Insert witty comment here

I went down to Crystal Cove on Wednesday with Kimmicita. I've never been down there so this was a special treat for me. We had fun walking down the beach and taking pictures. I took this picture because this guy has tourist written all over his bright orange matching shirt and hat. I want to take another trip down to Crystal Cove when there are some light clouds and I bring my tripod.


I also changed my photo blog's URL to http://jdabbeyiii.blogspot.com

Canon 600D, ISO-100, f/8, 55mm, 1/160 sec.

They call me the workin' man. I guess that's what I am.

I took this picture about a year ago and it got lost in my filing system. I remember it now and I hated the two idjits on the right that got into my view. That is Trey Ratcliff lining up his shot. Sorry for the tilted angle. Had I rotated and cropped it, I would have cut off his legs. This was before I bought a level for my camera. I really need to go back there and take more pictures. Who wants to go on a little photo walk to the beach with me?


Canon 600D, ISO-100, f/11, 27mm, 1/250 sec.

I can see the light!

The neon lights of the rides over at the SM Pier. I was surprised that I actually caught it with all the lights bright and nothing else to pollute the light of the picture. There was a lot of light pollution and I have no idea how this one came out. I think that it has to do with ramping up the ISO and going with a faster shutter speed. We shall try it again one day when I find another well lit Ferris wheel at night. Had a little fun with the colors too, look below. It's not often I post two pictures in one post.

Canon 600D, ISO-3200, f/5.6, 55mm, 1/400 sec

Under the Pier Downtown....

Under the Santa Monica Pier. I took this on my photowalk. I've processed this image time and time again. I finally got a semi decent image and now I am posting it. I just noticed that I have posted this picture already. Oh well, nobody has noticed yet so maybe I should keep my yap shut.

Canon 600D, ISO-320, f/5.6, 53mm, 1/15 sec

Sunset at the Pier

OK, I know that I have said it before, but this time I mean it. This is my last image from the Photowalk. I couldn't turn down another sunset shot though. So Today is my last picture form the Photowalk. I'm afraid I posted my images too quickly and I'm starting to run out. I guess that I need to go take more. You might notice a crazy ISO below, that is me playing around with shutter priority instead of aperture priority. Only image that turned out with shutter over aperture priority. You will also notice my new signature.

Canon 600D, ISO-160, f/4.5, 28mm, 1/200 sec

Pacific Wheel

I know that I said that I would not post any more pictures of the pier, but this is of the Pacific Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier. I do wish that people would show some manners and not walk in front of a camera when people are taking pictures. I swear... Some people's children..

Canon 600D, ISO-100, f/7.1, 20mm, 1/30 sec

This Pier is getting tiring, why don't I post other things?

OK, so I promise this is the last picture of the Pier that I will post. I just really liked the colors in this one. I pushed the detail and saturation as high as I could go without making it look like crap. I think that this is going to be the last picture from the PhotoWalk last month. I am going to be travelling around orange county this weekend looking for pictures. I may even hit up sunken city with my nephew and chica to get some pics there. Hej, that's a great idea. I think that I will actually do that.

Canon 600D, ISO-100, f/4.5, 18mm, 1/25 sec.

More Pier Please!

So another Picture of the sun setting on the Pier in Santa Monica. Now first I should say that I really enjoyed the photowalk, however. You know that the first part of that sentence is now null and void once I add the qualifier 'however'. No, really I did learn from it and hearing Trey speak, but there wasn't much to shoot where you could still hear him without shooting the crowd and you may have noticed that I don't shoot people. I may explore that in the future but for now, I only do landscapes and what not. So, another picture of the pier because it was the only direction where there were not hoards of people. I like the stray stream of orange sunlight coming out from under the pier.

Canon 600D, ISO 125, 27mm, f/4.5, 1/250 second

Kelp! I Need somebody! Kelp! Not Just Anybody! Kelp!

So I took a few different directions with this one. I've done five different versions of this image and I'm torn for my favorite between two. This is the more colorful version. I will post the other one later. This was on the Photowalk yet again, but I really enjoyed working on this one. The clouds were a bit tough to work with, but the colors and shadows made it a blast to manipulate and learn with. It was just fun. BTW: I also rpotated the image 3.8 degrees clockwise to get a flat horizon. I will be coming through all my photos fixing this since I found the functionality in Photoshop.

