Road Trip!!

I am not sure which came first...I wanted to go to the ocean, or my sister asked me to babysit my nephew on a Wednesday because his other Grandma was busy. Hmm.... dunno! Well, anyway, at the end of June my mom & I took a little road trip with the Corbinator and went to Ocean Shores. It was a whirlwind trip; a pretty good fit for an almost four year old! Of course, I took a bunch of pics! These are some of my favorites...

Aeroplanes

Mom & Corbin were pretending to be airplanes as they ran to the beach. I knew I would need a fast shutter speed/high ISO combo to get this little guy in motion. Unfortunately, I completely over-exposed the image!

So... I did a bit of editing a whammy!

Impression

Hahaha... I didn't mean to soft focus the beach; I just forgot that I had my camera in manual focus. oh goodness. The outcome, though, was lovely.

Sandals

I like the simplicity of this image, with the pop of color from the bucket. (thanks again dma for suggesting blue! Green wouldn't have looked as cool, eh?)

Throw it Back

I am not sure why, but Corbin decided to throw the sand back into the ocean. He is weird. It's heriditary. Corbin never had a chance. (Oh, and I did bump up the saturation & warmth of this one to bring out the tones in the waves).

Reflections

The reflections were pretty crazy. I could have spent all day taking pictures of reflections. Buuut, I am a nice auntie & let the little guy actually play in the waves. Generous. I know. (OH, and this is actually a crop in of a picture that showed him in full. I just really liked the reflection).

Not Jason Mraz

At one of our stops along the way, we picked up this hat for Corbin. I don't know, it has kind of a Jason Mraz look to it.... no? hahahaha. I really liked the lighting in this one; can't beat natural lighting! (although,I took this one with my Elph, so my settings were a bit limited & this pic is soft & noisy. )

Portraits

I did manage to get a few portraits of the little guy, too! (tooo-oooo) This one is my fav

oh gosh, and I wanted to prove that I was there, too, so while we ate burgers from Sand Box on the beach, I snapped this quick pic of me. So, for the record, I WAS there.

And that wraps up our trip to the beach! Thanks for taking a look & happy summer!

Woooooo it's sunny!

Yo

Yo: part I of Yosemite

Back in April, DMA and I flew down to Fresno, rented an AWESOME Ford Escape, and drove drove drove north toward Yosemite. I wasn't sure what to expect: would there be bears? would we see wild flowers? would it be just as cool as the countless images already captured in this mystical place?

After three days in the park, the answers are: bears aren't real, I WILL brake for wildflowers, and yes, absolutely yes, Yosemite is just as beautiful as you would imagine.

Our first stop on day 1 was a lookout about a half-hours drive from the entrance. Of course, we climbed over the rock wall barrier, powered on the walkie-talkies and set out to explore a gigantic cliff. I took this picture of a pine tree from this spot:

We made our way to the valley, ooo-ing, ahh-ing and gasping a few "daaa-aamn!" along the way. Beautiful stuff... glad we had a moonroof! I formulated a new equation:

The valley on Saturday + at lunch+ during Free National Park Weekend = Chaos. (make that chaos...squared).

We managed to find some tranquility by exploring some woods on the side of the road. We saw a deer! I wanted to get some unique frames, so I concentrated on some moss & new grass thriving in an area that was previously in a forest fire.

Continuing our survey of the park, we headed over to an area directly across a canyon of where our day began. I think this area is called Crystal Creek?

We decided to head back to the valley in the evening, pleasantly surprised that most of the families and tourists had headed back home. It was just us & a bunch of photogs...

I was glad to have my 70-300mm, tripod & cokin gradient filter!! I zoomed right past those wierdos. ;)

And that just about wraps up day 1! Not too shabby, eh?

se

SE: Part II of Yosemite

Welll... sometimes sunrise comes too early. We didn't make it to the Tunnel View lookout as early as planned (totally underestimated how very, very far apart everything is!), but we still managed to capture some beautiful morning light.

Except those darn airplanes! Kinda hard to do a long exposure when there are airplanes messing up your frames! I tried my best to fix the sky & this is how it turned out:



The sun rays were pretty spectacular. The pic below features Bridal Veil Falls.

The afternoon sun was pretty harsh; my landcapes from this time are bright and scratchy. DMA and I spent some time along the river, flirting with a group of Stellar Jays.

We took a little "hike" to Yosemite Falls (that is.... if you call a paved trail with a ...whoa... 30% grade a hike...) Ok, Northwest snobbery aside, it was pretty cool to be so close to something so massive.

We decided to ditch the park during the extremely harsh sunlight hours & headed to the town of Mariposa. Saw some cool sights along the way...

And we made it back to hotel before midnight. Nice! Thus ends day 2.

mite

MITE: Part III of Yosemite

ugh.

Morning.

early.

blah.

On Monday, we were able to rise & shine, precisely at the crack of dawn. We mustered our photographic energy and managed to make it to quite a few lovley spots for sunrise. The park was almost completely empty at those wee hours. Complete tranquility.

Our first stop of the day was the tunnel view, then we steered the Escape to the valley. I loved the sunbeams that were rising behind the hillside near Half-Dome and took soooo many frames trying to get the best exposure. Thank goodness for multiple SD cards!

When editing, I wasn't really crazy about the white sky. sad. So, I cropped in to just the good parts ;) Who said life has to fit into 4x6?

And here is another shot from the valley. You can see a little peep of sunrise gracing the top of the hillside. The full-color version of this frame is lovely, but I *really* liked the black & white version!

While trying to get a shot of El Capitan from the river (where was Ansel's vantage point???) we stumbled upon an old trail. I mean OLD. oldie old style. I was snapped this quick pic of the forest floor.
For the rest of the day we just wandered and found sights not on the maps. I loved the look of the hillside here:

And took a little bit of a long exposure of the river here:

and that, dear friends, wraps up the trip to Yosemite. As I look back at the images from this trip I am filled with peace and have a renewed appreciation for nature's beauty. Thanks for taking a look!