Vacation to Hearst Castle
Casa Grande
I’d wanted to go to Hearst Castle ever since seeing it from Hwy 1 while passing by on a road trip. The scale of the place blew my mind as I (more…)
Azeneth and Willie – Honeymoon in San Francisco
Azeneth and Willie Pelican
I got the call from Azeneth letting me know that she and her husband, Willie, would be on their honeymoon in San Francisco and that she wanted to surprise her husband by hiring a photographer for portrait session as a wedding gift. Being from New York they didn’t know (more…)
August Cover – The Spectrum
August Cover - The Spectrum
If you’re in the Redwood City area, make sure to find and pick up a copy of The Spectrum to see not only my cover photo above but (more…)
PPGBA Print of the Month – July 2010
Playing for the Masses
I’m totally blown away by the results of last Thursday nights print competition at PPGBA and I’m super honored to have done as well as I did. This hand-held HDR image scored (more…)
Entering the Concrete Jungle
The Concrete Jungle
Remember on a hot summer day you’d run through the sprinklers or maybe you had one of those toys that hooked up to the hose that was a fountain that had a bunch of hoses whipping about with water shooting out of the ends? The Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco reminds me of (more…)
Out to Pasture – Listen to Your Heart
Out to Pasture
I did a presentation on HDR a week ago for the folks at AMPP and one of the attendees, Michael Kendrick, and I were talking about how our passion for photography has (more…)
Intro to Film: Black Devil Ultra Wide and Slim Review
The Black Devil - Ultra Slim and Wide
Call me a child of the Digital Age, but I’ve never really shot film unless you count Polaroid instant snaps or the faint recollection I have of Kodak 110 cartridges that I used to play with as a kid. The first time I ever bought a camera for myself was sometime around Y2K, was digital, and every other camera I’ve had has been since. Until now. (more…)
Hand-held HDR and SF Financial District
Downtown Flowers
I’ve been hearing it from the so-called self proclaimed experts on internet forums that hand-held HDR is impossible or “you won’t get good results!” Just the mere mention of hand-holding (more…)
Third Times a Charm @ Print Competition
They Grow Up So Fast
EDIT ADDED 4/26/2010: When I originally wrote this post a week ago I seemed to be suffering from really bad writer’s block. I have an emotional connection to this image and, in fact, I have an emotional connection to ALL of my images but sometimes I don’t (more…)
Assignment @ Big Dog Vineyards
The Fruits of Labor
I got an assignment from the Milpitas Post recently asking me to get some shots of the sole winery in Milpitas, Big Dog Vineyards, for an upcoming story. With the spring-time on again/off again weather we have been having here in Northern California (more…)
El Capitan Emerges from the Shadows
O Captain! My Captain!
I’ll admit I’m like a fiend the way I check my Google Analytics, most often multiple times per day (there’s an app for that!), but I’m really bad about looking at my Flickr stats. Every once in a while I’ll sift through them to see where traffic is coming from that doesn’t originate from Flickr and I’ll find some interesting stuff.
I guess this all really started when I (more…)
Crushdown in HDR at the Gate
Crushdown at the Gate
Last month Todd from the local band Crushdown came to me saying that they needed some cool promo shots and asked if I could create (more…)
Another Merit Photo @ the Print Competition
Asleep With the Light On
It’s a win in my book! While it may technically be second place again, an 82 point merit print is another good effort for my second time in print competition. I went with the HDR above (more…)
Hoover Dam at Night
Hoover Dam
I got back a few days ago from my annual road trip with the guys to spring training in Phoenix loaded with images taken along the way. In usual form, I was planning on holding off the images for one big post but I had this one that I had to spit out as soon as possible.
Our trip started in the SF Bay Area but (more…)
Milpitas Visitor’s Guide Cover Shot!
Cover Shot
I had another recent assignment for the Milpitas Post to grab some images for the 2010 Milpitas Visitor’s Guide and one of my images (more…)
2nd Place in Print Competition
At the Ready
With help from my friend, and very talented photographer, Randy Wong, I entered my first PPA regulation print competition at my local PPA affiliate, PPGBA (Professional Photographers of the Greater Bay Area). I had never entered any live print competition and now I think (more…)
Weathering the Storm
Storm Serenity
With all of the rain and clouds covering much of California lately, I was reminded of this image that I shot last June in Lake Tahoe. I had been helping a friend paint his house in Sacramento over that weekend and since I didn’t have to be anywhere on Monday, I figured I would go the rest of the way up to the lake so that I could relax and shoot a little.
