The Presidio

What a wonderful day of photography. First - we went to a couple of camera shops where my friend bought a new bag for his camera, lenses, flash and filters. I think that we tried out all of the bags in the store. We then grabbed some lunch and went to the Presidio above Old Town. What a wonderful view from there.

Belmont Park

Paul and I went to Belmont Park for some evening shots. We found the roller coaster to be a wonderful subject. I think we wandered around for a long time until we could set up our tripods and get some good shots.
Of the several hundred that we both took that night - these are some of the best ones.



























A bit closer in - I liked the lighting that was cpatured with this shot.

WE set up our tripods and flash units and spent a lot of time getting the coaster coming around one of the last, fast turns.

La Mesa Car Show

Every Thursday evening through the summer, the city of La Mesa has a free car show. I have been several times. This is a great opportunity to see some great cars, take some great photos and talk to people who have spent a lot of time and money restoring these great cars. There is a lot of American iron there - some foreign. There is stuff that is relatively recent to stuff that is pretty old. This is a great event - feel free to bring the family!

This was one of the best examples I have seen of an original Bug. The paint was immaculate.

Balboa Park

One of the most photographed buildings in all of San Diego. I met a friend from work in and he allowed me to try out his wonderful Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS lens. While these pictures are not taken with this lens - I did capture some wonderful images with it. That lens is on my "wish-list" for someday. These pictures are with my standard Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS lens - of course - I used a tripod with this photo. I liked the way the lighting came out with this photo.














This is another picture that has been photographed many times. I liked the extra light in the sky during this time of night.

Cornado Evening

Yes - I have been quite remiss in posting to my blog lately. I see that it has been more than 6 months. Where has the time gone?
I have taken lots of pictures - sorted out the best - and now need to start posting those that I want to share.
As some of you know - we had some house guests for a while this past summer. Paul and I both love photography. We spent many evenings together talking about pictures we had taken, and had the opportunity for many great outings around the San Diego area. Here are photos from some of our trips. This is on Coronado - on the public fishing pier looking toward North Island. You can see the USS Ronald Reagan in the background. We were hoping for some more clouds - but did not get them on this trip.




















This is also from the public pier at Coronado but a little bit later. The building in the background with the green lights at the top is the Emerald Shapery Center in downtown San Diego.













This is another City Scene that I liked. My friend Harvey has a similar photo to this that he took several years ago. I was trying to create the same mood that he captured in his photo.

This is of Hotel Del Coronado. It was getting late - we had been taking photos for a few hours. I like the lighting on this one.

Wings Over Gillespie

On Saturday, June 16 - after the swim meet - we were invited by a friend at church to to to the Wings Over Gillespie Airshow in El Cajon, CA. The great part about it was - we had a personal invitation to his hangar. We parked on the tarmac, he fed us lunch, then we walked over to the airshow. It was hot - but there was lots to see. The boys had a good time.
There were quite a few people there that day - but overall - it was not as crowded as I was expecting. You were able to get quite close to some of the aircraft on display.

Swim Meet

Caleb had his first swim meet of the summer this June. All of his times were lower (he swam faster) than the last meet of last Fall. I think that he had a good time. We all really enjoyed watching him swim. I ended up timing about half of the races because they did not have enough people. As the meet goes on, some swimmers and families have commitments, and have to leave. We were there until the end.

Zoe - Likes her new Home

Zoe the dog seems to be getting along just fine these days. She really loves the boys. Of course - I am the Alpha Dog around the house and she thinks that I am going to step on her every time she sees me. She sleeps with the boys and loves to play during the day. Her favorite activity is napping. I think that if we let her - she would sleep 20 hours a day. What a life!

Jesse at the Suzuki Concert

Jesse played at his Suzuki Concert on June 2. Normally, this has been at our church. This year - it was at a different church. The lighting was actually better than in ours - not quite so dark. I was asked to take pictures of a mother/daughter combo. The mother was actually willing to pay me for the photos. I think that she thought that I was an 'official venue' photographer. I told her that I did not charge for the few that I took of her and her daughter. Next time... There is a possibility.