Canon 600D, ISO 100, 18mm, f/3.5, 1/100 second

Anyone Up For a Game of Skee Ball?

I'm not sure about you folks out there, but ever since I was a kid, the second I walk into an arcade, I make a B-line for the Skee Ball. I suck at it because the only hand-eye coordination I have is touch typing. Well, I lied on a previous post, ot on purpose, I just forgot that I took this picture. This was the last HDR picture that I took on the Photowalk with Tom and Trey. It just reminded me of when I was younger and I would do anything to go to a place called playland.

Canon 600D, ISO 3200, 42mm, f/8, 1/30 second

Behind Bars?

So this one was Christian's favorite from the pictures I took at the Photowalk last month. Personally, it reminds me of being behind bars, not that I have ever been behind bars. It's dark and gloomy with the promise of a brighter world just past where I can reach and there is no way to see where that light is coming from. Also the red light is pretty cool, but I was trying to wax poetic and all that jazz. Well, this one was a Photowalk picture so it is a very early attempt at HDR. I know that it could use some work, but I like to show how I first interpreted the photo and I will post changes later.

Actually, the image below is the one that Christian liked, but I made a few changes to it and darkened the red, tried to make the ocean outside from under the pier more visible, and darken the image as a whole because the mist was washing out the image and taking away from the dark ambiance that I was going for. This also shows the difference between photomatix below and photoshop above. I am playing around with both applications trying to find my favorite blend between them all.

PS: Let me know if you like me showing multiple versions of the same image. I'm still learning so I'm not quite sure where to go with some of these. I'm trying to figure out which ones look best as realistic and which ones should be cartoony and exaggerated.

PEOPLE! Leave a comment and tell me which one you like better.

Canon 600D, ISO 1250, 55mm, f/6.3, 1/40 second

The Crosses

Another shot from the Photowalk. Another one of the pictures I took before I found the main group. I dropped it down to monochrome because I felt like it. I'm against the war the same as these guys, but we go about it in different ways. Then there is always Jack Handy's thoughts on war, "I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." Well, on with the post. This is not an HDR shot, but I like it anyway and this is not an HDR only blog.

Canon 600D, ISO 100, 20mm, f/9, 1/200 second

Wanna go for a ride on the Ferris Wheel?

So, when I first arrived at the Santa Monica Pier for the Photowalk with Trey and Tom, I could not find the group on the pier. I met some guys that sent me in the right direction and on my way to the large group that you can kind of see on the left, I took this picture of the rides on the pier. This happens to be one of my mothers favorite pictures. I got a little crazy with the radius, but I like it.

Canon 600D, ISO 100, 18mm, f/10, 1/250 second

Restaurant at the end of the universe

So this is another photo from the Photowalk with Tom and Trey. This HDR image had a wide range, I went from Cartoony to just a few white dots on a black background. With some input from friends, this seems to have been the best outcome of the images. This is also when I got the hang of using aperture priority mode on my camera. You can imagine what it was like getting it to just the right balance where I get the lights in the sky and the lights reflected off the water without having the lights completely wash out the image. I wish that I would have had a wide angle lens for this, but I will have to go back once I get one.

Canon 600D, ISO 3200, 28mm, f/8, 1/2 second

A hobo's view

So this was the second image that I tried with HDR. I took it while standing under the Santa Monica Pier and this homeless guy was rambling on about how he should charge me for taking pictures in his home. This wouldn't be a terrible view to have from one's living room. I chose to go a bit washed out on the colors and kind of make it dreamy since the homeless guy ranting at me was quite a bit out of it. I could smell the cheap vodka from 10 feet away. This is also before I realized that I needed to pay attention to how level I was. After this shoot, I went out and bought a bubble level from my local Camera shop Jack's Cameras in Lake Forest.

First Post: Under the Pier

Well, not so much my first post, really my second, but my first one with one of my photos. It's really tough to choose which one to post first. I chose this one because it was one of the first HDR pictures that I took and processed. Now this was not the first iteration of this HDR image, but I wanted to get more detail and I wanted some detail of the ocean through the posts to come through. The colors came out a little Cartoony, but I love the greens.

I took this while on a Photowalk with Trey Ratcliff and Tom Anderson at the Santa Monica Pier. I took this with my T3i. I must tell you now that I may not always post my exposure details since doing so with HDR is a lie, but I will tell you what windows says that it is.

Canon 600D, ISO 320, 53mm, f/5.6, 1/15 second