pierces

This week's photo is from my side of the mountain range pictured last week. This week brought a bit of wild weather with a long stretch of significantly lower than normal temperatures along with days and days of rain and snow. Over a period of days, SoCal communities had what amounted to the area’s normal total precipitation for the year. Snow levels dipped low enough that our local forecast actually predicted snow for us down below 1,000 ft.. It never quite made it, but relatives closer to the mountains at about 1,600 ft. got about an inch on Saturday afternoon. It was a rough week of weather in a land unused to harsh conditions. I am, however, thankful for said conditions since they decorated my mountains for this lovely panorama. Snow Day Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 27 and Sunday, March 5. Time marches on. As proof, I present the fact that March starts this week. March out the door and take a few photos to share! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

20 years?!? I sort of knew that but was still surprised when I saw this today. I ran into CC while browsing randomly and we joined a Meet & Mingle thread for a Caribbean cruise later in the year. By sailaway I think it had over 2000 replies. It seems that long threads just don't happen anymore. I wonder what contributed to that. Was it more people cruising with friends and family with less desire to meet people? Maybe the rise of ports-of-call-specific threads that answer the questions about destinations that were common back then? Who knows? I'm not sure when I stumbled onto this photo forum. I think it was sometime in 2004 or 2005. Anyway, it has been one of my favorite places to yak about cameras and photo stuff since then. Nice, helpful people are the vast majority rule here and over the years, the few who weren't were strongly encouraged to find other entertainment elsewhere. (Still are.) I think the thing I like most is the flood of people who jump in and offer help or advice when a question is asked. It keeps me thinking that the world doesn't suck as much as the news lets on. Anyway, thanks to everybody here; the regulars, the occasionals and even the lurkers (who are strongly encouraged to post 😉) for making this an enjoyable 20-year habit. Dave

Yup. The Pearblossom Highway runs through mostly desert from near Lake Arrowhead all the way through Palmdale and Lancaster to the 5 Fwy in the middle of the "Grapevine". Depending on the time of year, it can be pretty scenic with weather ranging from Snow-dusted cacti with "chains required" signs to a balmy 115° with a chance of thunderstorms. Despite the mess California is in, it is blessed with an incredibly wide variety of natural beauty and getting out to chase the scenery with a camera it is good therapy. Dave

We have been taking the back way home from the High Desert since family moved there about a year ago. The winding road leads to the (mostly) two-lane Highway 138 and avoids several miles of Sunday afternoon traffic on the main freeway route. Winter weather hasn’t allowed for a view like the one here and the bright, clear day gave me a reason to pull off the road and capture the snowy peaks. I grew up on the other side of those mountains and they dominated the horizon all my life. In theory, the view from this side should be slightly less impressive since the elevation where I live is about 900 ft and the main peak is over 10,000. In reality, at about the same distance and 2,700 ft. higher, I can honestly say the view is no less awesome. The Other Side of My Horizon Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 20 and Sunday, February 26. Valentine's Day was last week. You're on your own. Amaze me! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

If it is colder outside than inside, fogging isn't an issue...until you come in from outside to inside where it may be warmer and more humid. The problem is condensation which occurs when a solid surface is at a lower temperature than the point at which water vapor in the air around it (humidity) will condense back into its liquid state (dew point), Same reason your grass is dry all day but wet in the morning. The trick is to keep the camera at a temperature above the dew point so condensation won't form. When in a tropical environment, I use a small ReptiTherm terrarium heater that I plug in at night and put in a dresser drawer with my camera and lenses (I have also zipped it into my camera bag). It maintains an 80° - 90° temperature and at that temp, I've never had condensation be a problem in warm climates. In colder climes where the cabin temps are higher or equal to the outdoor temps, condensation is not an issue. In places like Alaska where wildlife is plentiful, there is rarely a lot to see from either the ship or the ports as far as wildlife is concerned unless you specifically take a tour to go find it. I am not too familiar with wildlife in Norway but my guess it would be pretty much the same. I have found the 24-105 to be a 98% lens while travelling and it rarely comes off my A7III. I also pack an A6600 with either a 12mm manual focus or a 70-300 zoom to cover the longer or shorter opportunities, depending on the day. Hope that helps. Dave

