Mare Island

Mare Island, near Vallejo California, is the home of the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean (now closed). It’s also the home to many dilapidated buildings that I’ve been trying to photograph well for some time. Usually the light is too harsh and the sky too plain and boring to make interesting photographs, but last Monday we actually had some clouds in the sky approaching sunset, so I shot round there before it was too late.

This is the building I’ve been eying for some time. It always looks to me as though someone has sculpted the holes in the windows to be pictures of things: people, bats, sea lions, whales, a rabbit – but that’s really just pareidolia. I like the effect though.

About half a mile away is what looks to be a burnt out warehouse or factory. The wreckage and the light makes it look like a scene from a dystopian sci-fi movie.

Inverness, Tomales Bay California

Abstracts - San Francisco

Rowland Plaza

Another building owned by my employer - Rowland Plaza, Novato California.

Santa Cruz

Last weekend I went on a Sea To Summit half day workshop to shoot the waves at Santa Cruz. It was good experience and I learned a lot. For one, I wouldn't have known how to find the great locations. And for two, I would never have thought to be standing in the moving water taking pictures. I also learned that I need more filter power. Five stops ND wasn't enough to slow down the exposure enough to capture the moving water effect in the day (curse Olympus's base ISO 200). But I did manage to capture two reasonable shots near to sunset:

Each exposure at one second. (The above shot is level btw. The "sloping to the right" look is an optical illusion probably caused by the cloud on the right.)

Unfortunately, not a lot of cloud, so no interesting sunset shots. Luck of the draw.

Tomales Bay

I went on a drive to Tomales Bay - about an hour from where I live - amongst other things, to photograph the fishing boat wreck off the coast of Inverness. It's easy to find - visible from the road and a minute's walk from the parking lot of "The Inverness Store" Deli. It wasn't great light (I was hoping for some pink clouds at sunset - no such luck, just gray), but at least not boring. Topaz managed to extract something interesting from the sky.

I really need to come back when there is better light. Probably at dawn, as the hills to the west would block the sun at dusk, but that would require me getting up an hour before dawn, so that's not going to happen.

On the way back I stopped to shoot the reflections in this pond that I drive by each time I go to Tomales. I applied one of Trey's Lightroom presets which rendered the scene pretty much as I pictured it at the time:

Cherry Blossoms and Mustard Flowers

It's spring. All of Sonoma looks like this now: