Snoopy Hydrant

Another hydrant pic, I was reminded of this recent one after seeing Warren's Hydrant Tree.

When I spotted this, I had thought of Snoopy right away. Just the colours I guess, and the hydrant does look like him a little... :)

Toronto Skyline

On our visit to see my Toronto out-laws over Christmas, we flew from Boston to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The airport is on an island in Lake Ontario, very close to the edge of downtown Toronto, giving us a good view of the CN Tower and surrounding buildings.

The timing was fortuitous in terms of the position of the sun, and the weather was totally cooperative, with very blue sky and nice puffy clouds. As I shot, some of the clouds passed between us and the top of the 1815-foot spire.

Ritz Camera Camera

I stopped by the Ritz Camera near work the other day to buy a battery (hey big spender!) They have a big, colorful fake camera that takes up the better part of a display window, and I started playing with taking photos of it.

I soon noticed that the "lens" actually was capturing passerby, and I captured a few myself, with this one being my favorite.

Hydrant Tree

Lumix DMC-GF1, Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8

Post-Christmas discards turned this fire hydrant into a tree :)

--Warren

Snowman With a Tan

California Christmas ... ;) Love it.

Ghost Flight

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 45-200mm

Arrived in A Flying Saucer

I've moved to California! Along the Caltrain south of SF in Palo Alto, I'm looking forward to a sunny winter. :) Season's Greetings!

Scary Gingerbread House

Wasn't intending on this, but the St. Francis Hotel Gingerbread House kind of turned sinister. Leica M6, 50m, f2, Ilford Delta 100

Dan

Tis the Season

Downtown San Francisco during the holidays always provides some interesting street scenes.

Leica M6, 50m f2, Ilford Delta 100

Beached Kayak

Lumix DMC-GF1, Lumix 45-200mm

This looks like a selective coloring exercise, but that is in fact how the scene looked in color, at Richardson Bay in Tiburon. The owner was an older gentleman who paddled his way to the edge of the shore, stepped out of his kayak, and continued walking without looking back at his recently dragged-ashore kayak.

--Warren

There is Always One in a Crowd

Spotted this one cow feeding on the road while the rest of the herd was behind the fence. GH2 100-300mm

Dan

Sunrise

Since I was up and about for the lunar eclipse and to compliment Warren's recent series of sunset images, these were taken with the GH2 and the 100-300mm.

Dan

Lunar Eclipse

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse from this past Saturday. GH2, 100-300mm handheld at 1/6 sec, ISO 2000.

Rockefeller Center - Dressed for Christmas

So even an old Jewish guy like me can't fail to be impressed, and yes, a bit moved, by the beautiful Christmas displays at Rockefeller Center.

I had wanted to walk down the Channel Gardens to get that classical view, from Fifth Avenue, of the angels along the Gardens and the Christmas tree straight-on against 30 Rockefeller Center - but there was just too large a crowd for me to even get close in the time I had left before catching my 6pm bus back home. I detoured west on 51st Street, which was less packed, at least in relative terms, and took this photo from the north side of Rockefeller Plaza.

St. Bartholomew Dome Interior

I got up at the proverbial oh-dark-thirty Saturday morning to take a 5:30 am bus to Manhattan for a lesson in post-processing workflow with the incomparable Dave Beckerman. Specifically, Dave shared with me his more than two years of using NIK Software's suite of impressive add-ins for Photoshop or Lightroom.

It was a great experience - Dave is very creative and an excellent teacher. If any of you get a chance to spend some time in NYC, try to look him up, or even better, take a lesson from him. You won't be sorry.

After our lesson, I went to St. Bartholomew's on Park Avenue and 51st Street. It's a beautiful Byzantine-style basilica. It's one of those special places where even if think you haven't seen it, you probably have - Hollywood loves it for scenes of high-falutin' weddings. Both the original and the remake of Arthur used St. Bart's for their wedding scenes. The church also had a very big part in the Angelina Jolie film, Salt.

I took several interior shots with a tripod at St. Bart's before a docent came up to me and said that tripods were not allowed. To get this photo of the interior of the dome, I laid my camera flat on its back on a table just underneath the crossing, set it for Automatic Exposure Bracketing, and triggered off the three exposures with my infrared remote shutter release. Back home, I assembled the three exposures using NIK's HDR Effex Pro to get what you see here.

It's very interesting... I could barely make out the detail in the dome, it was that dark. But thanks to 21st-century electronics, our digital sensors just keep sucking up photons until the image processing chip says "enough." And unlike film, long exposures don't suffer from reciprocity failure. What a great world we photographers now live in!

p.s. Sorry about that photo of Russel Brand running out of St. Bart's in his gatkes.

Shoreline Strolling

Lumix DMC-GF1, Lumix 45-200mm

Sights of the Season

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 20mm f1.7

Images from St. Helena taken last weekend.

--Warren

Lamppost Decorations:

Autumn Leaves Caressing a Church Steeple:


Store Window Santa Doll:

Dahlgren Hall: U.S. Naval Academy

A mid crosses in front of Dahlgren Hall at the U.S Naval Academy.

Naval Academy Chapel Dome

Looking up at the inner dome of the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.

Sunset at Pacifica Pier #4

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 14-45mm

Sunset at Pacifica Pier #3, "Fire Water"

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 14-45mm

Sunset at Pacifica Pier #2

Panasonic DMC-G1, Lumix 14-45mm

parking meter

not sure why, but i have a 'thing' for meter pics...