George Town, Grand Cayman. Busy day! Dave

Radiance of the Seas, Montego Bay. Yes, it's a real sky. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 13 and Sunday, February 19. Valentine's Day is this week. 'Nuff said. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

I have sort of dropped out of the world of fandom. With all the antics and non-professionalism of the players of various professional sports, the urge to follow a team or a player has just dried up. The one exception is the Super Bowl. For many years, Super Sunday doubled as son Dan's birthday party and featured noisy crowds of relatives and fantastic snacks. With all the lockdown nonsense, our last few Super Sundays have been private affairs with Kim and I watching the game and doing our best to keep the snacking legacy alive. 2023 brought more Super Bowl Snacks of the Gods featuring Tiny Taco Nachos and Twice-baked BBQ Chicken Wings. Who cares who wins or even who’s playing when you have good food and great company? God-Snacked Dave

Ketchikan

On the Raw vs. JPEG subject, the decision is more complicated than it used to be. This shot I took at a family gathering where I set up strobes and such outside for party pictures was the first one after sunset and I still had auto white balance on instead of setting it to 5600K. I was able to pull the shadows and set the WB easily in Lightroom. Thank goodness for RAW, right? Wrong. JPEG only. This is the reason that the RAW vs. JPEG choice is more (or maybe less?) complicated. With the advances in processing software, the ability to repair even fairly egregious goofs has become possible in a JPEG. With massive storage available for pennies a gigabyte, the extra space for RAW isn't really an issue but on the other side, the in-camera processing has advanced so far that out-of-camera JPEGs are as good as you can get from converting RAW to post or print. Personally, I have just about abandoned RAW. My cameras produce excellent JPEGs and neat stuff like multi-shot HDR make JPEG a safe choice for nearly any situation. IMHO, of course. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 6 and Sunday, February 12. This week ends on Super Sunday. A super good reason to get your camera out and have a super fun time taking super good photos and sharing them with all the super nice people here on this super relevant photo forum! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Eighteen years ago on Groundhog's Day, the family was gathered in a hospital room welcoming our second Granddaughter, Daisy, into existence. On Saturday, a rather larger group of family and friends welcomed that same Granddaughter into the complicated and somewhat frightening world of adulthood in the twenty-first century. The guest list exceeded the capacity of our venue, so the hosting of the gala event was at the Bautista compound (Good friends’ house + huge yard). I said “gala” and it was. Red carpet. Formal wear required. Red and black theme. I broke out the studio flash equipment and shot hundreds of serious and funny portraits throughout the evening, including this one of our warm, funny Princess for a Day. Adulting Dave Behind the scenes...

Not mine. This was taken by NASA's Spirit rover on Mars. Lordy, I love actual science! Dave

Acapulco at night Dave

Photoshop is a curse and a blessing. An incredibly useful tool that gets a lot of bad press from photo purists. Not fair. As a tool, Photoshop will never over-process or perform an evil manipulation on a photo without some human interaction. Blame the human. Here are some more sins committed by Satan's software. (See how easy it is to shift blame to the tool? 😉) Flock of obstructive tourists at Peggys Cove discreetly disintegrated. These were done with the Clone Stamp. The content-aware deletion tool can be a little odd-looking unless detail is low, as in a sky.

