California (now day 5 of 13)

[jcdeboever]

#6 Eight seconds to cross

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Great composition. Your kind of a freak really....

 

[jcdeboever]

#8 Nantucket Circle Gated Community

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Bizarre, is this a NASA farm station?

 

[Frank F.]

I guess we will see a similar discussion when I post my Fresno series later .... may be less controversial when it comes to the San Francisco & Golden Gate & Kings Canyon. Love to see different positions!

 

[Frank F.]

Day Two

On the second day I opened my window and felt I was blasted away by the Californial sun:

#1 blasting morning sun

 

[Frank F.]

I went to the garden of our AirBnB and found our Chinese hosts grow veggies under the exhaust path of all the airplanes flying over the lot:

#2 airplane exhaust veggies

#3 airplane exhaust veggies

#4 airplane exhaust veggies

#5 airplane exhaust veggies

 

[Frank F.]

There were also other aimals, like crows and cats and a fruit tree:

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[Frank F.]

I also examined the Infrastructure closer from the garden perspective:

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[Frank F.]

upcoming: Google, Berkeley

 

[DanOstergren28 4]

I like the first shot and feel like you captured the environment and feeling very well. I also like the color tones and the added vignette, and disagree completely with anyone who says this photo "has nothing at all going for it", which seems to me more like bullying and not critiquing.

On the second one I'm not a fan of the intensity of the dark tones, but I do like the lighting on the surrounding mountains as well as the detail and color captured in the sky.

In the third shot I don't like the intensity of the bright spots; it makes it look almost as if the shot were taken with a toy camera or the lens was covered in vaseline. There's also a dust spot near the upper left corner that I personally would have removed in post processing. As far as being a shot that captures a memory for you though, I like it and see the value in it.

 

[DanOstergren28 4]

I also examined the Infrastructure closer from the garden perspective:

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I really like all of this particular set and have no critique to offer. Great lighting, subjects and compositions. None of them look heavily edited either, which is something that I think really benefits this sort of photography; they all merit in terms of photographic skill in my opinion and don't have to use editing as a crutch.

 

[Frank F.]

Very interesting for me how very polarizing these few shots were. In another forum I experienced the same while all joined behind the landscape shots later.

There are two intentions when I go shooting a foreign country:

1) experience for myself first hand
2) not reproduce what I have seen earlier

In California I could not help but see what I had seen in the photo books. That is what the first series represents. I am not there yet. I just see the echoes of what I have seen in the books.

After piercing my brain with sun my mind started to open on the second morning.

PS. My computer is just in mending mode. I experience lots of checksum errors downloading as if a man in the middle attacks the files. Then I cannot install the files. I need updates for my RAW converters though. Either my router was attacked with an attack that survives a factory reset or there is something on my system. I run LINUX from a DVD to scan all drives and can therefore not upload the rest if the 2nd day set.

My voyage started on 9 October and ended on 21 October 2016 ... I did take a lot of shots every day ... less than usual because I was my son's driver and did drive 3 to 6 hours per day. So there should be 13 sets.

 

[Frank F.]

(OK. Now on Linux, see how the upload works here)
@Google I did a one camera (D500) one lens (1.4/35 Ai-S). I really thought that I took a lot of photos whioch in fact I took not. I was talking to my brother and my son we ate wonderful food and had a great time. Not more. So I can only show you the colorful bikes, some gras and a signet...

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[Frank F.]

I really do not want to show "friends & family", so only very few impressions from a friend's house in Berkeley (I really thought I took more pictures):


#17 still this "Northern African" light & color intensity!

#18 the girls have a nice sense for colors:

#19 Electrical installations, American style. For my German eyes this looks third worldish:

 

[Frank F.]

Later we went to the sea side for a long walk in cold wind and bright sin, my son was freezing but happy.

First set is SF skyline, surfer, pelican:

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[Frank F.]

Then we visited a peninsula made of concrete rubble where wild fennel and thistles grow, scatterd artwork and graffiti. People walking their dogs, sea side houses by the Highway in the setting sun:

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