Inquisitive Gizmo!

I was out in the back yard playing with Gizmo and I was taking his picture, all of the sudden he realized i was sitting on the ground with a camera and he had to come up and inspect it. He is always really interested and willing to learn about everything...and I think he loves to have his picture taken, LOL!
About the actual shot, I love taking pictures of faces with shallow depth of field. I used my Canon 50mm f1.8 mkII lens and set it to F/1.8 to really give me that shallow DOF. I focused on his left eye and took the shot, ofcourse it really helps that he is a very good puppy and listens when I tell him to sit, stay and not move. Well for the most part he will follow those commands. After I processed the shot using Adobe Lightroom again converting it to B&W and pushing the contrast up a bit. I have been trying to do more and more in the camera and less on the computer which is real nice, but just so you know I will always do a little post processing work to make the exposures just a little better.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)

Lens: Canon EF 50mm 2.8 MkII

Focal Length: 50mm

Aperture: f/1.8

Shutter: 1/100sec

Lazy Sunday!

Good old Ecco loves nothing more than to plop himself down on the cool hardwood floor on lazy Sunday mornings. We were watching TV on sunday morning and the light comes into our apartments and creates great white light that shines on the floor, sitting there I saw Ecco laying down and decided to get down on the floor with him and take this image. Ofcourse I had to shoo Gizmo (our puppy) away, LOL! I focused in on Eccos left eye and took the shot. As you probably all know by now I love Black & White, color is just so regular, its what everybody sees! B&W baby!

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 18mm
Aperture: F/3.5
Shutter: 1/15sec

The city shines bright under the moonlight.

Took an unplanned trip to Griffith Observatory the other night and waited for the sun to go down, I started taking sunset shots but this city is really the most beautiful at full night time. I took many shots of the city, the Hollywood sign, etc. but my favorite shot was this one, city way off in the distance the the moon shinning down on it. Post processing done on this image was minimal, mainly converting to Black & White, adding a little contrast but that was pretty much it.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 200
Aperture: F/3.5
Shutter: 2.5 sec

Downtown LA from Historic filipino town.

Looking down Glendale Blvd towards downtown LA. I love the city at night sometimes it feels peaceful and scary at the same time. Walking around alone in a city that never sleeps is great fun. Sometimes the city looks ugly sometimes amazing but always has lots of character.

Post processing was easy on this image, B&W... and as Jared Polin would say I "boom-ified" basically lots of contrast and darken the sky. I find that in LA when you photograph the city at night you have to darken the sky instead of lightening it since there is so much reflected light from the city.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F/3.5
Shutter: 1/2 sec

Echo Park Lake

Driving home as I passed the Echo Park Lake I noticed that the sky was full of "puffy" clouds which is actually pretty rare in LA, we usually have flat blue skies on sunny days. I thought this would be a great time to take an image of the lake with the city in the BG.

Post processing was all done in Lightroom 3, obviously I made in B&W, bumped up the contrast and other small cleanups.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 55mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F/5.6
Shutter: 1/500 sec

The city of Angels is always in a hurry.

Found a great location to take a long exposure of cars heading in to the city. Just about the 110 freeway up in Elysian Park. I drove up there and waited for it to get dark before I could take these shots. I guess it must have been around 9pm not that it matters since in this city the streets are always packed, but I didn't want to take any chances on there not being enough cars. The second image is really great because of the cars coming toward us from inside the tunnel.

All post processing on both images was done in Lightroom 3. These were pretty simple mostly just contrast and small saturation increases in the sky.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 46mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F/22
Shutter: 30 sec

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)

Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm

Focal Length: 46mm

ISO: 100

Aperture: F/22

Shutter: 20 sec

Portland Head Light - Cape Elizabeth Maine

On a trip to Portland, Maine for Jay's wedding we went for a picnic to Cape Elizabeth's Fort Williams where this lighthouse is. While walking down to the lighthouse with Sonia's sister Erica, I took this image of the lighthouse with my iPhone 4.

Camera: iPhone 4
Lens: iPhone 4 back lens
Focal Length: 3.85mm
ISO: 80
Aperture: F/2.8
Shutter: 1/850

Post processing: I did a lot of work on this image, the most obvious being turning it to B&W, but I also sharpened, contrasted and I also corrected the horizon as it was a little slanted. I'm not going to list all the changes on this one because since it was shot with the iPhone most of the changes were simple tweaks.

Los Angeles from the 1st Street Bridge over LA River.

I drove out to this location and waited for the sun to go down behind the city, I was planning on getting a shot of Downtown LA skyline, but once I found this location I thought it would be more interesting to get the perspective of the street leading up to the city. After a while of planning I saw a metro train roll by and decided I would wait for the next train which run pretty often at the 6:00pm to 8:00pm hours. I was hoping to get a shot of the moving train with the sun setting behind the city.

Camera: Canon Rebel T2i (550D)
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 100
Aperture: F/22
Shutter: 1/30

Post Processing: I used Adobe Lightroom and did a lot of modifications to get this image.  Here is list of the modifications I did.
Temp: 5550
Tint: +16
Recovery: 100
Fill Light: 10
Blacks: 35
Brightness: +150
Contrast: +100
Clarity: +50
Vibrance: +25
Saturation: -30
Tone Curve: Medium Contrast
Sharpening: Amount 40, Radius .8, Detail 35
Noise Reduction: Luminance 100, Detail 50, Color 100.
Lens Correction: Canon EF-S 18-55mm Profile.