February 25, 2014

Sunday morning at Vista Point


click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

On Sunday after finishing up my normal walk-around through Northbeach and Chinatown I stopped at Vista Point on the north end of the famous Gee-Gee Bridge to practice my skills as a tourist. It was a battle-royal between sun and a thick layer of clouds, and the sun was winning.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

A busy Vista Point on a Sunday in late December. Come one, come all.


Photographing Marin County - the exhibit and book       


4 comments:

John @ Beans and I on the Loose said...

Really like that black and white presentation.

AphotoAday said...

Thanks JOHN (SINBAD'S DAD) -- Yep, b&w was the obvious choice. But you know, there was a whole lot of Photoshopping I did to that image, so here is the rundown; first I set the levels of the highs and lows to get some boost in contrast, and then during the b&w conversion I darkened the blues to get even more contrast. Then came the fun--I noticed that I had the top and bottom almost equally divided, (((and lord knows we can't have that))) so carefully avoiding any change to the center (the City) I used the Content Aware filter in PS to squash the bottom down to a proper third, and then I expanded the height of the clouds to fill the remaining aspect ratio. Then I ran it up the flagpole on Facebook and got a really good response, so yes, I think it might be a "keeper". But to be honest, it is not one of my favorites at all. Just a snapshot in my estimation that I managed to save from banality. Maybe I'll eventually warm up to it--sometimes it takes time.

John @ Beans and I on the Loose said...

I was with you for awhile there then you lost me.

AphotoAday said...

Hi JOHN (SINBAD'S DAD)-- Well, the Content Aware in PS5 and up is kind of hard to explain. Am sure there are good YouTube videos on it, but basically what happens is you can stretch or squash an image, or parts thereof, but it only affects parts of the image that have less detail, so as not to squash or stretch important pixels. Really an amazing feature, but looks bad if taken too far as the image begins to get weird. I only use it occasionally when normal Scaling isn't going to do the job.

 
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