August 30, 2010

morning in west Marin


click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

The other day I think I mentioned that 90 percent of photography is just "being there at the right time". You just never know when all the conditions are going to be right.

But I can help narrow the "being there at the right time" statement down a bit -- the odds of getting a good landscape photo in the middle of the day are pretty much slim to none. My advice is to put that camera away between the general hours of 10AM to about 5PM.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

If I ever thought you might go there I would show a map of my usual route out through west Marin, but I take a series of tiny roads that snake out through some of the most beautiful rolling hills and farmland that you are ever going to find. There is a great deal of Marin County that the local residents never get out to explore.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Shrouded in a hazy fog it might be a bit diffiucult to see, but that's our beloved Mount Tamalpais (Tam-al-pi'-us) in the distance.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Even at 8AM the light on this schoolhouse was almost too harsh, but I stopped to shoot it anyway.

Within a ten mile radius of here there are four "one room" school-houses, although two of them are actually in Sonoma County, just slightly over the Marin County border. And yes, they are still in use. Lets hope those kids are learning more than I did in school -- I was such a dummy and still am!



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6 comments:

photowannabe said...

That first shot is stunning Don. When I saw it as your banner yesterday enlarged, I thought it was a true prize winner. It should be entered someplace.

photowannabe said...

Forgot to say that my son's photo shoot on Saturday was a photo walk in China Basin with people from Adobe and Lightroom.
He loved it and got some super pictures.

AphotoAday said...

THANKS PHOTOWANNABE SUE -- Yep, it's beautiful out there alright and that morning the conditions were just super. I think I used my polarizer filter for the shot.

Interesting to hear that the Adobe Lightroom people were putting on the photowalk in the China Basin area. Boy has that area ever changed from what it used to be.

I usually do my photowalks with the CaliberSF group, and they are growing and seem really popular.

And yep, Lightroom is becoming really popular -- it has a lot of neat features, but still can't do "layers" which is what regular old Photoshop is good at. I'd like to try Lightroom, however, but I need to upgrade my Mac OS from 10.4 to 10.5 or 10.6 before I can use the latest version of Lightroom.

If you're curious, my computer is a three year old MacPro with 16gb of RAM, two seperate one-terrabite hard-drives that I run in a mirrored RAID configuration for realtime automatic backup, plus a dedicated 500gb hard-drive for Photoshop only, and of course a 334gb hard-drive that came with the machine.

Oh, for years I suffered with my Windows machine -- am SO glad those days are over... Bill Gates is a very nice and generous man, but really, the machines he makes are just junky toys.

MELI. said...

im in LOVE. i love mornings. fog. oh that first shot <3

AphotoAday said...

HI MELIGROSA -- You know what? I love people who love my photos. My cat couldn't care less about my photos, but I love her too.

marc aurel said...

I have abandonned you for too long. Wonderful, inspirational pictures!

 
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