Since it was hot and I wasn’t really paying attention to the forecast, I didn’t (more…)
Enjoying the Day’s End
Near the end of a relaxing afternoon wine tasting in the Temecula area, I was inspired to grab this image as I saw (more…)
Seeing Griffith at Night in HDR
While I sometimes get in just a bit over my head after a project snowballs bigger than I expected or sometimes I just procrastinate, this time it may be a mix of the two. I’ve got a lot going on photographically at the moment (sweet!) and I’m working hard to make sure that something new comes together. What am I getting at here? A recent trip to (more…)
San Francisco City Hall in HDR strikes again!
It’s time for celebration over here at the Anvilimage compound! My image of San Francisco’s City Hall (shown above) won second place in an HDR photo contest hosted by Rick Sammon! I want to (more…)
A California Christmas
While driving back from Auburn, CA, after a day of wine tasting with my girlfriend, the rain stopped coming down long enough to make a stop off at the state capitol in Sacramento. I’ve been to Sacramento plenty of times on the way to Tahoe or Folsom, but this was the first time that I had actually (more…)
St. John’s Cemetery
I was dumbfounded when Paul told me, but I couldn’t believe there was something cool right here in my old stomping grounds that I didn’t know about. He and I were planning to do a night shoot of a small graveyard that dated back to the Civil War located in Redwood City and Paul asked me if the cemetery in San Mateo had anything cool in it. I shot back with, “What cemetery in San Mateo?!”
While on the phone, we both hit Google Maps and searched for the location as well as any info we could find about St. John’s Cemetery. I went to high school just a few miles from St. John’s and I had no clue that the small sanctuary with its entrance nestled at the end of a street in a hilly neighborhood even existed. I could see the top of the mausoleum pictured above on the Google Maps satellite view and quickly found a pic on Flickr that someone had posted and instantly knew that I would be paying this place a visit.
Of course, the cemetery has hours that wouldn’t permit the night photography that I wanted to do, so I headed over one morning just after the front gate opened at 9am. Paul was at work and couldn’t join, but I grabbed a few shots and purposefully didn’t shoot everything that I wanted so that he and I can go back later to shoot some more.
HDR Info: This is a 3 exposure HDR image that was shot handheld without a tripod. Using my Canon 40D and a Sigma 10-20mm lens, I grab the three exposures for this with a focal length of 12mm with ISO 100 and f7.1. The three exposures were combined and tone mapped in Photomatix and further cleaned up in Photoshop CS4.
A Night at the Park
Honest! I didn’t know that the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco was closed to the public past 10pm… But the security guard was really cool about it. Instead of outright kicking us to the curb, he politely asked us to finish up our shots and head out. Seriously!
When I’m wandering through the city late at night looking for a the next cool shot to take, sometimes the last thing I’m thinking about doing is looking for a sign that tells me what the hours are, especially when it’s as well lit and welcome looking as the gardens next to the Metreon! We (Tom, Paul and I) actually ran around and shot this place up for at least 45 minutes before we were talked to by security. In hindsight, we all thought that it would have been sooner because there are security cameras all over the place.
The shot above was taken from inside the edge of the fountain over the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial looking toward the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For those that don’t know, that would be the brick building with the zebra striped tower. The building to the right with the bright blue top and yellow interior wall is the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Luckily, this late at night (almost 1am) the fountain is off so I didn’t get wet!
The shot below is the one that I thought would summon security. The three of us, in an effort to get above the trees and concrete, ascended some stairs that appeared to be for utility access to some doors on the third floor.
Perched somewhere I probably shouldn’t have been with yet another one of those round, glass-eye security cams right behind my head, I set up the tripod for a couple of HDR’s. Eh, it was one of those shots that I just had to get: lots of glass, lights, the recognizable SF Marriott Marquis Hotel, the tower of St. Patrick’s and some cool, blue lights from the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco. Talk about the diversity of subjects in one shot. It was worth the risk and the security was cool about it. I’ll be back to shoot again more in the daytime for sure!
Reflective Calm HDR Info: Three images shot on a tripod using a Canon 40D through a 24-105mm f4L lens at 40mm with ISO 100 and f5.6. HDR processing handled by Photomatix and further edited in Photoshop CS4.
Metreon Glass HDR Info: Three images shot on a tripod using a Canon 40D through a Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm with ISO 100 and f8. HDR processing handled by Photomatix and further edited in Photoshop CS4.
