when less is more

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photo by Donald Kinney

Well, finally, I have the opportunity to show just one photo as a solo act, thereby living up to the blog's name of A-photo-A-day.
Today, ladies and germs; "A" actually means "One".


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also, Golden Hours in the afternoon

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photo by Donald Kinney

As you probably know by now, I prefer the Golden Hours of early morning. The possibility of a rare "oh wow" moment is motivating, if not compelling.



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photo by Donald Kinney

But that same warm quality of light can offer a gentle glow late in the day.
This is the Bolinas area just before sunset, from the ridge on Mt. Tamalpais.


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once upon a time in Olema Valley

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photo by Donald Kinney

Well, by the size of the house, I imagine they must have had a lot of kids.



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photo by Donald Kinney

I guess they would have been raising cattle. Probably as early as the 1860's.



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photo by Donald Kinney

A slow walk through the Olema Cemetery will reveal where a lot of these farming and ranching people came from. Italians and Portuguese, and Sicilians, and even a smattering of Norwegians. The great-melting-pot of nationalities--right here in the Olema Valley, west Marin County, California.


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we used to just call it "P.G."

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photo by Donald Kinney

Locals (and a little boy, Don) knew Pacific Grove as the generic "P.G.".
Wide and tall--are the groves on the Pacific, mostly of pines and oaks.
Alone, on a rocky peninsula--guarding the safety of Monterey harbor.



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photo by Donald Kinney

This area is Point Pinos, or Point of the Pines; a treacherous area for boats on foggy and stormy nights. A drive around-the-water was a standard after church treat for the Kinney family in our yellow 4-door 1947 Pontiac sedan.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Yes, more of my "neutral density" experiments... Slow and smooth water.


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split rocks and soft splashes

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photo by Donald Kinney

A couple different ways of going about this. Usually I just flip an image horizontally and connect it to an unflipped image, but for this duo (above)
I shot both sides of the rock and brought both sides together in Photoshop. The large center portion of the massive rock is excluded.



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photo by Donald Kinney

This is a "flip" but with two separate snaps of the same scene; one reversed.


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Smokey waves, on smooth water.

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photo by Donald Kinney

Smokey waves,



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photo by Donald Kinney

on smooth water.


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fast water, slow lens

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photo by Donald Kinney

Brace yourselves...



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photo by Donald Kinney

You might be seeing more of this soon...


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and the sun starts it all

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photo by Donald Kinney

Sun-rising is a task. Sometimes tall trees and big hills need to be climbed.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Time in the afternoon to make ripples glow, like these in Richardson Bay.


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from another planet?

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photo by Donald Kinney

...on a lonely mountain highway in the dark of night.
Well, I'm probably not good enough of a liar to convince anyone of my UFO sighting (with photographic proof) over the Pacific Ocean the other evening.

But a curious set of events caused that streak--my hand bumped the camera very near the end of exposure, and while the low values didn't respond to the shake, the bright helicopter light in the sky left a thinner streak to the left. Looking closely, there is smaller light, below and to the right of the bright light, streaking in the same direction. So... sorry folks, not a UFO.



photos by Donald Kinney

Over the ten or twelve years that Kitty was living with me here at Kittyland, I often wondered if she might have arrived on earth from some other planet.

CAUTION :: LOUD VOLUME
animal sounds -
mouse over keys --or click on key to repeat 3 times... drag keys to create key combos. I made this and more with Flash and Actionscript years ago.
More at: http://keyboardsoundeffects.blogspot.com



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a filter for dimming light and slowing time

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photo by Donald Kinney

There are a few techniques that I stay away from, but by attaching a very dark Neutral Density filter to my lens I can travel back a century or more when the sensitivity of film emulsions was slower-than-snails.



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photo by Donald Kinney

For all three of these images I was shooting at .80sec, f-14. ISO-100, 2-stops minus exposure-compensation, and an 8-stop neutral density filter. With Photoshop I removed all color from the image, although a century ago the photographer might have tried his/her skill at hand-tinting the photo using transparent oil colors.


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a morning blast of light

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photo by Donald Kinney

Days are still warm and pleasant, but Summer is slipping.
It is starting to get cold. Mornings can be foggy.



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photo by Donald Kinney

This time of year the sun is at a low angle. Shadows are long and dark.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Cold air mixes with warmer air. Clouds of morning fog rise. Voluminously.


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low water levels at Nicasio Reservoir

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photo by Donald Kinney

We had torrential rains in December. None since then. Rationing looms. Problem is, that Marin County depends exclusively on rainfall, and we haven't been getting any. It's the dreaded "D" word, as in "Drought".

