In a world of so many great photographers and writers, I am venturing into some unknown territories, leaving comfort zones, finally very willing to practice the art of seeing. By maintaining the practice of posting daily photos, I hope to continue learning about the possibilities that I trust are out there for the taking.
See Ray (real small) way down the fairway up in the right corner?
San Jacinto beyond.
Liked Ray's reflection.
I attended two seminars today at the Photo Festival: First – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: From Shoot to Finish by Peter Krogh with dpBestflow, Second – Storytelling With The New Canon 5D Mark II & 7D with Vincent Laforet. Both lecturers were extremely informative and held my attention throughout both the 2 hour sessions. A year and a half ago Vincent put this video together in a 12 hour period of time using a prototype of the Canon 5d Mark II. Vincent’s life has changed tremendously (for the good) once the word on this video got out.
Home at 5pm, Ray surprised me with a Friday night dinner special of fried (minus the fried part I take off) chicken dinner he’d picked up from Sherman’s deli. Yummy, but very full, I had to get out for a short Walk Around the Block before the light was gone.
Nabisco Golf Tournament filming equipment. See the little frame of a house lower left? That's our home. We look at all of this equipment located across the lake.
Late afternoon Walk Around the Block photo.
The light refracted in the sprinklers caught my eye.
Looking back at 1/3rd of San Jacinto.
Ray reminded me tonight when I was on the phone with my backpacking friend, Meadow Ed, that he is NOT driving me down to Campo tomorrow. He says that he knows my schedule better than I do. This is true. I’m one day off and extremely excited to realize I have one more full day before I leave for the border.
Now I have time to practice a little with the new camera gear I bought from Sammy’s Camera Store at the Photography Festival. More on the specific gear later. LR, you won’t see the dollar amount because I used my secret cash account out here. Sammy’s was selling their goods without tax and without mailing costs (for the items they didn’t have in stock there). Canon is having an unbelievable promotion and rebates going on if you buy the Canon 5D Mark II with other gear. I bought 3 “L” series lenses. It’s a good thing LR doesn’t know what “L” series lenses are! This new camera can’t use some of the lenses I have. But again, more on the gear and the new Canon 9500 printer later:-)
Another day spent troubleshooting email mobile phone blogging. I met a very nice computer man though.
Here is an interesting assortment of photos I found myself shooting while walking around the block. All these photos have “lines” in common. I actually was looking for deep shadows and line but hadn’t really thought I’d found any, until I started reviewing what I’d shot.
The 4:30pm shadows caught my attention.
Here the triangle of grass was the interest.
Light on the fountain water.
Backlighting.
Well hidden flag.
Liked the curving roots.
Knowing my morning would be consumed with getting ready for the Baby Meeting five of us are driving in to LA for today, I took some photos while on a packfree walk around my neighborhood last night.
I’m back to using the Canon Powershot A650 on walks until I read more about the Canon G11. I’m sure I just don’t know enough about the G11 to stop it from doing its own thing. I sat with the manual last night, but I was too tired too keep reading. The jury is still out on the G11. I will be taking the Canon Powershot A650 on my backpack. Knowing a camera makes a world of difference. Even though my head says I want to save up for a big girl DSLR (bigger than my Canon D40), I’m not looking forward to learning and becoming familiar with another camera right now.
I love my little Canon Powershot A650 (except for when I try to shoot macro). I know where everything is without much thought at all. I know all the camera’s idiosyncrasies. I just need to pay attention to seeing and shooting. No more gear!!!!!!!!! Trying to learn lighting (which I’m not learning really) has kept me from going out to shoot. Well, lighting and all the zillion other activities I have lined up all day.
First shot before I moved closer and Mr. Bunny ran away.
Noisy Raven.
Can't believe this guy. See him every day. Poor dog.
Another attempt at a hand held macro.
It was the shadow that caught my eye.
Stacy arrives for our 7:30am walk around MHCC, before the rain.
While waiting for Connie, Stacy and I chatted with a neighbor. At first I thought, What great spikey hair this man has.
Stacy, Take a photo of me wearing the spikey hair.
Making the most of the Westin fairway hills to get some burn.
A brief glimpse of snow covered San Jacinto on our rain free walk.
In my photo below, I wish I’d changed the angle of capture so that the cactus (see blog amendment below to correct succulent name to agave, not cactus) point on the right didn’t blend in with the dark background. Another thing I noticed when I zoomed in is that the front left cactus point isn’t in focus and that is where I intended the focus to be rather than where it is on the right rear point.
Hey, I’m happy I notice such things lately.
Another student of Carol Leigh’s, Lori, has a wonderful portfolio of cactus photos on her site. I thought of Lori this morning and wished I could have picked her brain on how to shoot this shot.
And I just have to post this way too funny photo of Connie’s mode of transportation these days.
Blog entry amended 8/16/09. I received an email from a friend who helped me see that what I had photographed was not a cactus. I was told..”you called your agaves “cactus”… grrrrrr…… they’re both succulents, but agaves aren’t cactus, and vice versa! Grrrrr…… you know how protective I am of my agaves, so be careful not to besmirch their reputation! >;-}”
I apologize and stand corrected!
