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’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.
Well almost. I missed my train to work by 2 mins. Missing my train doesn’t mean that I’ll be late to work, I’ll just be on time and not early.
The next train that I can catch is in 27 minutes. So instead of just waiting around and reading the paper I walked over to Starbucks, which is only half a block away. Over at Starbucks I grabbed a tall cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal.
A cup of Starbucks coffee and their a bowl of their Perfect Oatmeal are pair to die for. The coffee is good, I like to add two packets of brown sugar and enough half and half to almost match my skin tone. The oatmeal comes with toppings that you can add; brown sugar, mixed nuts, and mixed berries. I like to add all the toppings in my oatmeal starting with the brown sugar, then the mixed nuts, and finally adding the mixed berries last. Then I would mixed all the ingredients together and enjoy while taking a sips of coffee throughout the course.
A perfect enough morning for me 🙂
It is Monday, the weekend is over and I am back on the 9 – 5 Mon – Fri grind. On top of the grind I have a commute of … Continue reading Monday Commute
Here I am with another blog…
Well this technically is not a new blog, but a revitalized blog. What I plan to do with johnydecali is promote my perspective on how I see this world.
Yes that description is vague to what I believe that this blog can be but there is a reason. I have made several blogs in the past and they all have failed. This one may too as fail as well. The difference with this blog from the other blogs that I have made in the past is that those blogs inhibited me, limited me, and gave me tunnel vision.
I have interest in many things from photography to wakeboarding. And I plan to use this blog to document all my thoughts in all the hobbies and random things that perk my interest.. Even though I would like this blog to be about everything and nothing, I will do my best to keep it organized.
Right off the top of my head these are the main categories that I plan on writting about:
What else can I say?
It is what it is.
johnydecali 