Elk Antler Arches-Jackson Hole

When I wrote the new Topaz Clarity plugin review yesterday, pricing and exact availability had not been released. Heidi, from Topaz Labs, emailed me today letting me know that it is being released tomorrow and the retail price is $49.99. Because, I guess, this is a brand new product for Topaz, they are offering a special price of $29.99 through May 31st if you use the promo code claritynew, at checkout.

Definitely is worthy of adding to your Perfect HDR arsenal. Get Topaz Clarity here.

Today’s Perfect HDR photo of an archway of elk antlers in Jackson Hole Wyoming is another one I’ve put through Topaz Clarity.

The Elk Antler Archways of Jackson Hole

There is a huge National Elk Reserve just outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  So, it’s no surprise that the locals have an overabundance of elk antlers.  Once there is one hanging over the doorway and fireplace of every home and business in this upscale town, they went looking for other ways of, let’s call it, “recycling” old antlers the elk have shed.  I prefer to think of it this way rather than the antlers coming from hunted animals.

If arches are good enough for MacDonald’s, then they are good enough for Jackson Hole!  I can just hear the town council proclamation when the idea was ratified back in the day.  So, at the four corners of the one-square block central park in Jackson Hole, now stand rather unique monuments made entirely of elk antlers.

The morning I took this shot last week was very gloomy.  Very very gloomy, and rainy.  I really wanted to show Mai the Grand Tetons and it was hard to imagine that the weather would be bad enough to shroud these monoliths which run a few miles parallel to the snake river north of Moose, Wyoming.

Yeah, it was that bad.  I have seen the Tetons several times and this is my first shutout.  RATS.  No great HDR photo ops here this time.

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After Using Topaz Clarity

Last week Topaz Labs sent me a pre-release version of their brand new product called Topaz Clarity.  I was on a two-week photography road trip and normally would have waited until getting home to give something new, like this, a try.  However, the promise it made of naturally and intelligently enhancing edge definition, contrast, and clarity without adding halos to images, was too much to ignore.  After all, halos are the ubiquitous image flaw present in more than 95 percent of the HDR photos I see online and the biggest common image flaw that my Perfect HDR processing workflow is designed to eliminate.

Halos in HDR Photo – Click to enlarge

Halos are for Angels, not Your Photos

If you are new to HDR, you may not even realize that your images have halos.  I didn’t.  We are so stoked at how cool the HDR technology makes our photographs look that we fail to see the flaws or just don’t know how to eliminate them.

Halos occur at high contrast edges, such as; where sky meets a building or mountains or thin tree branches.  Here is the same image, poorly processed.  Check out the ugly dark grey areas in the sky between the trees… halos.  Bad stuff.  You don’t want this in your HDR photos. If you adopt my simple Perfect HDR workflow, you won’t have these disgusting halos to worry about.

The Topaz Clarity Plugin Test

So, one evening on my road trip last week, I ran one of my HDR photos of Yellowstone National Park through the new Topaz Clarity plugin.  The resulting image, above at the top of the page, shows a remarkably subtle, yet impressive improvement over the normal processing I would have been happy with using my recommended Perfect HDR process.  The “before” image is below:

Perfect HDR processing before Using Topaz Clarity

The before image is much flatter with less mid-tone contrast. After using Topaz Clarity, the photo really pops! Best of all… NO HALOS!

What’s in Topaz Clarity?

The control I like best so far in Topaz Clarity is mid-tone contrast which allows me to quickly get some zing into the mid tones which used to take a lot more work.  It brings back detail into those areas which are usually lost when you mess with high contrast adjustments.

Do you ever want to selectively adjust colors, saturation, luminance and/or hues?  If not, you will want to learn the creative power in doing so. I do this quite easily in Lightroom 4 now.  If you are not using Lightroom, now you can do these creative color manipulations right in Topaz Clarity. You’ll learn to like this feature a lot!

Then we have the new masking technology!  The fun never ends.  If you are a Lightroom 4 user, you already enjoy the ease and creative help from the edge aware masking brush.  I love the edge aware brush and use it on virtually all my images. Topaz Clarity has three different masking brushes; normal, edge aware, and color aware for easy and precise masking. There are also several gradient masks, which, on top of all the rest, give you extremely precise control of all areas of your image.

If any of the above sounds difficult, it’s not.  Don’t worry about it. One great thing about Topaz is the abundance of video tutorials available for all of their great products. The interface is very intuitive and you’ll be enhancing your Perfect HDR images like a veteran the first day you use it.