We walked right out our front door and walked the Arnold Palmer course around 9:15am this morning. It was free of golfers as the course has been closed for maintenance.
I have too many hobbies/interests. I need a lot more hours in the day to maintain balance and moderation in all areas of my life.
Comments on some of my interests and how I’m doing in the area of self care:
-Food/eating has to head the list of interests. If I’m not eating good, I’m not a happy camper. I have been excellent in the area of eating to live, as opposed to living to eat. I’ve been planning, shopping and making good clean food for Ray and me for 175 days now. No sugar, no white flour, writing down and emailing the 3 daily meals and two snacks to Xochitl every day for the 175 consecutive days and I feel good. I’m afraid if I don’t send in my food, I’ll go back to my old ways of eating. I’ve been feeling in balance emotionally as the result of changing my food choices and my relationship with food.
-Exercise. Hmmm. I could always do more. I’ve been carrying my backpack a couple of times a week hiking about 2 hours. I walk around Mission Hills CC a couple of times a week. Certainly not enough exercise to get me ready for the July 17th backpack I’ll be doing. Oh, I’m also doing sit-ups nightly with the hope my stomach muscles will help strengthen my back.
-Photography. Not good here at all. I seem to have put practicing taking photos on hold. But I paid attention yesterday when I blogged that I hadn’t picked up a camera lately, so this morning I clicked off the shots below and other shots this morning while climbing up and down the hills on the golf course. The golf club workers, getting the traps and greens ready for the 8am shotgun, were laughing at me climbing up to the tops of a hills, turning around, descending them, only to hike up the same hills again. The goal is to hit all hills on the fairways.
-I subscribe and am monthly automatically deducted for the cost of online access to photo lessons and don’t even do the lessons.
-Golf. I’ve been going out with Ray a couple of times a week around 5pm where he helps me with my golf as we play about 5 – 7 holes. The weather has been really beautiful at that time. We’ve been lucky to have temperatures under 100 degrees lately.
I’m trying to get my old stiff back ready for our 4 day trip to Pebble Beach where we will use the two rounds of golf given to Ray by his sponsees a year and a half ago. Thank God I made and paid for the expensive golf room for two nights before the market crashed.
I do have a thing with taking photos of my shadow. Pretty place we live in isn’t it?
Ray probably thought he was safe going out for a walk at night with me. You see, during the day I usually stop and take way too many photos and Ray usually just walks on leaving me to whatever it is that has my attention.
Today it was near 100 here. We knew this morning we’d be doing our exercise after the sun went down.
The night was so balmy. The walk went by so fast. I was fascinated with shooting hand held photos of the night lighting when the shutter was open for a full minute. Trying to get an in focus shot was out of the question but I still was curious what the photos would look like. I had the ISO set to 800.
We’re walking on Inverness Drive and I’m shooting back across the 15th fairway lake to our home (the house with the palm tree growing out of it!). I used a 100% sepia photo filter in Photoshop to hide a tiny bit of the noise or excessive graininess.
Ray is already back home when I shot this photo of our street. Our home is at the end of this cul-de-sac. I actually sat down on the street pavement trying to get as much as I could of the lighted tall palm trees.
I entered our courtyard and began shooting the lit cactus. Almost ready to go inside, I noticed my shadow. I never pass up a shadow photo op. I even posed, turning my head to the right to get a good shadow outline of my profile, while I’m holding the camera out away from me with my left hand, trying to check to see if I’m actually framing myself properly in the LCD. I’m glad the neighbors can’t see into our courtyard. On more than one occasion I have been accused of self obsession. But the neighbors don’t need to see it. After I got this shot and I came out of my shooting blackout, I looked to see if Ray had been watching me. Nope. He was at work on his new Lenovo Thinkpad T500 probably shopping for, yes, another putter. ‘Cause you know, like a new camera will make me a better photographer, Ray is on a never ending search for the newest and bestest putter. Every day! Oh, Ray isn’t going to like that I wrote this. 
Look how long my pony tail is getting.
I got up at 9:40am this morning! 9:40am. I remember going to bed around 10pm thinking that I would gift myself the process of waking up and not racing out of bed. I did wake a number of times this morning, but never looked at the clock. It’s funny but I have this old idea, that obviously isn’t so old, that I waste most of the morning sleeping so late. I love the feeling of getting up early and getting lots done before the day really starts. But I must acknowledge I did enjoy waking and rolling over back to sleep this morning.
Ray and I were couch potatoes today. We sat in front of the TV and watched the Masters. I don’t ever watch TV during the day. Again, I’d feel unproductive and guilty not “doing”. But I’d be remiss to not acknowledge I had a ball watching Tiger and Mickelson and Perry.
An hour after the golf Ray and I went for a walk. While on our walk I shot some photos. Here are a few:
This statue always gets me. I asked Ray to pose next to this statue of a man on a bench with an allegator under it. 
See Lane, I may not have sat outside for an hour the other day as you suggested, but I did give myself some “rights” today.