A dynamic city

a dynamic city

San francisco rainbow ~ in a rare stormy, foggy, cloudy summer day overlooking the city through the golden gate bridge, i witnessed a rainbow arched over the city. i was half expecting lightning as i was being drizzled on! and with what i was seeing up this way, i wouldn't have been one bit surprised if that would have actually happened.=)

This scene is quite rare, even for me to see it like this...

If you enjoy this san francisco rainbow piece, please take a look at a fiery sky ver from the same location~

Www. flickr. com/photos/21491133@N02/3699261874/

Bentley Continental GT Speed

Bentley Continental GT Speed

Fishermans Hut, Lofoten

Fishermans Hut, Lofoten

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission © All rights reserved!

For requests, Please see the links in my profile for my website, accessed via my buddy icon.

VIEW LARGE HERE

Thank You SO much for your comments and invites!!

Nope, this is not SCOTLAND!!

For our Summer holiday, we visited the Lofoten Islands, Norway, for

Just five days, the rest was spent around Tromso.

Never have I seen such a beautiful place, meadows full of lush grasses and wild flowers of all colours. The mountains rearing up from the sea.....someone on the TV recently described Lofoten as being like the Isle of Skye "on steroids" !! Another pleasure, was the wooden buildings, a lot of which are painted red. Lofoten is a photographer's paradise, so many opportunities, and uncrowded with a lot of single track roads to explore, off the beaten track.

We went prepared for cold weather...The Lofoten's are North of the Arctic Circle, but it was much milder than we anticipated! All down to the influence of the Gulf Stream, the same as us!

The Land of the Midnight Sun. I had hoped to capture it, but each time we were somewhere to get the shot, the clouds moved in!

It is so weird though, it really does stay incredibly bright, all through the night!

Mostly the weather was very good to us, too nice sometimes, with very bright blue skies and no clouds, not great for Landscapes.

I would LOVE to go back when Winter still has it's grip, I imagine the light to be to die for!

( Note to self.....I would love to go back ANYTIME!)

This particular shot, .....we had passed by this scene a couple of times, and I didn't like the light, but on this occasion, it was really quite miserable, but with tiny glimmers of sun stabbing through the curtains of rain. EXACTLY the way I wanted it.

I just fell in love with that ramshackle old hut.

A five shot HDR, and a touch of Orton.

This is my INTERPRETATION of what I saw!

A link regarding info on the Lofotens.

En. wikipedia. org/wiki/Lofoten

ON EXPLORE #416

New Zealand 20cent piece

New Zealand 20cent piece

Macro photo of a New Zealand 20c piece.

The process to take this photo is Described in detail on my blog.

In short:

Vivitar 285HV @1/4 close low camera left

Canon 580EX @ 1/2 high camera right at distance

Wrap-around paper diffuser

Lens cap directly behind coin to provide contrast in the reflection.

Setup shot.

The Ark

The Ark

Iceman9294.smugmug. com/photos/swfpopup. mg? AlbumID=6359064...

Harley sesiom XII

Harley sesiom XII

Modelo Zaloa

Strobist info. Un flash 580EXII con difusor a la izquierda a 1/4

Mi web... My website:

Arfoto. es

Itchy and Scratching

Itchy and Scratching

I've always loved this tree. It is right near the parking lot at Stafford Lake in Novato, CA which is the best place around for a full 18 holes of Frisbee Golf. So usually when I pass this tree I have a frisbee, but no camera. Yesterday I was having a late afternoon nap and I suddenly awoke thinking about this tree, so I looked outside and saw that I had maybe an hour of daylight left, so I grabbed my gear and headed down to Novato. I got there at about 6pm, the park closes at 7. The sun had already set behind the hills surrounding this valley, so I knew I was going to need my strobes. I put one strobe on a gorillapod, affixed a diffuser and placed it under the canopy of the tree, off camera to the left. This was used to light the branches extending off of the main trunk and the side of the main trunk. Then I placed a second strobe on a light stand facing the tree about 20 feet back. THis strobe lit up the ground, the leaves in the front of the tree and a bit of fill on the main trunk. The third strobe, my Canon 430ex was placed on the ground and propped up with a log. The light from this strobe is what you see on the ground on the right.

The three strobes were fired using Cactus V2 triggers. As is often the case with the cactus triggers in outdoor situations, and particularly when trying to use a Canon flash, I had a lot of misfires and shots where two of three or one of three strobes fired. I took about 50 shots in all to get this one, but I was moving the strobes around a lot.

I took the final shot with my 10-22mm lens, laying on the ground in front of the tree.

In PS, the only thing I really had to do was add in the eye and a little bit of the nose, and darken the crack that is the mouth. The basic shape of the nose and mouth were provided by nature. I posted a little tutorial on texture wrapping a while back. This images uses essentially the same technique.

I also used an adjustment layer to soften the flare of the flash on the grass, and cropped and rotated the image to straighten the horizon.

I also did a version where the mouth was showing teeth, and the eye had an eyebrow, but it seemed like too much, so I reverted back to something a little more subtle.