Series - Celestial

Inspired by Brooke Shaden's art, Promoting Passion.

When we moved to Southern California I was in awe of how visible the solar system is from where we live. We like to go for night rides [motorcycle rides]. When we get up in the mountains the view becomes even more clear. I've always loved the moon and stars. It wasn't until now that I had a good enough camera to capture them.

Below is the start of a series of the celestial view as I see it. The first image is an artistic take on that exact view when I saw it. The second image was made on the same night. The third image is of the Blood Moon with a dot of Mars peering on from above. And the fourth is the August Super Moon.

I'm still working on these. This is where I am with them at present. I'm hoping to come up with more pieces to create a series of 6 or 9 pieces. I started this series in February this year.

The Poppy Concert

The Congregation

The Heart of Poppy

Be Still My Heart

The Entertainer

Last month we made a trip out to the California Poppy Reserve. It was a windy day. The poppies were giving quite a performance. I used a fast shutter speed so that I could grab them in position. I used macro focus on all of them.

They danced for all the spectators. Leaping about and swirling around. They were entertaining.

2014 Lunar Eclipse

This is a Lunar Eclipse series I made on April 14/15th. Noting the orange glow on the moon. Reports out are calling it a blood moon. There's a bit of controversy surrounding the "blood moon". This article explains what a blood moon is and how it occurs. This video shows what happens as the Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reflecting off the Moon's surface and instead the light passes through the Earth's atmosphere, turning it orange.

All of these have a hazy blur on them, except one. There was a thin layer of cloud cover passing. I set up my tripod on the concrete to make the camera stable. In the last two I captured Mars in the upper right corner. My favorite one is the last one. I used my Sony DSC-RX100M2 camera to make these.

Focal Length: 37.1mm
Exposure: 1/30
F stop Number: f/11
ISO: 100

Focal Length: 37.1mm
Exposure: 1/30
F stop Number: f/11
ISO: 100

Focal Length: 37.1mm
Exposure: 1/4
F stop Number: f/10
ISO: 100

Focal Length: 37.1mm
Exposure: 1/30
F stop Number: f/4.9
ISO: 160

Focal Length: 10.4mm
Exposure: 30s [Long Exposure]
F stop Number: f/3.5
ISO: 100

Focal Length: 10.4mm
Exposure: 5s [Long Exposure]
F stop Number: f/3.5
ISO: 100

Chair || March Photo A DayThis

Not my photo, just borrow for story.

I'm a big fan of the Heidi story made into movie. Yes, I have the DVD in my movie library. In the story Heidi becomes companion and playmate to Klara who was bound to a wheelchair. Very much like the one on the left.

Toward the end of the story Klara surprises her Daddy with the fact that she can now walk because Heidi helped her learn.

I'm reminded of a girl I cared for during my nursing days. She loved Shirley Temple movies. She was wheelchair bound. However, she'll never be able to walk because of her disease.


She was one of my most favorite patients. She always greeted me with a smile and hug. When my name was mentioned and she saw me she got so excited she would bang her head against the back of her chair so hard that if she weren't strapped in she would jump right out of that chair. She was adorable.
It's been a might long time since then. I've lost track of her and her family. I'll never forget her.

This post was inspired by today's theme prompt for #marchphotoaday by #fmsphotoaday for Day 6.

Video Teaser || Fine Art

During one of my online training classes they stressed that having videos for marketing are important. The video here was created with a free account at Animoto. I was allotted 30 seconds to use in the free account.

The images I chose for this video are some of my favorites. Not exhaustive. The sound track is something offered by Animoto.

Tell me what you think in the comments. This is only a teaser video. Eventually, I'll create something with more than 30 seconds that will involve some behind the scenes footage of photo shoots.

Golden Day - Summertime Fun

Mt Baldy in the Clouds

Cloudy Mt Baldy

I love big puffy clouds.

This evening at sunset I noticed this out my window. I didn't have time to set my camera up. So, I grabbed my mobile phone and snapped it.

I did some post processing edits on it because there were a few unsightly things that were terrible distractions.

I love the way the crevices in the mountain cast the deep rich shadows at sunrise and sunset. I also love the rich warm glow from the sun.

Recently, I've been going through some transformation in myself. Just today I was reading over at Brooke Shaden's Blog. She's a fantastic photographer and story teller. I took a photography class offered by creativeLIVE that Brooke instructed. She creates amazing art. Her post from today [2/27/2014] put me on my toes. I was mentally and emotionally challenged by it.

I struggle with being imaginative and creative. Everything I do is basic safety net stuff.

It's hard to break out of my mental black box. I was encouraged by a few people in the comments on Brooke's post.

For me, my mental black box is just that... black, dark and a dungeon. I feel mentally paralyzed.

When a sliver of light creeps in I'll reach for it. It'll be my escape hatch with a rope that I can climb out of.

When I reach the for the light it will bring light to the darkness. It'll shine bright and show all the wonderful blessings and open my mind to have permission to come out and play.

2014 Anniversary Mtn Trip

Paul and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on February 13th. We celebrated by having dinner and then we drove up into the Mountains on Glendora Ridge Rd in the Angeles National Forest Area. Paul and I both were playing with my new camera he bought me for Christmas. It's hard to say now who took which. We got several. Many were experiments to see exactly how we could push the camera. All the images were taken between 10pm and 1030pm. There's one image that requires some extra TLC before it can be presented. Below are the culmination of me and Paul's handy work. I did all the post processing treatments to enhance the images.

Please share what you think and which one you like the best!

This image was captured with the moon as seen
in the corner with the glare, 10pm at night, with
minimal post processing.

This is the same image from above. There were
several post processing artistic treatments used.
One, you can see a different moon. The moon
shot was taken a few days before at dusk.
Enhancements were added to stars and colors.

Several post processing artistic treatments were
were used on this image. The basic scene is
exactly as it was captured.