi Lauper on her "Memphis Blues Tour".  Great concert, amazing energy and songs by Cyndi Lauper.

A little panorama action...

Yesterday I went to Torrance to the American Honda HQ for an Acura event.  While there they opened up their museum for a luncheon and a tour.  IT was quite impressive to see their collection of historically significant Honda's and concept cars from over the years.

This image was done with the photomerge too in Adobe's CS5.  The program does a pretty slick job of matching frame content to create a single large image.  Enjoy the sneak peak into the American Honda Museum that is not open to the public, rather is a by invitation only.

Very Foggy Morning

Its not the tool used that makes the difference, its the photogs eye.  This little gem was grabbed this morning with my cell phone as just an example of using a low res tool to its advantage.

Sierra Sunset ala Autochrome

I do love the Sierra's.  I find them a great respite from the rigors of day to day stuff.  I shot this a couple of summers ago while on a trip to June Lake.  This was actually a trail off the main road to Mono Lake.  I loved the suns final ray shooting through the mountains before dusk settled into night.

I decided to do this one in the Autochrome look as I felt the painterly impressionistic results fit the image better than the simple RAW image would have given.

This took several steps, most of which I've outlined here in the past.  I do love the simplicity and WYSWYG preview results you get with Adobe's CS5.

I've got a show this spring and am debating what to do.  Should I present all "ala autochrome" or should I go with all "scanned hand painted negatives".  Hell, I can't even decide what one image I should submit to the LA Center of Digital Art for their "Unjuried" Show, which I just adore, in December.  What to do?  Create more is the answer and let the most powerful series be the choice.