You can’t pass up an interesting sky.

I actually headed down Roselle Rd. to see if a cool, possibly abandoned house with a windmill was still there. I mean, the house was certainly still there–it wasn’t that windy this week–but I was worried that the old windmill on the barn had blown down.

Sure enough, it had. The thing must have been there for 75 years, but within a week of discovering it, it gets blown down before I could take my picture.

Fortunately, on the way to this house I saw a tractor way out in a nice green field enjoying the sunshine and warmer January temperatures. On the way back, I stopped when I noticed a dirt road leading into the field and nobody around to bug me about trespassing.

So this beast is a Massy Ferguson 285, last produced in 1982 and selling for $24,500 at that time. As a model, the 285 had been in production since 1972.

This one has been sitting here for a spell. I don’t think it will run, but the key is in the ignition and you can get a shop manual online.

Have at it.

Upstairs is a soda fountain and an ice cream shop, but the real fun is downstairs in what appears to be a 100-plus-year-old basement that even has a spring that runs through it. It dates back to the days when Sonora was a hotbed of gold mining operations.

Anyway, I just had to capture the feel of this place on film somehow, so I came back the next weekend with my tripod, which was necessary because of the low light conditions down there.

I took a number of images, but this is the one that gets the most response from people on the Internet. It was processed with a technique that combines multiple images into one and the result is often an interesting, texture-rich, almost-illustration-like feel to the image.

Enjoy.

This is what is called a High Dynamic Range photograph. It is accomplished by taking multiple images of the same thing but at different exposures and then combining them in post processing. You can do the same thing by taking one RAW image and creating five different images out of that.

This is just one of several results you can get out of the process. Usually I go for a more natural look, but I totally intended to seek the freaky surreal look I have in this one.

I think what really makes this image is the guy just to the left coming past my camera. If I could have planned it, it could hardly have turned out better. I had hoped for something interesting in the foreground like that and I took many pictures from that same location. I saw the guy coming on his interesting low-rider bike and got three pictures snapped before he was past me.

This one didn’t give a view of the bike, but his unexpected turn to my left and the little duck to get out of the way was  really  a bonus for me.

This turned out to be such a good spot to stand because of the umbrella angled there on the left. I felt I needed an anchor of some sort to frame the people. I feel some balance was also added to the photo by the lemonade stand on the right.

Also very fortuitous for me was the guy in the red giving the diagonal balance from the umbrella to the right corner.

I really enjoy this photo and think if you really take some time to look at it, you will too.

In my attempt to find some interesting angles on things–mostly sunsets–I decided to find a sort of back road through the area.

You get a whole different view traveling along the bank of the canals that thread through our area and as soon as I slather myself with bug repellent, I am going to take another trip down those concret rivers.

Like I said, I was waiting for and looking for a good unobstructed view of a sunset, but on this day I found some little details at the back of people’s property that interested me.

This is one of those shots.

I know, this is as much a waterfall as I am Brad Pitt, but– as with my own face–this  is the best I can do given the circumstances.

The circumstances were thus: there was water; there were rocks; I had a camera.

Anyway, I had wanted to try to show the motion of water in a waterfall, just not bad enough to go on a long drive to find a real waterfall.  Fortunately,  I found myself in Murphys by the little creek, so this is the best I could do.

Here is how I approached the shot and what I was trying to accomplish:

In order blurr the running water, you have to use the slowest shutter speed you can. If it is too bright outside, you can’t just set the camera to a slow shutter speed because the rest of the picture will be overexposed (too bright).

Fortunately, it was in the evening and in mostly shadows, but I put a polarizing filter on my lens to cut down even more on the amount of light reaching the sensor of the camera.

The shutter remained open during this exposure for 2.5 seconds, which produced the blurring effect of the water as it moved downstream.

I also made sure I used a very small aperture or f-stop, which is the size of the opening that the light passes through. This has two benefits: the smaller the opening, the longer you need to let light through, and the smaller the opening, the more of the picture was going to be in focus.

I wanted as many of the rocks to be in sharp focus as possible, but if I had a large aperature (opening),  a narrower portion of the picture would be in focus.

Another must have for this shot was a tripod. The camera had to not move at all in order to keep the rocks–which also weren’t moving–in focus.

Anyway, there you have it; I am not Brad Pitt, and this is not a waterfall, but some people appreciate both anyway.

I went to Calavaras Big Trees State Park on Wednesday for the first time since I turned into a photo freak.

This photo is of a fallen tree that is hollow all the way through so that you can see from one end to the other.

You are looking at the root end. I thought it would make an interesting picture.

For me, it is taking pictures; I can easily get lost in what I am doing and expect that some day my wife will call me in as a missing person.

Take this day in San Francisco, for example.

We were staying near Union Square and I stepped out for a short stroll around the area to take pictures. This was a bit before 6 p.m.

Four hours later I had walked many miles and snapped many pictures and my wife awoke from a nap to wonder what happened to me.

The turning point for me was when I realized if I walked to the ocean I could be there for sunset.

This was just one example of what I saw.

It seemed so odd to me that she would be there like that, but then I realized that it is no different than someone in Modesto on break at the mall eating a hamburger while sitting by the fountain.

You see, the stool she was sitting on was her fountain seat, the street was her mall, and the chrome pot was her McDonald’s bag.

It is funny how we think things weird when they are just the same things we ourselves would do if put in different situations.

It must have looked strange to drivers when all of a sudden a man rises up out the the giant patch of sunflowers alongside the busy road.

After passing these yellow beauties for weeks as I make my almost daily trek down Pelandale, I finally stopped, got out of my car and lay down on my back.

That’s how you can get a good view of the sky, you know. You see, it wasn’t just the sunflowers I wanted, but the sunflowers against the blue blue sky.

Now the sky was very blue, but not THAT blue. I used a polarizing filter, but I didn’t use Photoshop to get that color.

I took over 100 photos that afternoon, and, believe it or not, I must go back because I thought of another one I missed.

Don’t be scared if you see a figure emerge from the weeds along the road!

While visiting a friend with my daughter who wanted to see the new baby chickens, I found the colorful creature above. I only took my camera because my wife insisted on getting a shot of the chicks, so I obliged.

The chicks were cute, but boring. I spent my time trying to capture the beautiful feathers of the huge rooster. My wife had to tap me on the shoulder and make sure I got at least one shot of the chicks.

So this is what I got when I went to take pictures of some chicks.