We went to San Francisco twice last weekend, in anticipation of a big project I am working on and hope to complete before summer. 

I photographed the Presidio and Fort Point. I was very lucky, since Fort Point celebrated Living History Days with civil war actors in period customs. It was a lot of fun and while we were there, I also photographed some of the spectacular views you can find at the Presidio and the Main Post, from where the Presidio grew to its current spread.

I parked my car and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge to boost my Golden Gate Portfolio. 

Both locations are a lot of fun to discover and the pictures really turned out exceptional (all shot with the Canon 7D). Check them out and come back for more, the project is far from done.

Which of these do you like best?

Confronted with an unprecedented range of software programs and sliders, digital photographers sometimes struggle finding the right balance. Browsing through the websites of my esteemed photography colleagues, I get the feeling that the opinions on color treatment seem to diverge, rather than converge. New software companies, like Topaz Labs, satisfy the need of the extreme end of the spectrum, while purists contest the unnatural appearance of these pictures. Composition and lighting alone used to make good photographs, but today it seems that color treatment becomes just as important. Since all our senses are overloaded every day, it becomes harder and harder to make a visual impact. Attracting a viewers attention may require a bold statement, but how bold is too bold and how much is too much? 

Train your perception and improve your compositions.

We are born with the capability to see and we hardly contemplate about it unless we lose or eyesight or our focus. Yet the way we see greatly determines our “talent” as photographers. Low-level subconscious brain functions filter the information our eyes capture, before it reaches the slower and more complex areas of our brain where we make conscious decisions. Sometimes we must learn to un-filter information so that we can grow our talent and go beyond our previous capacity as photographers.

How we see

We are incapable to process all the information our eyes capture. Most of our senses have filters, that pre-process and classify information.

While you are reading this, you will not feel your left foot, until you start concentrating on it. This is of course assuming your foot did not send out alarm signals (pain) before.

Perception happens only in a very small field in the center of our vision. While you are reading this page, your eyes follow the words, despite the fact that your field of view is broader than this page. This is because your brain only recognizes things that you focus on.

We also have peripheral vision. In the peripheral vision, we quickly identify movement, but we have no clue what moved. We need to focus our attention, the center of our vision on the moving subject to identify it.

Our brain processes information from the center of our vision different from the peripheral vision. Our camera does not discriminate between the center and the edge of the frame.

One of my favorite parks on the Colorado Plateau is Hovenweep National Monument.

Hovenweep is a delight to photograph. Its remote location at the border between Utah and Colorado and its overshadowing neighboring park, Mesa Verde, make sure that this park receives only a trickle of visitors when compared to other places. It is very unlikely that you get much disturbance during your photo session and if you do, you can easily outwait everyone.

Dani finally analyzed my feelings correctly, after I stumbled through Mesa Verde with an average mood one day and suddenly lit up with delight when we visited Hovenweep the other day. Mesa Verda does not leave much to creativity. You hold your camera into the hole and that is that. Photos either look good or they do not, but your influence on the outcome is limited.

Hovenweep is different. You can have fun with compositions, go crazy with foregrounds and backgrounds, try weird twisted angles, and never tire of the limitless options that this small park offers.

I have uploaded two new Galleries of pictures from my recent trip to the Four Courner States and Nevadea. I shot these pictures with my new Canon 7D. Since the camera is brand new, I had to change my workflow, mostly because my version of Photoshop does not support it and Lightroom 3 Beta does not give me good results with white balance. I worked things out though and finally learned how to use Silkypix Pro (review coming).

Meanwhile, here are some galleries for you to enjoy.

The first Gallery is Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. This is a very diverse park with plenty of alien looking rock formations to explore. Had I known how much fun it was to explore this jewel, I would have come here sooner.

The second Gallery is Colorado National Monument. I have been in the vicinity twice before and couldn't make it here either. Colorado National Monument also was a pleasant surprise. Nearby parks in Utah overshadow this little pleasant park.

I am working on more galleries and some interesting blog posts. Meanwhile, enjoy these two.

It’s been said that imitation is the best form of flattery, but when it comes to creative arts, it’s best to develop your own style. Famous artists and sculptors have their signature styles, and it is their innate uniqueness that allows experts and aficionados to recognize their work and differentiate it from that of their peers. If you want to gain a fair amount of fame and success as a professional photographer, you need to develop your own style too, one that says you’re unique and different from the hundreds of thousands of others in the business. While it’s easy to think along these lines, most photographers don’t know how to go about developing their own style. It does not happen overnight, and to get to a point where your work is easily distinguishable, you need to first build a firm foundation:

During the Thanksgiving weekend we drove to Los Angeles. I just finished uploading a number of photographs and created a few new galleries in my Los Angeles section. The image above is from the Japanese Garden in the Huntington Library. It is just one of the magnificent places we discovered. The Getty Center was fascinating as well. The striking architecture of the Center, sitting on top of a mountain overlooking Downtown L.A. and Westood is a tourist magnet.

One our way home we took a small detour through Simi Valley, where we discovered the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Among the fascinating exhibits is the original Air Force One Plane of President Reagan. The library is definitely worth a visit should you ever get to this area.

Learn the skills to get the shot, no matter how fast your subject moves.

In Part 1 of this tutorial, I explained the connection between Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO sensitivity. In this part, I will elaborate on some practical applications and show you how to set up your camera to achieve the effects you want.

Whether you want to freeze action or blur the lights of a car at night, motion is a primary concern of many shooters. Many questions I receive relate to motion. Some readers of Part 1 suggested that I continue my series, elaborating on different scenarios to help guide you through many possible photography scenarios you may encounter.

Freezing Motion in Action Shots

An example of a subject frozen in Motion is this photograph of a rock jumper in Maui.