Red Hill Coffee Shop
Roadside Americana
Adjacent to Red Hill BBQ is the Red Hill Coffee Shop in Rancho Cucamonga, California. When I captured this image I was attracted to the geometry of the bui;ding from this angle of view, the paint job, the signage and the character sitting on the bench outside the building. A weird group of details to be attracted to, but the totality of the details and the overall scene trigger my mind to conjure up some interesting scenarios.
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Red Hill BBQ
Roadside Americana
Red Hill BBQ, Rancho Cucamonga, California. I love the wagon wheels, pot bellied stove and the oil barrel pit with the smoke coming off it. There is real fragrance to real barbeque.
Give Up A Little Love For The Old Girl.
Prowler Roadster inviting suitors, American Classics Car Show, NHRA Museum, Pomona, California 21-Oct-2012.
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Red Coupe #5
American Classics Car Show, NHRA Museum, Pomona, California 21-Oct-2012
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Red In The Afternoon
Nikon D7000 18-200mm @ 56mm ISO 200 1/200 f/11 Lr4; PsCS6
The San Marino Motor Classic, June 10, 2012, Lacy Park, San Marino, California.
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New Bug On The Block
Nikon D7000 18-200mm @ 40mm ISO 200 1/60 f/22 Lr4; PsCS6
We spotted this shiny new red beetle while going for a walk in our neighborhood recently.
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A Man, His Best Friend & Favorite Toy
Nikon D7000 18-125mm @ 35mm ISO 320 1/20 f/5.6 Lr4; PsCS6
I met this gentleman and his companion at the Santa Clarita Valley Corvette Club car show, October 16, 2010. This was the first car show I had ever attended. This image was originally rendered as an HDR, however, now that the thrill of discovering the HDR process has run its initial course with me, I can look at the HDR image and admit that the process, and the state of my skill level at the time that I originally processed it, were both sub-par. In actuality this image did not need HDR processing and it was diminished by poorly applied HDR processing.
I’ve spent part of the past week going back in my catalog and re-processing images, losing the bad HDR and improving the final renderings. I’ll talk more about this in Wednesday’s post.
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Bouganvilla #71; Climbing The Wall
Images From My Yard
Nikon D7000 18-200mm @ 82mm ISO 400 1/50 f/16 Lr3, TpzSim; PsCS5
This bouganvilla is climbing the south wall in our backyard, getting plenty of sun all day long, it was totally decimated a few years ago when the block wall was built to replace the old wood fence and is making a good come-back. The same treatment was given on the opposite side of the yard this past year when the wood was replaced by a new block wall. I can’t wait until all the bouganvilla comes back and our backyard perimeter will be covered by green and shades of red.
Clean Chevy: 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air Two Door Hardtop
Spring Car Show Season
Nikon D7000 18-200mm @ 38mm ISO 200 1/100 f/18 Lr4, TpzSim; PsCS5
Standing its ground among superior numbers of Corvettes at the Corvettes West/Ronald McDonald House car show, April 1, 2012 in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
Floral Impression #4
Images From My Yard
Nikon D7000 17-135mm @ 135mm ISO 1600 1/640 f/16 Lr3, SnapArt3; PsCS5
This image is the first in a series of 15 floral images that were captured when I assigned myself a project to find images only in the backyard of my home. I captured this image with a regular zoom lens, not a macro lens, hand held. I achieved the impressionistic feeling for the image using an Alien Skin Snap Art 3 filter which applied an impasto like brushstroke, then using layer masking in Photoshop I applied a gaussian blur to the background elements.
This image reminds me of something you would find as the “face” of a greeting card, with of course a suitably sappy message imprinted on the inside.
Wednesday Ritual
Nikon D7000 18-200mm @ 29mm ISO 1600 3-bkts (-2EV, 0, +2EV) Lr4, HEP1, CEP4; PsCS5
This scene is becoming part of our Wednesday ritual. A double bacon cheeseburger and chocolate Coke for me; a bacon cheeseburger and a Coke or shake for Judy at our usual table inside Johnny Rocket’s. When we are really energetic we then walk over to the adjacent Wednesday farmers market in The Shoppes in Chino Hills, California where we might score some fresh produce, or a container of goodies from the baklava man.
I used the Glamour Glow and Tonal Contrast filters in Color Efex Pro to tweak this image, which as usual was a hand-held three frames bracketed.
Hanging Out With Dad
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 14mm ISO 800 3-bkts f/20 Lr3, HEP1, TpzSim; PsCS
The scene is the South Lake Avenue shopping district in Pasadena, California. Life couldn’t be better for a young girl than a leisurely afternoon window shopping ride with the family dog and dad towing us in a red wagon.
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Angry Bird
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 10mm ISO 2500 3-bkts f/16 Lr3, HEP1, TpzSim; PsCS5
When I first started post processing this I was thinking “Italian Flag”, and while it has all the right colors, they were not proportioned right. Then as I looked at the image, more and more, it hit me, “angry bird!”.
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“Doctor Who, your transport is ready.”
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @10mm ISO 800 3-bkts f/20 Lr3, HEP1, TpzSim; PsCS5
Is it really Doctor Who’s time traveling machine or just a classic British telephone box found at a British themed mini-mall in Pasadena, California?
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Fall Color #112
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 135mm ISO 200 1/250 f/18 +2EV -2EV Lr3, HEP1, Tpz Sim; PsCS5
The trees were on fire with red and orange tones behind the businesses on Second Street in Pomona California.
