Night stones

This photo was taken in old downtown Nice in the south of France. What a place that turned out to be, one of my favorite cities. Old downtown Nice looked a lot like what you would expect your stereotypical old Italian city to look like. With street vendors, hanging meats and sidewalk cafes ready for people watching. Obviously this was taken at night, the cobblestone streets damp with moisture. The colors in that area at night were simply to rich to not try to get a nice picture.

Due to this being a spur of the moment snapshot, at night, I had no choice but to place it on the ground so it wouldn't come out blurry. As it turns out, that ended up looking neat, and while I made the mistake of not having that "grout" down the center, I like the asymmetry. It seems to work with not being able to see what's in the background. I did very little photoshop work to this photo which is un-usual to me. With the focus being so near, all the streetlights got a nice etherial glow to them naturally. In addition to all of that, it also makes me feel like I want a beer...perhaps it's the green which reminds me of the Irish which in turn remind me of beer.

Kobe Bryant, you suck

I'm pretty happy to say that the Lakers lost in the finals. I know it has nothing to do with photography or even art, but today it's ok. I hate the Lakers. I hate everything they stand for. I do think they perfectly represent the city they come from however. By that I mean the Lakers are a HUGE disapointment, and an embarasment. How can this city, that prides itself on the superficial be such a dump? I'm not sure, but they sure put together one superficial basketball team. Kobe isn't a dominant player, and Phill Jackson isn't the greatest coach in the universe. What I've noticed, is that without a guy named Jordan or O'Neil, it's VERY difficult for him to win a championship. However, O'Neil DID bring a championship to Miami. Hmmm, makes you think. Kobe, where did you go? Don't great players find a way to make an impact when it counts? You had a low scoring game when it counted most. You had almost no assists when they shut down your shooting. You had no rebounds when they stopped you from shooting and passing. What do you get paid for exactly, to make Paul Pierce look like the best player in the game I suppose.



At any rate, go Celtics, I'm happy for you at this particular time. I hate Boston sports, but you brought shame to the Lakers franchise that nobody will soon forget. And for that, I thank you.

Now it's time to get ready for something that matters, something called...........THE DALLAS COWBOYS!!!!

Vegas baby, VEGAS!!

Long time no post, sometimes daily life gets in the way of online updates. I thought a good way to keep posting updates when busy would be to post up and talk about a particular photograph now and again.

So this is the first one I'll talk about. When I look at it the first thing it reminds me of is that you don't always have the best vantage point. I'm not looking down a particularly interesting point on the strip. I guess you can see the New York New York Casino to the left, and then far off on the right the top of the Paris Hotel and Casino. What is interesting though, are the amount of cars going into town compared to the number of cars leaving town. I don't suppose I noticed that at the time I took the photo, but who knows why one takes certain photos.

This photo also represents one of the ways I like to guide the eye and create interest, and that is with focus and color/saturation. I did a lot of work to the sky on this one, to really saturate it up, it kind of draws the eye away from the line of cars coming into town. I think that creates a nice sense of movement for the eye, and the end result is an interesting photo of something that isn't actually that interesting, in my opinion.

Basic digital manipluation tutorial 1.0

Like I said in the blog about the location this photo was taken, it just looked slightly interesting compositionally and I needed a break from driving. So lets throw this into Photoshop and see what we can do.

The first thing I always do is adjust my saturation and contrast levels. At this stage I've decided it's about the car, so I adjust to make the car look like I want it to. I'm not concerned with any other elements in the photo, just the car. I've also started painting out my front license plate, hehe.


Next up for me is to add some "depth of field" to the image. I like to use focus to drive the eye and ,in this case, I want to also use focus to draw the eye away from the extremely boring background.


Now I've started to to a bit more work. First I've darkened the corners, I'm not sure what natural effect causes this but I really enjoy the look. To me it places the subject "out there" and sets you back from it, it makes me feel like a voyeur and observer. The second thing I've done is to start desaturating areas, specifically the bright sky and very "rich" background dirt pile. I've also removed visual detail from the foreground, kind of "posterizing" it. At this point it's clear what the focal point is, and you have no choice but to look at it, the annoying background is also becoming slightly less annoying.


The foreground still bothers me, it seemed out of place and washed out. So I darkened it more, realizing at this point I would be cropping the photo to make it very horizontal. I've also added back in some color to the asphalt as it gets closer to the car. Again I did this to drive the eye and to "sew" in the foreground visually as it gets closer to the subject matter.



Final piece done!!!! After I cropped the photo, the first thing that I wanted to do was to remove the clashing color of the graphiti, so it went to green. I also continued to add color into the foreground to keep the eye in that area. The background is still kind of distracting, but at this point I'm pretty much done.