Temecula Balloon Festival

Photo Club outing synopsis: For the 5 of us awake enough to attend the Temecula Valley Wine and Balloon festival on Saturday, June 2, we had plenty of opportunities to catch that elusive Balloon Launch shot that only happens in thefirst few hours of daylight. We arrived at the venue at 6:00 AM and milled around with about 50 other spectators while the event organizers hunted around for the key to let us in. The key finally arrived about 15 minutes later and it looked amazingly like a 3 foot long bolt cutter. Once they cut the chain and let us in, we took the obligatory group shot in front of a balloon gondola. 30 minutes later - things started happening - but not where we were. Due to the low cloud ceiling and the prevailing winds, the balloons were trucked about 7 miles away from the venue in hopes that the balloons could eventually land at the festival location.We all piled in a car and headed out to the spot where the balloons were launching. On the way we were entertained by one of our members who spent 4+ years working for a balloon company and was part of the very first Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. He explained how balloon technology has changed over the years. It was fascinating to learn that one of the reasons that the Albuquerque, NM area is so popular with balloonists is due to the wind pattern found in the area. They call it the Box. Winds are from a constant direction at a specific altitude, a different direction at a different altitude. We arrived at the spot (a dirt field - no admission $$ required) where about 35 balloons were setting up and preparing to launch. We set a time to meet back at the car for about 90 minutes in the future. Our unnamed balloon expert said that they would all be gone in 45 minutes (he was exactly correct on this count). We were able to get quite close for photos of the launching process of many of the balloons. Some members ofthe group even helped with launch procedures! We saw balloons take off in ones and twos until they were all in the air. None of the balloons were able to go very high in the air due to the low clouds.We then drove back to the festival location. Along the way, we saw most of the balloons coming down well short of the festival grounds. Back at the festival - we rode a tethered balloon approx 30 feet inthe air (about 4 minutes total). We spent some time walking throughthe festival displays and shops and taking pictures along the way.



Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took that day.

Desert Camping

We went camping in the desert for a few nights. We drove out to Borrego Springs on a Thursday afternoon, planning to spend until Saturday morning. Early Friday morning - we took a wonderful hike up Palm Canyon. It is amazing to see all of the palms growing in the middle of the desert - as well as all of the water in the canyon.

We spent 2 1/2 days and 2 nights. The Nights were great - it cooled off just enough for us to sleep well - ok - well - we were in a tent - sleeping on the ground - so we really did not sleep that well at all. Anyway - it did cool off at night. The days were hot. We used lots of sunscreen and went through many (many) bags of ice. I think we all drank a few gallons of water through the day.

It was fun - we had a great time with our friends, and we ate good food.

Click the title link to see more photos of our desert trip.

Here is a picture of my truck. I don't have many pictures of my truck - and I liked the way this one turned out. This shot was actually at the Salton Sea - about 30 miles East of Borrego Springs in Imperial County. We did not see the nicest area of the Salton Sea - I think that if we would have gone a ways South we would have seen some of the resort area of the Salton Sea. Glen bought a book and read to us about the Sea. Absolutely facinating!

Speaking of cars - one of the interesting things we did was to get a Mustang GT unstuck. One of the campers nearby our campsite got her car stuck. The car was actually high centered. We ended up jacking the car up, putting rocks under the tires that were spinning, then we were able to drive the car out of the hole. The owner was very grateful.

Coloring Monochrome Images Digitally

No - I did not take this picture. I downloaded it from one of the magazines that I receive in the mail. They had an article in the magazine about hand-toning images digitally. The image that I downloaded was a black and white jpg file. I added all of the color.
The article had detailed information about how to use Adobe Photoshop to add the color. Since I have the poor man's version (Photoshop Elements) I had to come up with alternate ways of adding color into the scene.
I think that I did an OK job - what do you think?

Jesse and Seth Turn 10

Jesse and Seth almost always get to celebrate their birthdays together. We take turns hosting the party

Here are the boys getting ready to eat cake!

Easter Dinner at Our Hosue

Each Easter Sunday - we invite all of Jo's family over to our house for a nice afternoon of fun and fellowship. The kids enjoy spending time with cousins and humting for Easter Eggs in the back yard. Everyone brings something to share and we have a great meal. The past few years, we have also invited some dear friends from our church. So - if you see a kid in the photos that does not appear to belong - you may be correct - he may be a friend of ours.

Disney's California Adventure

The next day - we went to Diney's California Adventure. I acutally liked this better than Disneyland the day before. The boys liked it a little less. Oh well. I liked the tributes to the various parts of Califiornia. If you have not been - it is worth seeing. Click the title link for more pictures.