Topaz Clarity Compatibility and Recommendations

Over the past few days, I’ve been testing Topaz Clarity on all my processed images and always find a lovely improvement in my HDR result.  For those of you who want a little geeky info on why this plugin seems so good, let’s run it down for you.

• Topaz Clarity easily manages your micro, midrange and overall contrast.  It’s easy to give your HDR photos added punch while still maintaining a natural feeling of tonality to keep it real. This improvement in local contrast results in no added noise, halos, or artifacts with minimal post-processing effort.

• Topaz Clarity is compatible with Mac and Windows platforms. It works with Adobe Photoshop CS4-CS6, Elements 9-11, Aperture 2-3, and, best of all, Lightroom 4.  Any application which supports Photoshop plugins will also support Topaz Clarity.

• The software comes with over 100 presets which are categorized into those best used for portrait, landscape, fashion, architecture  nature, etc.  It’s easy to create your own presets too.

Fitting into the Perfect HDR Workflow

Right now, my recommendation for a Perfect HDR workflow for beginning HDR photographers consists simply of Adobe Lightroom 4 and the Photomatix merge-to-32-bit plugin.  Using only these two softwares you can produce consistently stunning HDR images without halos, noise or artifacts.  You may find it strange, but I do not recommend that photographers new to HDR try to use Photomatix Pro.  Pro is like a NASCAR race car; too powerful and beginners always seem to get into poopy trouble using it.  Just look at all the poorly processed HDR online and I rest my case.

Of course, not all the bad HDR is attributable to Photomatix Pro, which is really awesome software, just that it’s MUCH harder to learn to use properly. There are several other powerful HDR programs that beginners can also easily get into lots of trouble with too and I would just not use any of them until you get a some solid HDR experience.  Then, and only then, would I recommend upgrading to one of them.  However, Photomatix Pro is still the best HDR software available and the only one I recommend.  Just promise me that when you get Pro, you’ll tonemap responsibly

Is Topaz Clarity for You?

When you have mastered my easy to learn Perfect HDR workflow and are ready to add a new creative dimension to your work, consider adding Topaz Clarity to your system.  It’s a worthy plugin to add to my recommended Perfect HDR workflow.  With the combination of Lightroom 4, Photomatix merge-to-32-bit plugin , and Topaz Clarity, I know you can make images just as compelling as you can by using Photomatix Pro and Photoshop but it won’t take you years to learn how.  It’s a lot cheaper too, by the way.

Topaz Clarity will become available sometime this week.  I have not yet seen the pricing on this product, but when you buy it, save 15% by using the promo code PerfectHDR at checkout.  This promo code works for 15% off any Topaz product.

Be a Show-off

If you are using my Perfect HDR workflow, please come join us on Google plus in the Perfect HDR Photography Community.  Everybody there loves seeing new work and we welcome questions when you run up against things in your HDR processing.

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Alien Landscape – Badlands National Park

This is just one of the cool places we’ve visited on our road trip the past several days.  This road trip is happening because of my daughter, Ashley’s, graduation (YAYYYYY!)  from the University of Colorado in Boulder.  Instead of flying and missing all the scenery and fun of a road trip, Mai and I drove.  Along the way we planned to visit with friends along the route and see some new territory.

Badlands National Park in South Dakota is where our friends Cathy & Bill Fliris wanted to show us.  They live in Lusk Wyoming, a place I had never heard of until we met Cathy on a yoga retreat at Haramara in Mexico a few years back.  Bill is also a photographer and he showed me some of his beautiful work taken here at Badlands, the Black Hills and Alaska when they loved there.

It was really great that they both took a day off work to drive with us to Badlands on the hottest day of the year, so far.  It was 97 that day and made the Badlands feel even badder.  At sunset I was able to get some super shots of this desolate place.  Many people will not appreciate the Badlands as I do and my time there was way too short to give me time to explore it as it deserves.  Bill was telling me that the National Park Service has outpost cabins that they actually allow artists to occupy for free if they feel your work is worthy.  I’m definitely going to look into that further and maybe get back here for a couple weeks in the Spring or Fall.

Sunset over Badlands National Park

Related articles

• Badlands
• Watercolor artist is at home in the Badlands
• imabonehead: Badlands Picture — National Park Photo — National Geographic Photo of the Day
• Crazy Photo: Lightning & Double Rainbow Over Badlands

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Yosemite Valley in Fresh Snow

My fondness for black and white photography started in the late 70′s.  Color photography was not only difficult to achieve in the home darkroom then, it was also expensive and required a lot more equipment than black & white.  Back then, I was young and not rich so I learned to love black & white.   There must also be grateful acknowledgment to my ex-wife who relinquished one of our three bathrooms to me for the exclusive use for my black & white darkroom.  At the time we had only two children… later, I would need to give up the darkroom as life picked up speed.

