[taken w/ iPhone]

Over the weekend I was at the swimming pool at the Hills Club with my friend Charlie and his daughter Layla. It was gorgeous. Pretty much a perfect day. The water in the deep end was a bright blue that attracted me to it like a bear to honey. Being the photo dork I am, I walked over to the edge of the pool and snapped off a couple of shots. I love to watch light refract on water. When I find puddles and streams, I try to get my camera as close to the water as possible. What’s amazing is how when framed up right, a reflection becomes a liquid version of reality. In some photographs it is even difficult to distinguish between source and reflection.

While we were there, Charlie started throwing Layla up in the air and from where I was, the whole scene was backlit. I caught her in mid air and will post those shots later.

[taken w/ iPhone]

See if you can figure this out. It’s a little whacky…

[taken w/ iPhone]

Last week during the storm, I got excited and headed for Tahoe. We left Wednesday evening and braved the snowy summit in the dark. Thursday morning, we arrived at Alpine Meadows to find about 50 cars in the parking lot… It was very cold and visibility was not so good. But knee deep powder in the trees made it worth while. We got all the goods on Friday too. Saturday morning, as we were resting our achy muscles, we checked out Squaw. It was bright and sunny and hard not to go ride. But years ago as ticket prices went flying past $50, I vowed not to ride on weekends and spend half the day in line. So instead, we went up to the lake, had a leisurely breakfast and walked over to the lake’s edge at Sunnyside. Here, my friend Lucky is kicking snow from a dock directly at the camera, providing for a great opportunity to create something interesting by freezing the action with a single frame. We did this over and over. It’s hard when you’re dealing with a camera that has the dreaded delay, especially for those of you with kids. You almost always miss the shot… And I was shooting with my iPhone. I had to say ‘Go!’ and then click the shutter, hoping the timing would be right. There were a lot of botched attempts, but we nailed this one. And I gotta say, I’m really impressed that I captured this with a camera phone.

[taken w/ iPhone]

It’s all about the lighting… Daft Punk figured this one out and applied it to their recent performances in a way that left seasoned concert goers in awe. Here, the robotic twins open up at the Greek Theater in Berkeley and proceed to tear the roof off. Next time you drive by, you can see they still haven’t replaced it. The light shows are so unreal that there are loads of video clips online. Look them up on youtube.

[taken w/ iPhone]

I love silhouettes. This was taken from the parking lot of the famous Claremont Hotel, in the Berkeley hills. They have a great terrace at Paragon that looks out over the bay. Great for sunset drinks. The service pretty much sucks. But hey, the view is insane.

[taken w/ iPhone]

Sometimes while I’m driving, I see something that I have time to reach for my iPhone and capture. The camera performs rather well under low light conditions. Here’s a nice night time abstract.

[taken w/ iPhone]

Because a photograph is a two dimensional represention of a three dimensional space, distance and perspective become critical when attempting to communicate scale. Here, Robbie shows us what happens when a small object is just inches from the lens.

[taken w/ iPhone]

What’s interesting about this image is that it wasn’t staged. Well, it was, after my eye jerked. But I was just getting into my car around 8 in the morning, when the sun comes through the trees and shines into the front window of my car. As I sat down and went to put my water in the passenger seat, a bright ray of light blasted the bottle, making the water sing and the label bling. Aquafina has a pretty catchy color combo on their clear, thin plastic label that is back lit here. And you can see the words on the other side, written in white, through the water. Before camera phones, I might have just noticed this and thought how cool it was. But now, I make a picture for two reasons. One is, I have a camera phone and two is, I want to remember what was happening with the light that caught my eye. Here, I tried to fill the frame with the bottle coming towards you. The foot area of the front passenger seat was in dark shadow and made for a perfectly black background. It’s amazing what is happening around you all the time. When you learn to see light the way the camera does, things look different.

tip - always have your camera with you. always. always. always. it’s when you don’t that you will see the most perfect shot…

[taken w/ iPhone]

David and Ed and I were picking up supplies for work on the gallery when my eye jerked as I was getting in the car. I saw a wall of strong vertical lines created by the angle of the sun. I knew it was the perfect backdrop to make a portrait of the two of them together. They were already in their seats when I said, “It’s photo time! Let’s go!” Glad they’re good sports.

I get bossy when I see good light and have willing participants. Sometimes you need to act quickly as light may be fleeting. Fortunately, the light wasn’t going anywhere… I was just hungry. I set-up around this cool tear in the siding, took 3 shots and headed off for lunch.

[taken w/ iPhone]

Here is an image I made of David, who is helping to build the gallery. I’m posting this shot because there are 3 different types of lighting, which can be difficult when using AWB (Auto White Balance) because the camera isn’t sure where your white point should be. And you might not be either. The eye and the brain work all this out for us, but the camera is left clueless.

Behind his head, shining against the wall, is a daylight balanced bulb used for illuminating art work. Off to the right of the frame in the background is a room lite by an incandescent flood bulb. Then you have the light on David’s face; a battery powered fluorescent work light his partner is holding for me. It’s a bit low, as you can see the shadow from his nose comes across and clips the bottom of his eye socket. Turning the image grayscale is a great solution to the color balance issue. David saw the original image on the phone and didn’t like the tone of his skin. I could have just raised the temperature, but I really like to pull out the color in these situations. Sometime colors helps, sometime it does just the opposite. I generally prefer to have some sort of non-distracting background that adds strength, visually. Here, notice the way the window frame behind him defines the sense of space.