Its been a fun Year

Its been a fun year...to bad it goes by so fast...The older you are the faster it goes by..This will be the last post of the year... One more vineyard panorama from a vineyard in Morgan Hill..

I took a day trip to my favorite beach in Pacific Grove..The waves were too small but I managed to put two photographs together for an ocean panorama..

December is the month I usually house sit my brother's dog Skipper..Dig those eyes. He is a cutie.

While house sitting Skipper I took two panoramas from the living room windows. The first one was taken early in the morning.
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The second panorama was taken at sunset.

 
I want to wish everyone a Happy New Yeard

Last day of the month vineyard photographs

Last night I got a call from one of my photography friends, asking me if I want to go to take photographs of  a local  vineyard. The fall colors were absolutely beautiful.. here is one photograph  that I took early in the morning:
(Click to enlarge)

 Then I thought I would add some fog in Photoshop to give it an early morning look:

Here are a few more photographs that I took this morning..It was a fun day taking the photographs and preparing them to put on my Blog..

Outside my window this morning

I looked outside my window and grabbed my iPhone 3gs to take this photograph.. I used the               TrueHDR app. You can see the edge of the window frame in the lower right side of the photograph.

Yesterday I took a walk around the park and took this photography of poison oak growing on a tree.
I made the image look more painterly in Photoshop with a couple of Topaz plug-ins..

Neat app for iphone and ipad

I read about a new app called Big Lens on the internet..it cost me .99 cents to buy it..this is the first photograph that I did with it so don't be too critical... It has quite a few effects included, besides softening parts of the photograph like a long lens would accomplish.. here is a before example of Damien, my favorite phone guy at Costco:

After:

Fun this weekend with my iPhone 3gs and iPad 2

I had a lot of fun this weekend  with my iPhone 3gs. I  processed the images with my iPad2.. Most of these were processed in the app called "photoforge2"  and they were framed with an app called "crop and frame" app. (Click to enlarge)

 

IPhone 3gs environmental portrait

I was visiting a good friend.. The lighting from her window was nice and soft, so I took a hipstamatic portrait of her..Then I converted it to black and white in Photoshop. I really like environmental portraits like this...taken with a cell phone.. (click to see larger)

Our neighborhood owl

On November 14th I was looking up at our neighborhood owl and discovered the tree didn't have a lot of leaves to hide him... I went and got my point and shoot Panasonic fz35 and took some photographs..the following photo I converted to square format and did a little photoshop  to make it look like a Iphone hipstamatic photograph..

Then I went home and got my big camera, my Nikon d80 and 180mm 1.8 lens..Here is the result:

Everyone says that he is a barn owl..But he is a barn owl that likes trees..

Grape vines in the fall

Grape vines have always been a weakness of mine...I have to take photographs of them.. Thank goodness the wine isn't a problem.. While driving to town I had to stop with my iPhone 3gs in the hipstamatic mode..

The next morning I stopped on my way to Hollister and took some more photographs of the grape vines and leaves. I used my Olympus epl1 with the 14-42 zoom lens hand held..(click to enlarge)

Veterans Day at Applebee's Restaurant

My walking buddy and friend Joe invited me to go with him to lunch at Applebee's ... They provide a free meal for all Veterans... It was quite an experience seeing veterans of all ages with their families and friends.. Here are a couple of photographs I took with my Iphone 3gs..

 Even the waiters and waitresses decorated themselves for the occasion:

Trader Joe's flower photographs

I can't go to Trader Joe's Grocery store without taking a few available light photographs of their beautiful flowers... In Photoshop I play around with various effects.. Here are two examples:

 The next day I saw some leaves that I liked:

Halloween fun

The end of last month I was house sitting for my daughter Kathy... The neighbors had a halloween party and invited me to come over.(with my camera)  Here are a couple of snap shots I took with my little 5 megapixel point and shoot camera... ( Click to enlarge )

  The following effect is a hipstamatic action in Photoshop followed by a black and white version:

New Hipstamatic Action for Photoshop

I found an action at "janawerner.com", on line, that tries to replicate the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone.  An action is a photoshop term.  If you want to know what it really means you can do a search for a photoshop action and it will explain it better than I do...I am really having fun with it. The following are some samples: (click to see enlarged)

The last photo of my twin brother and me was converted in photoshop to brown tone.

Ipad blending of two images into one

Blending images is pretty new to me..There is a blending app that makes it easy on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad.

Here are a couple of examples: (click to enlarge)

More Ipad fun

Here is a photo of rocks and waves from Pacific Grove, Ca: ( Click to enlarge)

Some Blossoms and Mustard Greens:

My New Apple iPad2

My daughter Kathy and her husband Eric gave me a great present...a new Apple iPad2...I am having a lot of fun learning how to use the photography apps on my iPad... Here is a photograph I made with it..

Then I made it more painterly   ( Click to enlarge)

The next one is a guy sitting on some rocks at the beach: