Picture Day

I don't really have anything interesting to say today so I thought I'd just share a few pictures I took from a photo outing last weekend. I went to the San Francisco Place of Fine Arts and to the marina.

 

The Palace of Fine Arts

 

This is a really pretty place. You should visit if you've never had the chance. It's very odd to have a beautiful Roman temple plunked in the city. There were lots of photographers around. In fact I think just about everyone had a camera with them except this guy that was walking his dog.

 

Dog Walker

 

Is it me or is that guy just looking for trouble? Can't you see a pretty white poodle walking by and exciting all the dogs. The poor guy wouldn't have a chance.

 

Turtles

 

I like turtles. These guys were very photogenic today.

 

Flute Man

 

This man's flute was echoing pleasantly through the temple. He provided a very nice atmosphere to the area. When I first walked up to him and tried to take his picture he kind of turned away. I lower my camera and said, "Oh do you mind if I take your picture". He said quite confidently, "Not if you ask I don't". Then he told me that recently somebody took his picture without his knowledge and wrote a newspaper article on him. One of his friends told him about it. Since then he's been a little hesitant of photographers. And oh, it would be nice if I donated to his hat which was on the ground. I took a number of pictures of him and put $5 in his hat. Later in the day I thought it through and I'm sure that story was a setup. He must have 100 people take his picture every day and he's figured out that that story gets the most money put in his hat. He he. Even though I probably got had, I really like his music.

 

Dogs Wrestling Over a Stick

 

There's a dog park on the beach near the marina. I really like dogs so I took lots of pictures. These two guys were having a grand old time wrestling over this stick.

 

Did you like my pictures? I touched them up in Photoshop a bit. Could you tell? Was it distracting?

 

To the palace I first applied noise reduction with Noise Ninja. Then I cropped it to remove an ugly fence and some people. I also did levels and highlights/shadows to make it feel less flat. Then I applied a warming filter because it makes it look like it's in better sun light. And last I did a couple unsharp masks. I find doing a couple at different radii gives good results that look sharp but don't have that oversharpened halo look. Finally I wrote an action to save the image in two size appropriate for the web.

 

I did similar processing to the dog walker. Noise Ninja, levels, highlights/shadows, warming, and unsharp masks. I didn't need to crop this photo. I really like what the new highlight/shadows tools does. It kinda softens the highlights and lightens the shadows. The nice part about that adjustment is that it really brings out the colors that get lost in those areas.

 

The turtles picture got Noise Ninja, levels, highlights/shadows, and unsharp mask. I didn't bother with warming because I liked the look of the skin already. Can you tell this picture was taken through a chain link fence? You can see it on the bottom right of the photo. I didn't bother removing it because I liked the composition. I probably could get rid of it with a rubber stamp if I really wanted to.

 

The flute man has lots of processing. I did Noise Ninja first. Then I added a layer adjustment to desaturate the image and another to apply levels. I tweaked the color channels of the black and white image to get the most contrast. I mostly left red alone and pulled in blue and green. This makes the image a little more dramatic. I have this theory about photography as fine art. Photos need to be black and white and preferably blurry to be fine art. Black and white is because color photos look like your mom took them. Blurry is because fine art this century, ok well last century I suppose, needed to be unrealistic. So I applied a radial blur to this photo. It was too much at first so I faded the effect about 50%. I think that it's cool that you can apply a filter without a layer and then after you can still fade it. Photoshop is neat.

 

The wrestling dogs got Noise Ninja, levels, warming, and unsharp masks. The natural lighting was full so they didn't need shadows/highlights or much levels, but the warming filter added a lot. It was kind of an overcast day, but the warming filter makes it look like the sun is starting to set.