Year Three Begins

This is the start of year three of this photo blog. And I've returned my old neighborhood in St Petersburg, Florida. But this place wasn't there when I moved in 2005. It's the new Salvador Dali Museum. I always like to include people in my pictures of this nature to provide scale to the image and to give some insight into how the surrounding space is used by the public.

Here is a sunset shot of downtown St Petersburg. It's not a big town and this skyline is relatively new. But the big brown pelicans have been around the many years.

The Pier in St Petersburg has always been a favorite subject for me. But this is a different angle from the grounds of the community airport. It took a while for a bird to fly through the frame however I just had to wait a few minutes until the picture became what I wanted.

Baseball's Back

It's the first baseball photo of the new season and there's a lot going on - by baseball standards that is - as the first baseman of the Phillies, Robb Quinlan, thinks he's tagged out the Yankees' Greg Golson only to be told by the umpire that the pitcher made an illegal move and the runner is awarded second base. The more important news is it was near 80 degrees in Tampa, Florida and baseball is back until late October.

Two Cats - One Head

Sometimes you can come up with a different kind of photograph by shooting blindly at a moving target. In this case, the cat on the left, Tutt, was frolicking with, Ziggy, the other cat in the picture. I was trying to keep up with them ... to no avail. So I just kept clicking the shutter in their general direction with the hope of getting something. The result is this odd looking picture. Ziggy's body looks like it's attached to Tutt's head. I assure you that's not the case. Thanks to Penny for allowing me to feature two of her "little darlings."

L.A. At Its Best

Thanks to the use the zoom lens on my Panasonic camera (model DMC-FZ35 check - out the video) I was able to make the San Gabriel mountains far behind downtown Los Angeles appear a lot closer. Zooms compress distance and can mislead the viewer into thinking objects are closer together than they really are. But for my purposes, that's the image I wanted to create. It's so rare to see the mountains behind downtown in the first place given L.A.'s history of smoggy days. So I zoomed in real tight to play up the relationship between the glass and steel of the buildings and the natural beauty of the mountains.

It's Art. Any Objections?

I visited my most recent former college - Los Angeles Valley College - in time for the opening of an on-campus art exhibit by several members of the school's faculty. Professor Annie Buckley (L) is getting another close look at her creation called FORTUNE COAT. She glued several hundred fortune cookie messages to a coat. Front and back.

Here's a closer look at some of the fortune messages. Buckley said she thought about using staples to affix the strips of paper to the coat, but she said plain old Elmer's Glue was best for the job after all.

Movie Making In Brooklyn

Many TV shows and movies are filmed in Brooklyn, New York. But this is the first time since I moved to my present location last June that I've seen a crew set up its lights for a production. This is right across the street from my upstairs window and the lights we see here are to illuminate background shots for the main camera and lights that were across the street. I rendered this in black and white because the scene reminded me of those hundreds of film noir movies set in New York from the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Here's what it looks like on the ground and from behind the lights with real - not actors - people and cars going about their business while the filming went on up the street to the left. Those big windows in front of the lights are color correction filters - a light orange - to help balance the light so the camera records mostly white light from the various elements here: street lights, car headlights and exterior lights on buildings.

Scrumptious

On a cold Brooklyn night, this dessert was a perfect antidote to the chilly conditions outside. It's a hot bread pudding concoction with a side of vanilla ice cream on a bed of cinnamon and caramel. It was served up at the Chocolate Room on Court Street.

What Do You See?

At first look, it's ice on a tree limb. But after messing with the tint, I turned it into a small frozen aligator.

U.T. Times Three

If you're a member of the University of Texas Longhorn marching band you have to often wear this outfit when performing. This blog entry again looks at creative editing and I wanted to feature the Texas hats and the contrast of the traditional Longhorn colors and one band member in particular.

Here's the wide group shot - all hats and no cattle - to borrow and old Texas phrase.








But the second photo narrows down the picture to the elements I'm interested in. The hats and the young man on the right who stands out in the sea of burnt orange and white. The fact I can see his entire face and he's looking off-camera adds to the composition.

The third shot zeros in on him. There's no doubt what school he attends thanks to the TEXAS script to his right and the partial S in front of him. Their instruments are down on the ground next to them as they cheered on the Longhorn football team at a bowl game in San Diego.

So one picture can produce three or more distinct photos.