Mixing chemicals, dodging and burning under my Beseler 23 C enlarger, developing my own negatives and hanging them with clothespins, and quietly working in the amber glow of my safelight are my happy memories of my first years in photography.  By the way, I still have that Beseler enlarger with all the Nikon lenses for 35mm and 2 1/4 square format film, filters, and other darkroom doodads and really need to find a good home for that stuff.

During that time I learned what fine art black and white photography can be.  To view an original done by one of the masters is a beautiful experience.  Many times I would leave after work in San Francisco and go to the museum of modern art or the fine art museum when an important photography exhibit was up.

So, today, it’s a bit regrettable that I don’t do more black & white.  With digital photography it’s just too easy to do color and especially now with HDR and how cool that is, black & white photography just doesn’t happen often very much for me anymore.

The other evening I was pawing through my Lightroom catalog and ran across photos of the time Mai and I went to Yosemite in the winter a few years ago.  This was before I knew about HDR photography so I was just doing what I always do in Yosemite, only in color this time.  This shot was taken along the roadside heading up to tunnel view.  Tunnel View is beautiful, and EVERYBODY takes that shot.  I wanted a slightly different vantage point.  Having the snow made this shot possible. Taking this same shot from the same place without the snow would be a very forgettable photograph.  The snow adds the contrast this scene needs to be effective, especially to the foreground rocks and branches.

Well, one of the photos just spoke to me saying it would love to be seen as a black and white.  So I promptly opened it up in the amazing Topaz plugin for Lightroom, Black & White effects 2.  None of the fantastic presets were exactly what I wanted, but one of them was close.  All I did was add an additional “orange” filter from the plugin to give the sky a little darkening and more drama.  Ansel Adams used to use red and orange filters quite often to get the super cool dramatic skies you find in his work.

Sometimes I wonder what Ansel Adams might have adopted as his workflow in the digital age?

Related articles

• New Topaz B&W Effects 2 Released
• Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite Valley
• Artistic Black And White Photography By Matej Michalik
• Ansel Adams and his Love for Water

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So Many Questions

The participants convened at the appointed time at the Bladium in Alameda.  One could anticipate the fierce competition ahead with the unmistakably turbulent testosterone/estrogen energy mix in the matrix that afternoon. How many casualties will there be? Who will prevail? Will the clash be fair? Does one of the young jedi’s secretly have the referee in his pocket to influence the outcome? Will there be plenty of beer and pizza for the spent combatants? Who will be MVP and who will be forgotten? Will the sporadically erupting embers of 28 candles seriously singe the eyebrows of the anointed one?

The answers and more are in the photos below.

The Soccer Awards

Everybody was remembered and recognized for their special talent… except for the slight Kate faux pas. Peter is a fast thinker though, and recovered nicely.

It was a beautiful day shared with friends & family.  Happy birthday Peter!

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Craigdarroch Castle – Victoria-BC

Castles in Canada?

Scotland is on my bucket list. I want to see castles. Germany will also do. Turns out that there’s one that’s very cool up in Victoria, British Columbia. This photo is Craigdarroch Castle and was the home of Robert Dunsmuir, although he never got to live there.

By reading the literature about this must-see Canadian Castle I learned that Robert Dunsmuir was a Scottish immigrant who made a boatload of cash in the coal business on Vancouver Island. The legend proclaims that this Victorian Castle, built on a hill overlooking the City of Victoria, announced to the world that Robert Dunsmuir was officially the richest and most important man in Western Canada. Alrighty then…

The bad news, for Robert, was that he died in 1889 before the house… Castle… was completed. His lovely and talented wife, however, enjoyed many years living here until she died in 1908.

Here’s what a stash of cash will buy you in the late 1800′s. Four floors of exquisite stained glass windows, 39 rooms, over 20,000 square feet, servants to be sure, intricate woodwork and fabulous Victorian era Furnishings on several acres of lavishly landscaped gardens atop a hill with panoramic views of Victoria, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Olympic Mountains. It feels like a Fairytale to me.

Toadie Sent Me

Thanks to my friend, Scott Johnson, I got this HDR photograph of Craigdarroch Castle.  Mai and I were having lunch with Scott, of Toad Hollow Photography, and he suggested that we check  it out.  Turns out that we were within walking distance of the castle! So that evening, on the way to dinner, I asked if we could please just make a quick stop at the Castle for a picture?  Our friends are not photographers so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, yet I really wanted to get a shot of this unique place. As you can see, we timed it perfectly!  Literally, another 45 seconds after I shot this and the sun was down.

It’s a lovely place to see next time you’re in Victoria.  Craigdarroch Castle.

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Empress Hotel Carved Wood-Victoria B.C.

Easy Perspective Correction for those Crooked Lines

It happens to us all the time.  Our photos have distortion and converging lines.  Sometimes the cause is wide angle lens distortion and other times it’s convergence from the focal plane of our camera not being parallel to the lines in our scene.

The most common example of convergence is shooting a building from the ground and having to tilt your camera upwards to capture the entire building.  The resulting image has converging lines making the building look like it’s leaning backwards.  This effect can be eliminated by using an expensive tilt-shift lens or by doing a simple perspective correction in Photoshop.

Most of the time I’m not too bothered by converging lines like this. It depends on the image but usually I don’t correct it.  Actually, when you look at a tall building from the ground, the lines you see actually do this so it’s not unrealistic to leave some convergence on your photos.

If you do architectural photography, then you will probably want to correct the perspective to render all the lines nice and straight and tidy.

There are other occasions when you just don’t or can’t get your camera setup right to keep the important lines heading the right direction and end up with a terribly warped image like the one I had to deal with for this post.

The last common cause of distortion that we want to correct is the result of using a very wide-angle lens.  Objects at the sides of the frame can get terribly out of whack. This happens to me a lot because I use my 11-16mm wide-angle about 95% of the time.

We can correct all of these distortions very easily using Photoshop’s perspective distortion correction tool.  This short video shows you how.

News flash! Lightroom 5 Beta has Automatic Perspective Correction built-in!

As I’m writing this post, Adobe is announcing its new Lightroom 5 Beta to the public. According to the information I’m seeing, this newest version of Lightroom has automatic perspective correction built into it.  This is, of course, terrific news for beginning HDR photographers who don’t want to spend the big bucks for Photoshop. In fact, this news is most delightful because the HDR workflow I use and recommend for beginning HDR photographers uses only Lightroom for image processing.  So as soon as Lightroom 5 is released, the distortion correction in this post will be available even to my beginning HDR photographers!  Pretty cool.

Related articles

• Perspective Correct is a nifty photo utility for your iPhone
• Straighten your photos
• 
  Hands-on Photo Tips: Advanced Distortion Correction in Photosho
  p
• Julieanne’s favorite features in the Lightroom 5 Beta

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The reason I even started looking for new themes for my photo blog websites is because I noticed that 50% or more of my readers are accessing my websites on mobile browsers.  It’s 2013 and the time is here to build your online assets to be equally responsive to all browsers on all devices and give all users a great experience. FYI, Google is now factoring in “user experience” into their ranking.  This includes page load times as well as browser compatibility.

The newly upgraded websites have been live for just a few days now and that’s enough time to see the difference in website traffic behavior.  I’m noticing that I’m now getting more page views per visit.  Exactly what I wanted to happen!  The websites load much faster now too so my Google page rank should benefit nicely from just changing the theme.  That’s definitely worth it for me.

Now that I’m finished re-theming both websites, I feel temporarily like an expert on WordPress responsive themes for photography.  Several days spent researching all the new themes available and trying out some of them led me to adopt two finalists for my two photo blogs.   While this information is fresh in my mind, I want to write it down for you if you’re looking for an easy & worthwhile upgrade your photography website too.

What’s a Responsive WordPress Theme?

That’s the same question I had when I started seeing that phrase among the heavyweight WordPress theme vendors online; Theme Forest, Elegant Themes, Photocrati, Studiopress, etc. It surprised me to learn that a responsive WordPress theme is exactly what I was looking for, I just didn’t know what they were called. Dopey me.

What I needed.  A new theme for my WordPress photo blog websites that is more friendly when viewed on mobile devices. I also wanted to feature my photos in large or full-screen display to WOW my visitors.  With my old themes, it was  a crap shoot about how they ended up rendering on an android phone, or an iPad, or anything else.  Responsive themes are made to adapt to any browser so your photography website always looks great to everybody everywhere, hence, a great user experience!

Let me show you some of the cooler responsive themes I found and  the ones I chose for my two photo blog websites.

