Blog Archives
Why is everyone honking?
PICTURE OF THE MOMENT
I had to go over to the Music Department at San Diego State University an hour ago. I could tell that I was going to get to see a good sunset. I was stopped at a traffic signal, thinking it would be logical and safe to stop at a red light. While sitting there looking at the sunset, I thought I’d take a silhouette picture of the traffic signal.
All of a sudden people were honking. Wonder why……………….
Sunset from my back patio
PICTURE OF THE MOMENT
I have good clouds here in La Mesa more so than they do at the coast because I’m 14 miles inland. With all the rain we’ve had the past couple of days, I knew that as soon as the rain ceased we’d have some nice sunsets. Tonight was one of those nights. The following two pictures were taken from my back patio.
This post approved by
SNIPPETS — #5: Taking sunset pictures when there is no sunset
#5: Taking sunset pictures when there is no sunset
We are fortunate that we have a lot of sunshine here in San Diego….
Mostly….
Lots of sunshine often means that pictures come out harsh, sometimes overexposed, sometimes with parts of the picture blown out, especially the whites and reflections.
When I’m in that situation and don’t want to go home yet, I’ll often take sunset pictures.
I was downtown recently and the morning sun was out and bright, without the typical early morning marine layer that is prevalent…. just a few swirls of clouds here and there. So I took sunset pictures. It’s not hard to do. Just set your exposure compensation (EC) to the negative side.
The following five pictures were taking at normal exposure, -1 EC, -2 EC, -3 EC, and -4 EC:
I really like silhouettes, so I like the last picture best. However, I can put some building detail back into the picture in a digital photo editing program; I used Lightroom 4:
SNIPPETS are short posts about anything and everything.
Each SNIPPETS will also have a picture.
After all, this is Russel Ray Photos.
This post approved by
Downtown San Diego at sunset
Last month I went on 3½-hour whale-watching cruise. We left downtown San Diego at 1:30 p.m. and were cruising back into San Diego bay at 5:00 p.m., just as the sun was in its golden hour of sunset.
From our boat out in the bay, I was able to get these three pictures of the sun reflecting off a building in downtown San Diego:
Find other posts in my Picture of the Moment series by clicking on the logo at the upper right.
Just hangin’ out
Sometimes you just get lucky.
Not too far from me is a mountain peak named Mt. Helix. It’s a great place to watch sunrises and sunsets, and I go there often. The sunsets are the best because you can get downtown San Diego in the picture on a clear night.
On this day, as I was walking from my car to where I was going to wait for the sun to set, I saw these two guys just hanging out:
That was a snapshot in that I didn’t do anything other than set the camera (Canon 550d) to P and took a snapshot. I got lucky because I like everything about that picture — the lighting, the composition with the bench, the big tree, the rocks, just the right perspective to the picture with the guys sitting on the rocks instead of the bench (how guy-like). Even the houses about 500 feet below are in pretty good focus to indicate how high up the guys were.
Picture taken on November 29, 2011. Here is the reason why I went to Mt. Helix that day:
Great clouds are rare in the San Diego area, so if you come here and see them during the day, consider yourself lucky. Then head to Mt. Helix in La Mesa, Mt. Soledad in La Jolla, or Cowles Mountain on the La Mesa/San Diego border because the sunsets will be awesome.
