Mexico Trip! (18 pics, DIAL UP WARNING!)

RKW3 · Mar 26, 2008

My dad, my mom, and I went to Mexico for a weekend trip (only takes a 2 hour drive to Tecate from where we live).

We were there in the beginning of this month (March) and we only stayed Saturday and half of Sunday, so we crammed a lot of activities into that time frame.

Here are some pics from the trip. To view the whole, 24 photo set please view my gallery here.

1) A view of Mexico.

2) My dad talking to a local.

3) Cattle on the fields alongside the roads.

4) A cool abandoned lot we found.

5) Old chicken coop?

6) Close up of an old, rusting car.

7) Ostriches! Not something I see everyday.

8) Grape fields, not the right type of season yet though.

9) Sea Lions! We saw these from a boat ride we got in Ensenada.

10) Old, rusting boats out in the Ensenada harbor. And look, sea lions!

11) Hey Sea Lions!

12) As you can see this is where they like to hang out.

13) Cool view from the boat at sunset.

14) City of 'La Bufadora'

15) Eye of the storm

16) World famous blow hole.

17) Yup, this is Mexico alright.

18) One of the MANY guys trying to sell you stuff as you leave Tijuana.

Sorry for having so many pics, I didn't know which pics to choose from.

Thanks for coming, comments or criticism is welcome. :biggrin:

Arch · Mar 26, 2008

Excellent shots, i enjoyed them all :thumbup:

mdc017 · Mar 26, 2008

i am amazed with the colors. do all of your pictures come out like this or did you just pick these the best?

JimmyO · Mar 26, 2008

Great shots

I like how with the last one you only desaturated the backround as opposed to just black and white.

invisible · Mar 26, 2008

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: Impressive set! I especially enjoyed #5.

I assume most (all?) of these are HDR, no?

RKW3 · Mar 26, 2008

Thanks Arch!

mdc, in post processing a lot of my colors "came alive", thanks for the comment.

Thanks Jimmy, yeah I prefer to desaturate backgrounds instead of make them complete b&w. Number 6 is also done with the same technique.

Invisible, none of them are hdr. I didn't have a tripod on this trip

. Thanks for the comment!

MarcusM · Mar 26, 2008

Wow, great shots. My faves are #1, 2, 3, 5, 17 and 18.

I don't think they're all HDRs but it definitely looks like there's a few, like #5 I think?

Other than that, did you do a lot of PP? The colors and lighting are fantastic, I'm just wondering how much of that is PP?

RKW3 · Mar 26, 2008

MarcusM said:
Wow, great shots. My faves are #1, 2, 3, 5, 17 and 18.

I don't think they're all HDRs but it definitely looks like there's a few, like #5 I think?

Other than that, did you do a lot of PP? The colors and lighting are fantastic, I'm just wondering how much of that is PP?

Thanks for your interest. In fact I did do a lot of PP on most of these, but shooting in raw was pretty much necessary. In PP I lightened the shadows a lot, then darkened the blacks, and then I did Levels adjustments and I added some unsharp mask for contrast. Another thing I did was use the selective color feature, ie. to make my skies bluer, reds redder, etc.. Basically I just randomly did things until I thought it looked good :biggrin:

.

Harmony · Mar 26, 2008

Great series!

My personal favourite is 12, because the first thing I thought was, "Whoa!"

You really got "up close and personal" (with a zoom lens, no doubt! :lol:

)

Could you give an abridged version of your PP process?

wing352 · Mar 26, 2008

Great shots!! I enjoy all of them, I really like the colour in #10

RKW3 · Mar 26, 2008

Harmony said:
You really got "up close and personal" (with a zoom lens, no doubt! )

Actually we really were that close, the fisherman who was driving the boat let us get near.

I can't really explain my pp process anymore than what I did in the earlier posts of this thread, I kind of do random things and I just keep messing with stuff until I think it looks good.. haha

wing352, thanks!

Heck · Mar 27, 2008

Great shots. Seems like a nice trip to take.

RKW3 · Mar 27, 2008

Thanks Heck, it was a ton of fun. Mexico is awesome.

Hobbes · Mar 27, 2008

wow great shots! really like the shots of sea lions

never thought there are sea lions in the subtropics and tropics.
hehe it took awhile to load the pics so I know now why people were complaining when I created a thread with 49 photos :mrgreen: