Treated my wife to some time in the wine country on Saturday. I was able to manage a few photos in between the downpours. Everyone in the SF bay area is really looking forward to what we hope will be a dry week.

Cheers!

 

Wow, simply gorgeous photos! Those are some beautiful places, and you're a very talented photographer!

Which camera is this btw?

 

I am digging the first shot. It's got that weird panoramic look to it.

 

I also like that first shot best. It could use a little cropping however. (See where the yellow lines end? The space below them is not needed.)

The last pic gets my attention also. However, my eyes are drawn to the background, especially the lush colors. I really like that orange up against the green of the grass. The reflection of the wheels on the pavement looks pretty cool in your pic. (Do you have any shots where you took advantage of that?)

-Juan

 

Wow, those are great! Beautiful light and settings. Just to pick nits, #2 could use a bit of straightening and I wish that pole-thing wasn't in #3. And I agree with Juan, the reflection would have been fun to play with in #4.

Really nice stuff! I think you took great advantage of the bad weather.

Mark

 

Fantastic shots! Looks like a great day!

 

Thank you very much for all of the nice comments!

I was lazy and previously just did a quick resize of photo #1 as I was using it as my laptop's background screen. As was suggested, a quick 5 minutes with the rubber stamp and a new crop yeilded an image that is looking dangerously close to a too large sig image.



It's funny, I didn't even notice the reflections until you all pointed them out. I checked the other images I took that day and found these two that had more reflections. I'm wishing I played with the polarizer more now!



"Twiggy" really wanted to take a spin in the wine cellars, but they just wouldn't let us in.




I wish the telephone pole wasn't in this photo and that you could see more of the road, but the sign was just too perfect of an invitation for Minis


Cheers!

 

That crop that Juan suggested on the first shot works well. Yeah, that last one would be nicer without the telephone pole but it doesn't both me that much. Great shot. I like the soft lighting in all these a lot. You'd get a completely different look on a "nice" day with more harsh lighting and they wouldn't look nearly as good.

They all look just a tad over-sharpened to me, on my monitor.

Mark

 

Very nice pictures. Looks like you went on Dry Creek and Silverado Trail. I'd like that Cave for a hideout.

 

Yup, Siverado Trail only. Dry Creek Rd looks like a fun one for next time or perhaps Mt. Veeder Rd. I avoid 29 like a plague.

MarkS, yes, midday sun would completely change the look of these photos. I'd have to get up early (not likely) or wait til later in the afternoon to get a nice shot on a clear day. I agree, they look oversharpened on my monitor too; I was lazy just using the default sharpening after a 25% resize operation. I still need to learn better sharpening methods in PS.

Cheers!

 

I'd kill to have such nice roads nearby.

Do you use in-camera sharpening? It's a bit more work but I always shoot with no sharpening (though if you shoot raw you can set it to anything you want since the sharpening doesn't actually happen until post-processing) and sharpen later with an edge sharpener. I use Fred Miranda's Intellisharpen II. Stuff for publication I don't sharpen at all, or only very lightly. I figure they can decide how much they want for what size it's going to run so it's better to leave to them.

I've also found that you need more sharpening for a print to look good than you do for on-screen viewing.

Mark

 

I think part of that has to with with monitor resolutions being set at 72dpi whereas a good print works better at 300dpi or higher.
I could be wrong.

-Juan

 

The SF Bay Area is a great place to live, but typically has the most expensive gas and housing in the nation. You don't have to kill, just pay a lot! Seems like where ever I've been in the US however, there is always some back country hidden roads begging to be explored that most people don't know about. Besides, if you take dawn or dusk photos, even a carphole like PHX can look nice.

Yes, I only shoot raw unless I'm using my pocketable casio. The issue comes up when I'm resizing a photo down by 20% post RAW conversion and the result is consistently blury. It needs some sharpening, but maybe not as much as the lazy PS sharpening tool. I think one of my PS Kelby books there is instructions on proper sharpening techniques that I need to look at one of these days. Thanks for the suggestions!