Photography

A Few Birds of Round Canyon, Irvine

Published: Fri, Jun 14, 2019
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Photography, USA
Tags: Bird Photography, Irvine Ranch Conservancy, Orange County, Round Canyon

In the past week I attended 5 programs organized on Irvine Ranch Natural Landmarks. I will post about the first four in a day or two; today I am only writing about today’s program. I joined a lovely group of volunteers and visitors in the morning  to look for birds that live in the canyon. This was my first birding experience, and although we didn’t see a lot of birds during the short hike, it was a very pleasant experience.

I do not own any lenses that are ideal for bird photography, but I still wanted to take a few images. I’ll share them with you despite of not being great pictures. But they are wonderful memories of today’s hike. Here they go:

2 Ravens perching on a dead branch

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Crab Galore at Heisler Park, Laguna Beach

Published: Fri, Jun 07, 2019
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Photography, Photowalk, USA
Tags: Crabs, June Gloom, Low-tide, low-tide animals, Southern California

Southern California is experiencing the annual June Gloom. It’s a cloudy, overcast condition which is supposed to keep the temperatures down. But the temperatures this year have been down already; we are experiencing a very cool (but not cold!) spring. And the June Gloom is UGLY! 🙂 I remember moving to SoCal seven years ago on June 2nd, and for the first few weeks all I saw were the grey, sad looking mornings. I didn’t know about June Gloom back then, and I questioned if we really wanted to live in such a grey looking place. But I know now, that it passes.

Anyway, I still don’t like the look of it. So, when yesterday I drove down to the ocean for the second time this week, and I found the same grey conditions as before, I almost turned back home. I should not have expected anything better, but I did, and this made me cranky. I took my iPhone out and snapped a few pictures.

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Photographic Experiments with Roses

Published: Sat, Jun 01, 2019
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Double Glass, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photo Technique, Photography, Sol 45, Velvet 56
Tags: flower, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photography, rose

Welcome to my June 1 Lensbaby Blog Circle post! For this post I used the dried up roses my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day. My goal was to experiment with them and see what I could create. I set a few limitations for myself:

  1. I would only use Lensbaby lenses (since I was shooting for this post)
  2. I would only use natural light and some light modifiers – light reflectors, light softeners and flags (these add shadow)
  3. I would take all the photos from a tripod

Here is my setup, showing my wonderful assistant, Destiny as well:

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A Visit to Shaw’s Cove Beach – with a Surprise Find

Published: Fri, May 24, 2019
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Landscape, Photography, USA
Tags: Laguna Beach, landscape, low-tide animals, Sea Star, Shaw's Cove

I had it in my calendar weeks ago: low-tide coinciding with sunrise on Tuesday, May 21. I picked a location and arrived to Shaw’s Cove just before 5:30am. I felt very lucky, because there were a few clouds in the sky, and the barely waning Moon was also setting. (I had chosen this location because of the Moon; I used an app called TPE that helped me pinpoint a good spot.)

My goal was to take landscape pictures as well as hopefully find some neat low-tide animals. Here are some of the earlier landscapes:

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Perfect Imperfection – Something I Can Achieve with my Lensbaby Lenses

Published: Thu, May 16, 2019
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Inspirational, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography, Sol 45, Sweet 50 or 35, Velvet 56
Tags: Lensbaby

Whenever I talk to people about my current photography I tell them that Lensbaby lenses are perfect for me. The funny part is that many Lensbaby images are far from perfect if you are looking at them with your technical eyes only. I could even say that Lensbaby pictures are perfectly imperfect. What do I mean by this? Let me show you some of my creations and explain how the imperfection led me to create something that I felt stood out from the crowd.

Let’s start with this image, which I took with the Sweet 50 (my very first LB lens). Technically this image is not successful. I clearly wasn’t able to focus fast enough on any of the birds. Despite this, I really like the outcome. Thanks to the special effects created by the lens, I feel the movement of the birds, and I can almost hear the noise gulls make when a large flock of them fly away all at once.

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