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Roaring 20′s Excursion
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 24mm ISO 1600 3-bkts f/8 Lr3; HEP1
A typical baggage cart loaded with hand luggage and mail bags is on display at the San Bernardino Railroad & History Museum. The era represented could be the Roaring 20′s, the advertising card is for a rail excursion in 1923 from Venice, California to the 13th National Orange show in San Bernardino. The excursion was operated by the Pacific Electric Railway Company, which during its heyday had electric trolleys, popularly termed “red cars” criss crossing the greater Los Angeles area. The excursion from the beach at Venice inland to San Bernardino would have been roughly 100 miles if travelling by automobile, Pacific Electric offered a special excursion fare on Washington’s Birthday, February 18, 1928 for $3.25, round trip, via their electric trolleys
Pacific Electric’s operations began declining after the second world war, and most of the rail lines were eliminated throughout the 1950′s. The scandale that arose in the 1960′s was that it was widely thought that oil company and automotive manufacturing interests were responsible for the decision to replace the interurban rail transit system with freeways, cars and buses.
Ironically, local government and transportation authorities began championing interurban rail transit again in the 1980′s and the first Metro Blue Line rail transit (subway) line began operations in 1990 and later the Red, Green and Gold Lines were added, as was the Metrolink heavy rail system linking more distant exurbs. All of this work completed or still under construction in 2012, at considerable more cost to the taxpayers and environmental impact than would have accrued if the Pacific Electric Railway would never have been abandoned.
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Ultra Economy Class
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 18mm ISO 1600 1/15 -2EV +2EV f/13 Lr3, HEP1, CEP3; PsCS5
While those One Percenter’s are getting their shoes shined on the tarmac in front of their private jet they never forget the rest of us, and kindly arrange for alternative transportation for the wage earners.
This is a Hudson Bay Railroad hand car on display at the San Bernardino Railroad & History Museum.
Splotchy Leaves
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 135mm ISO 1600 1/160 f/20 Lr3, TpzSim; PsCS5
Found at a Lowe’s home improvement store garden department. I believe this may be part of the syngonium family, commonly referred to as Arrowhead Vine, bur being wrong is something that I am very familiar with, so don’t try to win any bar bets based upon my authority. I was heavy handed with the painterly effects and it was by design, abstracting the image out so you can view it as you would a Rorshach ink blot, and let your imagination fill in the blanks.
Waiting For The Light
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 24mm ISO 640 3-bkts f/25 Lr3, HEP1, TpzSim; PsCS5
It was an early summer evening in Glendora, California when we came upon this scene. The light changed to green and the woman went on here way, and we proceeded across and up the street to capture shop windows in the fading light.
Red Coupe
Car Show Fortnight
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 32mm ISO 800 3-bkts f/16 Lr3, HEP1, TpzSimp; PsCS5
Another red coupe on display at the Ontario Police Department Guns & Hoses car show, July 23, 2011. I gave this a painterly treatment using Topaz Labs’ Simplify Photoshop plug-in.
Antique Red & Black Buick
Car Show Fortnight
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 35mm ISO 800 3-bkts f/16 Lr3, HEP1; PsCS5
Today begins the Car Show Fortnight on the blog, two weeks of automotive images captured at car shows in the greater L.A. area. This image represents the oldest vehicle in this current series, an antique Buick that drove to the Ontario Police Department’s Guns & Hoses Car Show, in their parking lot 23, 2011. This image was created from two tone mapped versions produced in HDR Efex Pro, then layered and masked in Photoshop.
Update: This is a re-worked version of the original images, after considering Ken’s feedback.
Righteous Red Rod
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 31mm ISO 640 1/200 f/22 Lr3, PsCS5; TpzSim
All is right in the world for the man or woman who can park their lovingly hand crafted red hot rod next to a shady tree on a hot summer afternoon, pull up some lawn chairs, a cooler of cold beverages, and shoot the breeze with other automotive aficionados. This scene was captured at the “Old Pomona Hot Rod & Custom Car Show” held at Thomas Plaza just off of Second Street in Pomona, California on July 23, 2011.
This was another one of my painterly exercises achieved using the Topaz Labs Simplify plug-in with Photoshop. While this rendering is obviously a far cry from a purist’s concept of a straight documentary photograph, to me it conveys the beauty of the automobile, and a sense of the person who handcrafted it and a feeling for the time and place where it was displayed on both an analytical and an emotional level.
Ruby’s Red Vette
Nikon D7000 18-135mm @ 24mm ISO 800 3-bkts f/16 Lr3, HEP1; PsCS5
I’m going with an automotive theme this week, and starting with this image captured at an all Corvette show held in Redondo Beach, California this past June. The show was hosted by the Vette Set car club which is active in the L.A. area. This was one of 90 Corvettes on display that day, and situated as it was in front of Ruby’s diner with the matching color scheme, the scene begged me to capture it.
I applied the usual processing to achieve an HDR image then created an adjustment layer in Photoshop for de-saturation and then selectively painted out the masking to reveal the original saturation.
Heritage Boxcar
Nikon D7000 10-24mm @ 15mm ISO 400 3-bkts f/22 Lr3, HEP1, CEP3; PsCS5
This old boxcar is resting on the western edge of Heritage Square, hard by the Pasadena Freeway (the nation’s first freeway) in Los Angeles. As an example of great minds thinking alike I captured this image at about the same time that Van Sutherland captured a similar image, two time zones away. Van titled his image “Character” and you will find it on his blog Exile Imaging. Van’s version is more realistic than my interpretation, my excuse is that he had a better weathered subject than I did, covered with some great peeling paint, so I had to rely more upon slight of hand to make my surfaces more interesting.
