Happy Monday folks! I hope that all of you had a wonderful weekend.
Here’s one of my attempts at playing around with black and white photography with a texture overlay.
I used an antique grunge paper texture from Free Stock Textures.
That I blended it over my original image.
Let me know what you all think, I welcome all types of feed back.
Thanks and have a wonderful week 🙂
I took advantage of being off this past Thursday by going out shooting with my brother James and my friend Jorman. We spent that afternoon going to several places taking shots of iconic structures of San Francisco, one of them being the Palace of Fine Arts.
Built in 1915, nine years after the devastation 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was back on its feet and wanted to show the world how it well the city was doing by holding the The Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), World’s Fair, for the opening of the Panama Canal. There were plenty of magnificent structures that were built for the event such as the Palace of Horticulture and the Tower of Jewels. Sadly, like all World’s Fair, these great structures were only temporary. From all the grandeur of the PPIE, the only structure that remains is the Palace of Fine Arts.
Below is a panorama of the Palace of Fine Arts where you can see people enjoying the day and appreciating the spectacle before their eyes.
The Palace of Fine Arts received a long overdue restoration that was completed in 2011. Some of the things that came with the face lift was the removal of the inset faces from under the dome of the rotunda. Pun intended, even though the pun was corny.
To help give you an idea to how massive the rotunda is, I took a photo of a couple folks within the rotunda as they were going about shooting photos. The way I was able to take this photo was ever so gently scaling the steps up till I was a good 15′ – 20′ above the ground.
The steps that I scaled are actually planters and at the time of taking the photo, there were no plants within the planters.
James took a picture of me while I started my decent back down, then posted the image on Instagram. As you can see the urns are approximately 10′ tall, making me appear diminutive.
The landscaping is done so wonderful throughout the area for the Palace of Fine Arts. I am not a horticulturalist so I can’t name all the plants that surrounds the area, but the flowers, shrubs, and trees sure do compliment the areas and make the Palace of Fine Arts complete.
The Redwood Trees that grow on the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts grow along side of the columns so naturally that they appear to be a part of the structure. The branches and leaves of the Redwood works well with the Corinthians capitals of the columns.
Finally, a great feature of the Palace of Fine Arts is that the lagoon creates a tranquility to the space around it that brings in wildlife. The various wildlife that makes the Palace of Fine Arts their home ranges from ducks, swans, turtles, frogs, and many more. I had a great opportunity to shoot a few of the swans while we all were walking around taking photos.
I can’t wait till I come back to the Palace of Fine Arts to snap some photos of this place. Next time I’ll do some HDR and/or Time Lapse. And once the weather cools down and the fog stops being a constant, I’ll have a chance to shoot the Palace of Fine arts at night for the first time.
Please leave any comments, feed back, negativity, positive stuff, and what nots about my post, grammar, photo skills, poor post production editing, and story telling skills since I am trying to be a better blogger, photographer, writer, and person.
Thanks!
It has been over 3 years since I have been to the East Coast, specification New York and New Jersey. I was in those two states for my girlfriend’s birthday and for Fourth of July in 2009.
I spent about two weeks out in the East but it felt more like 2 days. I would like to go back to NY since I had a wonderful time there with my family and future family. I did a ton of walking to get to know the city, took a ton of photos, caught a Mets game, ate good food, and hanged around a lot of great people.
Here’s a photo of the New York skyline taken on the JFK Boulevard in Weehawken, New Jersey.
The Hudson River is in the foreground with ferries transporting people between the state lines. To the right toward the back row of buildings you can see the top of the Empire State Building. To the left of the Empire State Building you can see the W Hotel, the “W” gives it away. Other famous buildings that can be seen are the Citicorp Building with its oblique slanting roof, the diagrid looking Hearst Magazine Building, and the Time Warner Center that has the two tall towers. Both the Joe DiMaggio Highway and Henry Hudson Parkway can be seen to the left of the frame. If I were from New York and studied the skyline, I’d be able to name a lot more of buildings as I am able to name the buildings in San Francisco, and I would share that knowledge with you.
I hope to have another shot of the New York skyline by 2014 since I’m sure that the skyline has changed by now. Only time will tell if I ever get a chance to.
It’s amazing how foggy San Francisco is right now. The fog is thick and damp as it covers the City while the rest of the Bay Area is trying to survive a heat wave.
This time last year, the fog was the same. I remember that the City was foggy last year because a few friends (Tom Finale, Joe Ercoli, and Paul Giani) came up to the city to do a photo shoot last August. You can see the photo from that photo shoot here. After the shoot, we had dinner and talked about what iconic landmarks should we shoot while in the City. Palace of Fine Arts, Legion of Honor, Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, Lombard Street, and many more were name dropped. The only problem those landmarks that night was the fog. Since the fog comes from the west, we decided to try our luck east. We ended up at the San Francisco’s end of the Bay Bridge.
The fog was present but light. The look on the faces of my fellow photographers showed misery but yet we made the most of the night. We ended up shooting the Raygun Gothic Rocket, the Bay Bridge, and other stuff that I don’t remember. Below is the shot of the Bay Bridge that I got from that night.
I’d love to shoot the San Francisco’s end of the Bay Bridge again but on a more clearer night. In fact, there are a lot of places that I still have not had a chance to shoot. We’ll see how the rest of this year goes and how much shooting I get done.
As for now, I need to take advantage of the fog and learn how to work with it as many photo ops are not going to be set in ideal conditions.
I hope that most of you had a wonderful weekend as I did. I was up all night watching my shows and the Olympics simultaneously, that I did not sleep till god knows when.
Anyways, happy Monday, try not to work to hard folks.
Football is back this Sunday with the NFL Hall of Fame game where the Saints beat the Cardinals 17-10. Even though the game was just a preseason game, these games are important to the 32 NFL teams as they weed out their roster and fine tune their play books. Preaseson games are important to me because they remind me that the NFL regular season is just right around the corner! I just can’t wait for fantasy football, Sunday night games, Monday Night Football, bbq’s, tailgating, thrash talking, and big hits!!
Besides football being back on the national spotlight (I’m a huge football fan and football has never left my eyes thanks to the NFL Network), it’s Sunday which means a new episodes of Breaking Bad!
With Game of Thrones ending their season weeks ago, I am excited to have the final season of Breaking Bad on AMC. I can’t wait to get home and see what Jessie and Walt are into.
And if any of you are looking for a good show to watch, check out Newsroom on HBO. Newsroom is about a news anchor that has decided to do the news right by reporting legitimate news, not lying, having reputable guest, and staying away from pop news segments. Newsroom also premieres new episodes on Sundays but if you have HBO Go, you can catch up on episodes you miss anytime. If not you can find Newsroom and almost any show on ch131.so but you did not get that information from me.
Happy Sunday and have a wonderful night.
It’s Friday and I’m almost off! Can’t wait for the weekends to get here. Hope that the rest of you are already off and at happy hour 🙂
Side note, thanks for all the wonderful years in the green and gold to Kurt Suzuki, who just got dealt to the Nationals today.
Took this shot of the BART train on the West Oakland outbound platform early July. While waiting for my transfer, I took advantage if the setting sun with the incoming train. The end result is this Instagram photo of BART that has movement.
Lately I’ve been taking photos with my cell phone, posting it on Instagram, and ignoring my blog. Well, I’ve decided to put more effort in blogging… But first I had to ask myself a few questions. Do I enjoy blogging? Why do I blog? And what do I gain from blogging?
I do enjoy blogging when I have/make time for it. I have many other activities that I enjoy more than blogging but that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy blogging. In case you’re wondering what other activities I enjoy other than blogging, they are: sleeping, gaming, surfing the web, watching sports, enjoying a nice cold beer (s), photography, spending time with family, working out, watching movies/tv shows, reading, and so on. I don’t hate blogging and blogging doesn’t feel like a chore to me, I just need to prioritize and make time for blogging.
But why should I make time for blogging when I enjoy other activities more?
The reason I blog is to keep myself productive in a positive way. Instead of wasting time gaming, surfing the web, or watching movies and tv, by blogging stimulates my mind and makes me think about things… Random and irrelevant things. Gaming is stimulating; it does make me think and has me involved actively in a community. However for the most part when I am online, trolling the web, I am just hitting the ‘Like” button to participate in conversations. Blogging gives me a voice to post my opinions in a more productive and critical manner which involves more than 140 characters. Basically I have to put more effort in a blog post versus to just saying ‘Happy Friday!’ as a post, even though I can.
So what do I gain from blogging rather than just having to think more and being more ‘productive’ with one self?
Reflection. For now reflection is the best answer to my own question. Months from now I get to look back at my blog and see myself in my own POV and reflect to that particular time. With reflecting I hope to learn from my experience, laugh, and be at awe with myself. In truth this blog is my own personal public diary.
I plan, no, I will put more of myself out there publicly for those that are reading this so that they can understand me better and have a true unfiltered insight into my character. I’ll write more fluidly with my style but keep the grammar and spelling neat (as best as I possibly can). I wont apologize for being blunt, rude, inappropriate, or polite. In the past, one of the challenges that I have with blogging is worrying about what people will think. To hell with that worry. This is my diary and if you don’t like it, leave comment. Plus it’s just a blog.
“A blog is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation” – Dr. Sussmann, Contagion (2011).
johnydecali 