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~ “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

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Tag Archives: Oakland

Weekend Walk: The Merritts of the Stark

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Photo essay, Photography, Travel Essay

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

California, Lake Merritt, Oakland, photo essay, photography, travel essay

Cedar?

Cedar?

Lake Merritt is close to the Bonsai Garden I almost visited in last week’s Weekend Walk post.  The area around the lake teems with life, both wild and domesticated, both human and animal.  In the picture above, I was trying to capture the twist and movement of this tree.

A new landscape- natural and urban

A new landscape- natural and urban

The light on this day gave all of my photos a stark quality.  Maybe the fog off the East Bay diffused the light just enough for the camera to pick up what the naked eye could not sense.

View of the Northern end of Lake Merritt

View of the northern end of Lake Merritt

I am still trying to suss out how to depict depth when taking a photo.  It will take many years to perfect this, I’m sure.  I’m still learning not to accidentally take a picture or turn the camera off/on.

The roost

The roost

No examination of the Lake would be complete without mentioning the birds.  Lake Merritt is home to a bird sanctuary.  Although the sanctuary itself looks in need of an infusion of funds, the birds don’t mind a bit of benign neglect if they have places to roost and search for food.

Cedar tree with spiders

Cedar tree with spider webs

The cedar bushes are covered in spider webs at this time of year.  I like the contrast between the white web and the deep green of the bush.

Bougainvillea and Building

Bougainvillea and Building

Here, I was playing with depth again.  This photo is a bit like the place itself.  The mist that can sometimes make the San Francisco/Oakland area seem gloomy is the same mist from which these colorful flowers draw sustenance.  And the colors are unlike those in any other place I’ve ever seen.

Here’s hoping you all have a great burst of color in your lives this week to even out the gloomy bits.

j

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Weekend Walk: Bonsai! (Almost)

06 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by koehlerjoni in Photo essay, Photography, Travel Essay

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Bonsai, California, Community Garden, Oakland, photo essay, travel, travel essay

Never saw a purple rose before...

Never saw a purple rose before…

On our recent visit to California, I spent a couple of hours at the Oakland Bonsai Garden taking pictures.  Since photography is a new pursuit, I find it easier to take pictures of objects because they stay put.  The enclosed Bonsai Garden closed minutes before I arrived, but there were some lovely flowers in the adjacent community garden facility. I used the photo editing program that came on my computer to create the blurred background in the photo below.  My semantics are probably all wrong, but I don’t know photospeak.

I'd never seen one of these before, either...

I’d never seen one of these before, either…

I have been playing with foreground and background focus.  I took a bunch of photos with different aperture settings, and I couldn’t tell any difference between them, but I had luck just taking the camera and putting it very close to the foreground objects to create some parts that were out of focus, some that were in.

Yellow flowers, white bucket.

Yellow flowers, white bucket.

I wandered across some ducks in a pond, so I played with shutter speed to capture motion.  These ducks were fun to shoot, although I didn’t capture motion the way I envisioned.  Gotta start somewhere.

This shy fellow swam away from me, fast.

This shy fellow swam away from me, fast.

His gregarious older siblings.

His gregarious older siblings.

Taking photos has made me notice much more than I have in the past.  I might need to learn to balance viewing life through the lens with actually being in the scene. I say this because I took approximately five million pictures on the California trip. That’s a topic for another blog.  For now, I hope you are having a happy Saturday.

Something else I'd never seen.

Something else I’d never seen.

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