Progressing further on waterfall hues

Two more pictures after making three copies of the same picture and focusing separately on water, rocks and trees and a final merge..

Another technique that came in handy was to focus separately on things in foreground and things in background (with tripod) and merge the photos together.

Tried it on the Golden Gate bridge the other day from Sausalito and it works.. Same goes for waterfalls. Got this tip from Jay Patel who happens to have a wonderful website where he tells us how he took the photograph! A big thanks to him for the pointers.

Think that pretty much covers the falls in the two mile hike radius from the parking lot!

.

Uvas Canyon

We visited Uvas Canyon State Park near Morgan Hill last Sunday with the Cousins. Was in two minds to go on Sunday as there was an early flight to catch on Monday morning, but went anyways.

We walked around for 5+ hours through the park and covered multiple waterfalls and walked along creeks. It was a very pleasant day and we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon enjoying nature.

This was my first trip with the Canon 5D Mark II with the L series lens and most importantly the Manfrotto tripod.

The pictures have improved by leaps and bounds compared to the old broken tripod and the 400D + sigma lens combination. Not that those were bad photographs but yours truly has learned a lot of tricks since that trip two years ago..

Here are a few pictures.. (the second and fourth Images are HDR composites of 5 images taken at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1 and +2 Exposures respectively and then tone adjusted in Photoshop)

Seriously thinking of getting a photo site..

Any suggestions?

Uvas Canyon County Park - Half day trip in pictures

Updated post...

While the 4 hours spent in the park today were simply amazing(as exciting as it was to take my new bride to see the golden gate bridge two weeks after we were married...considering this is the first outing for the new lens!), there are side effects like sore legs, nose bleeds etc. that require some tending to..

More pictures to follow tomorrow...

This one was taken near IBM in Bailey road (which is on the way to Uvas..) We should all be happy that we have such a glorious sun that brings up the colors and shades the way it does!

Was planning on posting more details, but the allergies are at their worst. So leaving you with just more pictures from the trip..

As usual, the post ends with one of my darlings doing something memorable. The little one picked up a stick in her hand to walk around after watching everyone around her have a stick. No one in our party had one though. She also picked a really tiny stick which she carried with her the entire time. Every now and then she would break into her teacher routine and start saying "repeat after me, W is for..." etc. to her imaginary students. This happened everytime there was any sign within her height she could point to. It was so amusing...

.