Premium WordPress Photography Themes:

Photocrati WordPress Themes for Photography

I easily could have gone with Photocrati. There are 60 different WordPress themes for photographers in this top-notch line. You get access to all 60 themes with the one price of $89. In the end, I think I was just resisting the price. After all, I’m used to using the free themes available in the WordPress repository for many websites I build. And what if I buy the theme and then don’t like it? At the end of the day though, I realized that none of the free themes offer what I need and what modern themes for photographers are capable of. So, this time, I’m looking into premium WordPress themes to get what I really want.

As a photographer, my online presence is crucial to my success. It my website looks bad, I look bad. If it’s stunning with an engaging user experience, people will hang around longer and there is a better chance of gaining a new fan. So, this time, I spent some money.

Photocrati is a beautiful solution and I might just come back to it if either of my other two choices end up giving me trouble. They have a 30 day unconditional guarantee so, try it and get your money back if it ends up you find it doesn’t work for your needs.

Responsive Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes offer a stable of 82 WordPress themes.  17 of them are fully responsive themes so those are the ones I zeroed in on to check out.  The one that caught my attention is their Deep Focus theme and it’s this theme that I decided on for this website.  I like the home page slider that links to my choice of inner pages. I found that the theme is very easy to configure and the short codes really let your creativity go nuts.  There is a lot more customization available with the Deep Focus theme than I’m utilizing now.  For a mere $39 a year you get access to all 82 themes, support, upgrades, and a no questions asked 30 day money back guarantee.

Gleam Responsive Theme

Gleam is another cool theme available at Elegant Themes. I chose to use it on my golf course photography website; YourGolfMoment.com. So, for my $39 at Elegant Themes I got two themes for my two websites!

What I like about this theme is its simplicity to configure and the awesome full screen look.  It really makes my photos pop! All themes that I review on this page have a full online demo available on the respective vendor’s websites so that you can play around and see the possibilities for your photography business website.

Theme Forest Premium WordPress Themes.

Theme Forest is a huge repository of premium WordPress themes from many developers.  The website sort of acts like a broker for these developers to sell their themes.  If you search for “photography” themes you get over 300 results.  The search “Responsive” turns up more than 500 results.  Way too many in either case to check them all out.  I relied on reading other blogs to narrow my search within Theme Forest… it is a forest indeed!

The Keres theme I like a lot!  It give a true full screen experience, it’s elegant, and has a very intuitive user interface.  My blog would look great with my “more real than life” HDR photos featured in this theme. The price isn’t bad at $45 but that’s the only theme you get for that price.  Theme Forest isn’t a site where you buy a small subscription and get access to all their WordPress themes.  It’s à la carte.  For that reason, I decided to pass on Keres, for now, to see how I like Deep Focus in the long run.  If I decide to make a change, it’s super easy to just pop for the $45 and apply the Keres theme.  That’s what I love about WordPress for my photography website… changing the look & feel with themes takes only minutes.

Studiopress Themes

Back when I first began blogging about 8 years ago, Studiopress, with their famous Genesis framework, offered the best themes available for SEO. That’s what I started with, became comfortable with and have used on all websites I’ve build for myself and Mai over the years.  Their themes are excellent, no doubt.  I had been using their Manhattan theme for years on this blog until I just changed last week to Deep Focus.

The reason I didn’t continue with Studiopress is because I don’t feel they offer great themes made specifically for photographers.  However, you may feel differently. So please take a peek at their collection.  Manhattan is still a great theme, so is Landscape for a photography website.  The Minimal theme is a responsive theme and also works well as a photography website.  Studiopress themes run around $80.

Free eBook

One of the big vendors of premium Wordpress themes has a free e-book offer. Good info if you’re concerned about making your photography website rock.

Using WordPress for your Photography Website

Before wrapping this up I want to say a little about why I prefer WordPress over any other platform for my photography website.

• The most important thing to me is that I control it.  By using a free WordPress.org (NOT a WordPress.com) blog, I host my website on my own server.  Yes this costs me $5 a month. Big deal.  I don’t have to worry about anybody ever going out of business and my website disappearing overnight.  Sorry Photoshelter and all the rest, call me paranoid or controlling, but I like to know that all my hard work building links and a loyal following are not at risk.
• WordPress sites are flexible.  With thousands of useful plugins, virtually ANYTHING is possible. It may take some tinkering, but I’ve always been able to give my websites any functionality I want.  It’s so easy to do too there is no need to hire a webmaster.
• Google loves blogs.  Very important.  I want to rank high on page one for certain keywords.  Blogging accomplishes that for me.  Several times I’ve found a page I published one morning ranking on page one of Google in the afternoon.  That little Google-bot is fast! 