It isn't like Marin county doesn't have any experience running out of water. Draconian rationing programs are waiting in the wings, if indeed, we don't get copious amounts of rainfall soon. Water bills skyrocket during drought.



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photo by Donald Kinney

So the level of the lake has gone down substantially. About half of normal. Nicasio Reservoir is a reserve storage basin--it is a back-up to the MMWD system and isn't normally needed. Nicasio Reservoir is running on empty. Pray for rain.



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photo by Donald Kinney

The shrinking lake has nice soft muddy bottom. Easy to see evidence of animals who have visited recently. That is a pretty good sized Raccoon, some Gulls, and the 3 toed print is a Canada Goose.


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color for the sake of color

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photo by Donald Kinney

You know, sometimes a boy has to celebrate color just for the sake of color. And what better place to celebrate than Fort Baker, on the northeast side of the Gee-Gee Bridge. It was early. Darkness prevailed. It was beautiful.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And other times that same boy is compelled to stand on the shoulder of his beloved Mount Tam, soaking in the blazing color of that big fireball as it sinks into the Pacific. It was late. Darkness was lurking. It was beautiful.


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playing God on the waters at Alpine Dam

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photo by Donald Kinney

It is a powerful feeling... Arrive early enough at Alpine Dam and the whole area becomes my domain. My message is one of love and compassion. Deer and ducks make easy converts, but squirrels--well, they just never listen.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Damnation... In earlier times this place was a natural confluence of two streams, one in a steep canyon.  And there are fish, but not in great numbers. No boating, no peeing. No picking your nose! Oh, I suppose there even might be a rule against throwing rocks. Laws of the common man. Citations run about $300 a pop. Telling the ranger you are God doesn't help.


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color on a canvas of water

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photo by Donald Kinney

I don't know what this looks like on your monitor, but on mine it is just way too darn blue. I could have easily removed the blue during post-processing, but decided just to leave it is. After all, I suppose blue is my favorite color.



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photo by Donald Kinney

These are the waters of Alpine Dam on the northeast flank of my beloved Mount Tamalpais. Barely a drop of blue here, probably because I was shooting directly in the opposite direction of the first photo.

Photographically, the location of the sun in relationship to the direction the camera is pointing has a whole lot to do with how colors and contrast will be rendered. Here is your photo lesson for the day; if you want your lighting to be "flat and dull" then shoot with the sun on your back. If you want some snappy contrast and "pazazz" in your lighting, then shoot into the general direction of the sun.


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cold and early at Nicasio Reservoir

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photo by Donald Kinney

Oh, I probably could have gotten another 40 winks--the sun is takes its time to arrive this time of year. But there I was, camera and tripod on top of my favorite boulder at Nicasio Reservoir waiting for the show to begin. I waited, and waited some more. Plenty of time to count 7,451 fish jumping for tasty insects. Plenty of time for me to consider it all. Plenty of time to soak it all in. It was cold, very cold, but I barely noticed. For me, this is bliss...



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photo by Donald Kinney

Not a cloud in the sky. Plain vanilla except for hues of red and orange that would soon turn to yellow, then vanish into a long day of primary blue.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Birds--Canada Geese, actually--in a somewhat cooperative and organized line. Loud and discordant squawks about who knows what. Some sort of destination--but who knows where.


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a Sunday photo-walk in San Rafael

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photo by Donald Kinney

One of the perks of being a shutter-bug is the occasional opportunity to get together with other photographers to compare notes. On Sunday I met up with several brand new friends on a "photo-walk" through downtown San Rafael--something I would probably never think of doing on my own.



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photo by Donald Kinney

And while the others sharpened their skills by asking "real" people on the street if they would be willing to pose for pictures, I gravitated towards models I felt more comfortable with, such as these beauties who were waiting patiently and motionless in storefront windows along Fourth Street.



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photo by Donald Kinney

A great time was had by all, and the motto of the day was not to take ourselves too seriously. I'm sure we all learned all sorts of things from each other's perspective. On the right is Jerry Downs who led and organized our walk, which was free. Mr. Downs is a professional photographer with an incredibly playful attitude, humor, and a down-to-earth philosophy about photography. I'm looking forward to Jerry's new book, Why You Were Born, which is due out in April. The book is all about remembering what it was like to be a kid. Jerry grew up in a large family--11 kids, so he has experience.


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a Saturday photo-walk in San Francisco

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photo by Donald Kinney

I often like to joke that just like a dog my camera enjoys going on walks, but on Saturday I met up with a small group of like-minded photo enthusiasts for a "camera walk" and we had great fun snapping-up-a-storm. Yes, fun!



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photo by Donald Kinney

The Ferry Building's Farmer's Market bustled with activity and colorful food.



