Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Nov 10 - Napa Fall Colors, My Beautiful Wife and Fill Flash


Another beautiful view of Napa in the fall, only to be enhanced by my beautiful wife. Most people don't think of using flash in the sun because you figure it's already bright enough. The problem with the sun is it can be too bright and cause shadows where you don't want them. This is why a lot of photographers like taking pictures early in the morning or just before sunset. The light is softer and the shadows aren't as harsh.

Another problem with the sun is if you put the sun behind you as a photographer, you only get your subject squinting. If you put the sun in front of you, it is just so bright that your subject looks like they are too dark. One way to fix that is by using fill flash. Basically you turn on the flash on your camera. If you just use the flash on your camera instead of an external flash, you'll have to stand fairly close. Also, if you use an external flash, you can power it down a little, you want it to be similar or a little darker than the light around it, otherwise, the person will look "superimposed" like you photoshopped them into the picture. Here I have the flash a little darker than Apryl, you can still the the sun's light on the left side of her body (right side in the picture) and the flash isn't so harsh that she looks like she was added in photoshop.

If that bored you, then just enjoy the picture!

Monday, November 9, 2009

Nov 9 - Napa Fall Colors


I was amazed this weekend. You've heard of the fall colors in New England and the fall colors in Colorado and the fall colors in Washington.. But what about NAPA?!?!? I've been to Temecula during the fall and the vine leaves just kind of turn brown, plus there isn't a whole lot of other greenery in Temecula except orange groves, which stay green.

Back to Napa (and Sonoma of course), we were driving up the 101 to get into the Russian River area of Sonoma and I just couldn't believe the color. Green upon yellow upon orange upon red. It was absolutely STUNNING! The next day in Napa, I was finally ready to get out my camera (we were too concerned over wine in Sonoma) and my camera decides to give me an error, the shutter wouldn't close! I was in some of the most beautiful fall colors I've ever seen (Aspens still win, but this was a very close second) and my camera FAILS! After messing with it for a bit, it decided to start working again, so I don't have the quantity of pictures, but I do have some quality ones. This is the first, this was driving up to Sterling Vineyards and the trees just draped the driveway into the vineyard.

More to come!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Nov 4 - Great White Shark


I've done a lot of silly things. Walking with lions, bungy jumping, sky diving, falling down a waterfall and going on vacation during a class 5 hurricane. This one is probably one of the silliest. Get in a car, drive two hours to a Great White Shark feeding ground, take a bout out into the middle and dress up in all black, looking exactly like a seal. Yea, that sounds like a perfectly sane thing to do, right? Did I mention that the water was about 55 deg and that we were told there were 4 or 5 sharks hanging out in the area? How about that once inside the cage, you can't get out and your limbs can float outside of the cage if you aren't paying 100% attention?

So after getting in the water for 30 minutes, starting to freeze, dunking into the water and holding my breath when we are told a shark is headed our way, brace myself when the shark runs into the cage because he is following chub on a stick, I got out, and relaxed to take some photos. This is one of my favorite, especially when I can imagine that I was just in that cage and sharks were coming at me in the exact same way. They can't see all that well, so when the captain takes the bait out of the water, the shark tends to keep going and run into the cage. Perfectly sane right? I'd do it again!