August 05, 2008

Coit Tower, San Francisco


click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Sometimes my photos turn out so "normal" that I feel I need to do something to perk them up a bit...   I had to "jazz this one up" by selectively treating the foreground.   First I saturated the heck out of it, then applied what Photoshop calls it's "Smart-Blur" filter.   It blurs the center of objects while leaving their edges sharp.

Shot on Saturday from the elevated patio at San Francisco Art Institute.

Here's another shot with less zoom, slightly to the right.   That's Peter and Paul's Church -- no, they don't make Almond Joy candy bars there -- on the right:

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney


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8 comments:

Louise said...

Did you edit the colors, too? I love the colors of the buildings. Great job.

Tomate Farcie said...

Good thing you came to get these shots over the week-end!! Coit Tower is completely surrounded by fog right now, as it was yesterday morning. Even after the fog burns off, the visibility isn't great.

I really like the treatment on that Coit Tower shot No. 1! As to the banner photograph ... wow... I just can't get enough of it. I am one of these people who becomes like a little kid when I ride the cable cars even though I hear them all day long (they're really loud and you can hear the bells all the time, which is kind of cool.)

AphotoAday said...

HI LOUISE AND TOMATE FARCIE,

Yep, Louise I over-saturated the heck out of the building colors... I usually hate to saturate colors because it increases noise tremendously, but the "smart-blur" filter in Photoshop took care of that...

And Tomate Farcie -- you know, I still have never ridden a cable car, and although I've done most of the other "touristy" kinds of things, I doubt if I'll ever get in the mood for that... I've seen the long lines at the turnaround near Fisherman's Wharf and at Powell Street and Market, and I certainly wouldn't want to get into one of those... I understand that the fare is kind of pricey too... --But I'm not above trying to shoot them -- that particular shot (of course) is it coming west over the hill on California Street... It was stopped for the longest time right there, and I wanted to catch it with just a little more of it showing -- like the headlight -- but it's an easy shot to snag and I'll have to try for a reshoot...

Thanks everyone for your comments...
Best regards, Don and Kitty

photowannabe said...

Love your treatment Don. The enhancement makes the everyday picture extraordinary.
The silhouettes in the second one is a shot that is so unusual. Don't think its taken often at all.

Tomate Farcie said...

The cable car is a whopping ...$5 EACH WAY!! That means if you catch it at the bottom of California, for instance, and want to change at Powell to go to the Wharf or back down to Union Square, it'll cost you ... $10!!! Same thing to get back, of course, uless you have a MUNI pass, then it's free.

The Powell line is always really busy, especially at the Wharf and Powell, but the California line is OK and they go by every 10 minutes so the wait is reasonable. You could probably get some pretty cool shots from the top of the hill, from inside a Cable Car, and you can get off at Powell (I think) and check out the cable car museum (you see all the cables and wheels and stuff) Last I checked, that was free. You could probably get some pretty cool shots, there, too, Charlie Chaplin Modern Times style. :)

http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/

Leslie: said...

Beautiful photo. Although I've been to SF many times, I've never gone to see the coit tower. Must do that next time.

Texas Travelers said...

As I said when it was just the header. I really like the colors.
Troy

sattvicwarrior said...

.VERY VERY impressive new perspective of north beach BRAVO for you and for sharing

 
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