Disneyland

We took a mini-vacation in the early Spring of this year. We were able to get some 2-fer tickets available to Southern CA residents and went to Disneyland. The tickets were 2 day passes (one day at each of Disney's Theme parks for the price of one day. ) It was a pretty good deal - apparently lots of people thought so. Anyway - we drove up to Anaheim in the morning. Traffic leaving San Diego was really bad that day. Once we got out of San Diego - it was not too much of a problem. We had a good day in spite of the crowds. The weather was perfect - clear - just warm enough. We walked all around the park. The boys had a great time. Caleb is not into roller coasters - but he really loved the Autopia. We used the Fast-Pass system to ride the busy rides and it really worked well.

We stayed until we were really tired of walking - and watched the fireworks as we were riding back to our car. Our hotel was only about a block from the park. They were really apologetic that our room did not have a view. (In fact - we could see the Matterhorn from our window!)

The next day - we were back at the park to go to Disney's California Adventure.

La Jolla

This month my photo club went to La Jolla. While most of the club went in the afternoon, Harvey and I went in the morning. It will be interesting to see how the different pictures came out with the different light.

We spent about 3 hours photgraphing on a beautiful morning. There were lots of others out enjoying the sun and the surf.

Click the link above to see the photos that I took that wonderful day

La Jolla in Spanish means "The Jewel". It is the Jewel of America's finest city, San Diego. La Jolla is an exquisite combination of a southern European resort atmosphere and Southern California fun. While La Jolla is known to be one of the most affluent communities in the United States, it has a down to earth feel due to the beautiful natural scenery and the helpfulness of its residents. Moreover, in addition to fine restaurants, beautiful beaches, hotels and art galleries, La Jolla is home to renowned institutions, such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Stephen Birch Aquarium & Museum.

New Dog: Zoe

Some of you heard that we got a new dog recently. Here is a picture of her. We picked her up from a shelter - she was a 'rescue' dog'. Her breed is Maltese.

We have called her Zoë.

We got her from a shelter - she was matted and stinky and a bag of bones. We took her to the groomers on the way home and now she's soft and cuddly. She's been scarfing down her food and already has a little more fat over those bones. She loves to just sit with one of us on the couch - definitely a lap dog. The vet says she is anywhere between 2 and 7 years old. She only barks and fusses when we go away and leave her in the laundry room, or in her kennel at night. I think she's well-enough trained now to let her sleep upstairs with the boys - then she won't make a peep.

Awana Games: 2007

It's that time again: We went to the 2007 Awana Games on February 10. Our team was again in the afternoon. We arrived about 11:30 - and I think that our first event was at 1:00 where we met in the bright gym for the opening ceremony. We then went over to the very dark gym where it is almost impossible to take pictures. I did what I could - follow the link to see the best that I could do with the light that was there. I don't understand why they don't turn on the additional lighting that is installed. Anyway - it makes for a terrible photo opportunity.

Beyond that - our kids did great. This year - we had a great team that really prepared and worked hard. We were so good that we actually gave some of our team members to another church. We ended up winning the preliminary round, and were invited back to the finals. We made some mistakes - but ended up in 3rd place overall. I am very proud of the way each and every one of the kids did.

Follow the link on the title to see some more shots of the 2007 Awana Games.

Point Loma National Monument

Today my photo club went to Point Loma National Monument to get some shots of the Tide Pools. We did not know it at the time - but the USS Ronald Reagan was pulling out and we were able to see it go past us. Here is some information on the USS Ronald Reagan:
January Hundreds of friends and family members of Sailors assigned to the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group (CSG) watched as the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), embarked staffs and squadrons departed San Diego Jan. 27 on a surge deployment in support of U.S. Navy operations in the Western Pacific.
The Ronald Reagan CSG was deployed under the Navy’s Fleet Response Plan (FRP), which provides the U.S. with the ability to respond to any global commitment with flexible and sustainable forces and the ability to rapidly respond to a range of situations on short notice.

We also spent some time at the Tide Pools. Here are some pictures that I captured while there.

On the western side of Point Loma lies the rocky intertidal zone, a window into the ocean ecosystem that lies along of San Diego's coast. During periods of low tide, pools form along this shore in rocky depressions. In them you may see flowery anemones, elusive octopi, spongy deadman's fingers, and a myriad of other creatures.