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photo by Donald Kinney

I'll have more tomorrow about Jerry Downs, the professional photographer who led this walk, but he encouraged me to get out of my comfort-zone and "shoot" some people. Oh don't worry--I wasn't using real bullets.

Tomorrow I'll report on the photo-walk we did on Sunday in San Rafael.


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Photoshop -- god's gift to mankind

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photo by Donald Kinney

When I was just a wee lad, and long before I caught the photography bug, I can vividly remember announcing to my mother that I wanted to be a writer and asking her what I should write about. She threw-me-for-a-loop when she constructively told me to write about things I knew. The only problem was I didn't know much about anything at all. And so, ladies and germs, that was the end of my career as a writer. The nail in the coffin, so to speak. Finis. Da end. That's all folks...

The great thing about photography is that it is a tool of discovery. And really, squeezing off the shutter really doesn't take a lot of talent. We even have great tools like Photoshop to fix our mistakes and to make the impossible possible. Used with restraint and a bit of skill, we can use image editing programs like Photoshop to get the very best out of an image.



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photo by Donald Kinney

So, this (above) is what I started with. I have admired this scene (where Platform Road intersects with Sir Francis Drake Bouleverd) many times, but it is so far away, even with my long lens, that I have always passed it by with a tinge of heartache. Getting closer to the hills just doesn't work--there just isn't a good vantage point other than this far-away view.

Photoshop to the rescue... I was able to carefully "squash" that tall expanse of foggy clouds into a more compact mass. They call it the "Content Aware" tool. What it does is look for areas in the image with very little detail, squashing those low-detail areas instead of areas with more important information. The technique must be used with upmost care, however. I did the squashing in several stages--baby steps--to avoid the generation of artifacts and other deleterious image effects. To help reduce the risk of inadvertently modifying those beautiful hills, I "selected" only the sky for the Content Aware tool to work its magic.

Hopefully I was able to pull this off without detection. This will be our little secret. Lets keep it on the q.t... o.k.?

Hey, and I know what at least one of you are going to say--that you like the "unprocessed" vertical edition better. Oh, don't worry--all of my photos here on the AphotoAday blog come with a money-back guarantee. Yuck, yuck...


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giving trees a special treatment

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photo by Donald Kinney

Most photographers these days are completely willing to share their special techniques and secrets, but I know this has not always been the case.

Back in the early 1960's, when I was a lad of not more than 14, I attended a lecture at the American Federation of Arts in Carmel given by a high-falootin' and highly regarded photographer of the day--Wynn Bullock. He was a master of the 8x10 "view" camera, and his landscapes frequently incorporated nudes. I was a big, big fan.

But the lecture did not center on the work that had gained him fame. Bullock announced that he had begun a new direction for his work--colorful glowing abstracts, which I now assume were big broken chunks of glass illuminated with colored lights. I thought this new work was wildly creative.

The audience thoroughly enjoyed his slide-show, but several hands went up during the question-and-answer part of his lecture, and most everybody wanted to know exactly how he had made the photographs. But no, he was not willing to share his secrets, refusing to answer question after question. The audience became restless and some even became angry and vociferous.



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photo by Donald Kinney

Anyway, I am perhaps only famous in my own mind, but I am perfectly willing to share my secrets and special techniques. The images I am showing here are completely experimental. Oh, you may have heard of that old quip; "lets run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes"

Getting overly creative with the power of Photoshop is something we photographers all go through--and usually the results are an assault on the eyes. The jury is still out on what I have done here. In addition to changing from color to black-and-white, my basic technique was to reduce the "Clarity" setting in the RAW converter (CameraRAW) before making final tonal adjustments in Photoshop. A penny for your thoughts...


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avoiding that which is derivative

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photo by Donald Kinney

A year or so ago I was having lunch with a very fine photographer (who doesn't need any publicity from me) (J.M.S. for those of you who know her), and along with her normal wisdom she offered a statement that I hadn't thought much about--that, sadly, "all art is derivative". That is to say that everything has been done before. Not that we consciously copy the works of others, but we replicate what we have already seen and have appreciated.

Her statement got me thinking about the non-originality of my own work, and yes, perhaps it is true. But it also inspired me to seek out new ideas and subject matter. I decided tht my motivation should be to find new ways of seeing, and to thoroughly explore the discovery process on a personal level.

Oh, I'm fairly sure I'm not the first photographer to shoot ripples on a lake, but since this epiphany about derivative work, patterns of ripples like these have been new and exciting subject material for me.



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photo by Donald Kinney

This ripple photo (above) is not new--taken in May of 2012. It hung this year in the Marin County Fair photo exhibit. Better, I think, than the first photo.


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