Last week offered quite a show. Dave

To a certain point, I am as well. I do take the time to assure that my settings an all are correct and take care to compose. But... Sophisticated editing software is like that backpack thing you are glad to have when the unexpected happens and the plane's engine stops. 😉 BTW, I agree about the unnatural enhancements. Like the last enhancement in my examples above, it should look (as much as possible) like no enhancement was applied. Dave

On a recent cruise, we were talking to some people we met, and the subject of photography came up (I know..."shocking"). He is of the camp that believes a photo should never be manipulated, not even for white balance, tilt (packs a huge Gitzo tripod) or even brightness. He wants the picture to be "as he saw it". He wasn't a tin-foil-hat fanatic about it and admitted I had a point when I offered that film and most digital capture cannot match the wildly adaptable dynamic range of the human eye and only rarely does an image match exactly what your eyes see. He was, however, adamant about editing out distracting objects, correcting horizon tilt and especially the use of the new AI-driven sky replacers and such. I have mixed feelings about image alteration. I will freely correct everyday anomalies such as exposure, white balance, dust, or the occasional zit if the subject requests it. I will add or delete someone in a group photo in the case of inability to attend or divorce but manipulating an image in a such major way shouldn't be done unless it is requested. Altering for restoration or artistic intent is ok by me if the alteration is posted or admitted to if asked. There are a lot of grey areas but avoiding falsehood or ill intent is a rule of thumb that I prefer to follow. While processing images from our recent trip, I took some liberties with alteration. Examples below. The original with a criminally blah sky: Luminar Neo had a sky that fit pretty well and even allowed me to flip the inserted sky to match the suns direction. I should have darkened the sea/sky juncture on the left, but learning is part of life. Another blah sky view: Not bad. The program even took away the yellow cast from the reflection of the original sky on the water. It also represents a potentially possible view. This one had the same featureless sky but was pretty blown out on the left by the setting sun. I was able to flip the supplied image and adjust it horizontally and vertically to match the source light. By far the most realistic of the bunch. It retains the original sense of the scene but adds just a bit of detail. Dang the untimely passerby! Here I used the Magic Eraser on my phone software to immediately banish him to oblivion and save as a copy. I feel a bit uneasy about using it now since I didn't see that guy for the rest of the trip...hmmmmm. After playing with the replacers, I'm not as adverse to them as before. I will make it a point to point out when they are used, but I now think that judicious use of advanced editing tools in image creation is not all that different from stitching a panorama or judicious cropping and is just another way to express one's vision. What do you folks think? Dave

Virtually all of last week was spent at sea enjoying an uneventful but satisfying sailing on the Celebrity Solstice. The food was excellent, and the staff couldn't have been nicer or more attentive. We spent an hour in Avalon, 45 minutes in Cabo and skipped San Diego. We kept up with the news, I finished off an audio book while Kim browsed social media and relaxed with assorted tablet games. We talked about DIY projects including an entire morning researching bathroom upgrades and raising chickens. If you think we had a boring cruise, you’d be wrong. It was wonderful. Working from home means we have spent virtually all of the last 10 years within 50 ft. of each other and we’re perfectly fine with that. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Best Friends Dave In case you're wondering...gaffer's tape. I still don't pack a tripod.

Pictures taken between Monday, January 30 and Sunday, February 5. A new month starts this week. February 2023 is National Take Pictures and Share Them On Cruise Critic Month. There will likely be tens of thousands of pictures posted, so post early and post often to avoid the rush! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Sunday morning found us off the coast of Southern California waiting for the ship to complete its 12-hour 26-mile journey from San Pedro to our first stop at Catalina Island. The title “A Welcome Sight” isn’t a cynical observation that the world didn’t end overnight, but rather joy at watching the sun rising over the ocean from the deck of a cruise ship. Despite her modest spending in the casino, Kim was offered a “free” cruise from the Celebrity Cruises Blue Chip casino club, and we took them up on it. Even though we had to cough up a few hundred bucks for port charges, taxes and gratuities, it was still pretty cheap for a 7-day cruise. We hung out, ate, napped and spent a week in the company of our very best friends...each other. A Welcome Sight Dave

Solstice Sunrise (Taken from the Celebrity Solstice, not the Summer/Winter astronomical event). Click to view animation Dave