I’m happy.

Lunch Line

We visited a sustainable farm in India near Bangalore.  What an amazing system they have there and the food they grow is healthy & very tasty.  Our group from the Yoga retreat wasn’t the only one there.  We enjoyed the company of many other locals who just stop in for a unique meal.

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Not as many flavors as Baskin Robbins Ice Cream, but in my count there are 14 incarnations of Lord Vishnu depicted in the icon at the center of the Vishnu Shanti Ashram meditation hall.  In today’s photo you can see 8 1/2 of them.  Everything about this Ashram is done on a large scale.  The magnificent chariot entrance, the black marble tablets with the entire 800 verses of the Bhagavad Gita inscribed on them in three languages, the statues throughout the 20 acres of grounds, and the main Ashram building itself.  It’s all very impressive.

Getting back to this rather large statue which sits in the center of the meditation hall. By some accounts it is a statue of Vishwaroopa Narayana, with the encompassing the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu.  When I was there I counted 14.  Depending on your source, there are un-officially anywhere from 10 to 18, so the 14 I counted seems to be a fair number and I’m going with that.

This statue is a beautiful work of art and fun to photograph.  Check out all those snakes with the red tongues and bug eyes!

If you ever make a visit Bangalore, India, taking an afternoon to hire a Tuk Tuk to take you the 25 km to the outskirts of the city to pay a visit here is recommended. The traffic is fierce so know that ahead of time and just relax and get to know your driver. You might get some new tips of other interesting places to visit as well as making a new friend

Related articles

• Vishnu- The Protector
• Vagarthaviva, a Magical Verse from the Great Poet Kalidasa: One Prayer, 25 Meanings – Part 2
• The Night of Shiva: A Theological Reflection on Shiva on the Occasion of Mahashivaratri (Huffington Post Blog)

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Captain Photo Selfie

TPE Screen Shot

Comet Chasing

My son called. He wanted to go photograph the comet Pan Starrs with me. Not ever shooting astronomy thingies I didn’t know what to expect and I knew it would be an adventure. We used the iPhone app TPE that I talked about last week on my blog post about shooting the full moon to find a cool place to shoot. The idea was to have the Golden Gate bridge in the foreground. Using TPE we quickly learned that if we simply drive out to Treasure Island, in the middle of the bay, we would be in a perfect location.  In the screen shot here of TPE, the orange line shows the bearing of the setting sun and the blue line os the setting moon. You can see that the sun sets smack in the middle of the GG bridge from this location.  Perfect!  As a bonus, Alcatraz Island is positioned perfectly so, under the right weather conditions, this is a stunning composition.

There were clouds.  There was wind and it was cold.  Mai used her iPhone to grab this really cool shot of David and me setting up the telescope and tripods. What a stunning shot!  It’s one of those timeless classic photos of Dad & Son.  She has always has a great eye to craft images like this.

David and me setting up.Photo by Mai Vu

Even though it turned out to be a bit cloudy, we were able to see the comet for about 5 minutes as it decended from behind some clouds into a clear spot before dipping into the fog bank shrouding the Golden Gate bridge. The comet isn’t big enough to include it into the scene I was visualizing. It is a tiny dim fuzzball of light. We just  zoomed on and got a nice shot if it next to the thin crescent moon.  This is David’s shot of the comet last night.

Click to enlarge. Comet is left of the moon.Photo by David Cuddeback

After Mai and I dropped David at his apartment in San Francisco we went down to the Embarcadero to check out the new light show affixed to the Bay Bridge. It’s an artwork that was turned on last week and will be displayed for the next two years. It’s very cool and I grabbed a video of it for you to enjoy. I took some stills and even stitched two into a pano, but video is really the best.  The lights dance and move all the time in response to tides, wind and whatever else the artist programmed in.  I think I heard that there are about 250,000 LED lights on the bridge cabels and those moving patterns are always very interesting to watch.  In this video the moving lights look like fish swimming.

By now we were cold and tired. I still wanted to go photograph the rocket ship by the Ferry Building.  Mai nicely indulged me to shoot it and then we walked out onto Pier 41 next to the Ferry Building.  At the end of the pier I sat and  took the self portrait above. It was a full evening.

David tells me that there is another comet heading this way later in the year and it is predicted to be much brighter. I’m glad we went out to practice on this one so next time I’ll be more prepared to get a great shot.

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