To make this a totally complete and finished piece I would continue to work on the background to make it disappear more. At the end of the day however, it's a pretty cool looking little image considering that it is just a snapshot with almost no thought put to it and only about 2 hours of post work. :-) But after writing this, I believe I will go back and do some more work on this piece, I don't suppose anything is ever really done.

Photography road trip - SALTON SEA PART ONE

The Salton Sea is a very interesting location nestled between Los Angeles and San Diego just to the east. It's the largest body of water in California and was once a vacation destination for the well off. Over time the evaporation of the water left the salinity level so high it killed all the fish. Needless to say this scared off all the tourists, and what's left of it is one of the strangest places I've ever visited. The beaches are largely made of crushed fish bones and fish carcases are scattered everywhere. Even after all these years the smell in the area is unbelievably strong, a mix of salt and dead fish. That alone should tell you quite a bit about this place.

Every road trip in Los Angeles starts the same, with traffic on the freeway. Today though, it looks like I got off easy. My route takes me south on the 405 toward Oceanside . From there I head off east, through the mountains to the Salton Sea.

I'm always trying to keep an eye out for good photo opportunities. I saw this graphitti on some concrete dividers and decided that it might make a nice backdrop for a very horizontal photo using my car as the subject. I'm excited to see what the end result of this shot will look like. This is how I like to work in a lot of ways, take a quick snapshot with interesting composition. I consider the initial photograph to be about 25% of the end result, since I do quite a bit of post processing with Photoshop and I can change almost everything but the composition.

My first stop was a town called Truckheaven, I believe. It's a sparsely populated beach community directly on the west coast of the sea. Most of the elderly tenants were living in trailers. About 50 feet behind where I was standing was a man watering his perfectly manicured lawn. I walked over this strange little bridge down to the Salton Sea. After standing on the beach for the first time I had to wonder if the man watering his lawn could ever actually enjoy it. Why? Read on...

The water is surprisingly beautiful because the sea is almost perfectly calm. As I would find out later, in some places it reflects as well as any mirror. At some points there is enough haze in the air to create the look of what would surely be the worlds largest vanishing edge swimming pool. Avian fanatics visit this area for it's plethora of bird life. Specifically Pelicans, seen here gliding just above the surface of the water for dramatic effect.

The beach is pure white, but unfortunately the reason it's white is because it's made up of crushed fish bones. At any given moment, a quick look around will reveal countless dead fish. The sea smells absolutely horrendous, I don't know how people could stay here and live around the stench.

My next stop was the marina and/or yacht club, or what's left of it. You can see the old waterline if you look closely. It looks to be about 4 feet higher than it is at it's current level. You can also see the pillars that once held docks in place. The water in the foreground is in a little man made cove about the size of a baseball infield.

Just to the south of the yacht club is a little playground area where kids would play. It's a truly post-apocalyptic sight to see something like this. If it weren't for the creepy devil drawing on the slide that's half buried in crushed fish bones it might be nice. Like a lot of things I saw around the Salton Sea, I could never really imagine this being a real place where real people once spent time.

To me this image represents everything that is the Salton Sea. The water is pretty to look at, yet so salty that fish are still living/dying in it. Pretty white rocks are made white by pelicans defecating on them over the years. The beaches are beautiful and white from a distance, when focused they reveal a bed of crushed fish bones and carcases. You truly can not judge this book by it's cover. Notice how amazingly still this large body of water is, I've never seen anything like it.


Like any good resort town there needs to be a place for everyone to stay when they come to spend a holiday. Clearly abandoned, seemingly every inch of wall covered in "evil" grafitti. "Satan lived here" "In here lives the BEAST" etc. Some of the boarded up doors had holes kicked in them, with instructions to crawl in the hole. No thank you.



Like every good hotel there is a pool, and apparently this one is where "Hells Cuties "swim. There is random furniture thrown all over the hotel grounds. There were chair frames in the bottom of the pool as well as a burned mattress.



My next stop was Bombay Beach, which I believe is the most populated town on the east coast of the Salton Sea. It's a very strange mix of run down old houses, like the one here, right next to a house that someone currently lives in. The town is very quiet and I have no idea what anyone living here would be doing for a living.


The interiors are no better kept that the outside and of course that's what you'd expect. However I didn't expect to see burned stuffed animals and books. I can't believe that these are left over from the original tenants but I guess you never know. And at any rate, they sure do give off a creepy uncomfortable vibe.


That did it for my first trip out to the Salton Sea. Like I said, I wasn't prepared enough to see some of the other things that I wanted to. But I did manage to get a few photos that I really like, and should be able to do something with. So keep an eye out here, I should have something up in a few days.

Related Links:
Wikipedia entry on the Salton Sea
Official Salton Sea website
Kim Stringfellows great photo essay on the Salton Sea