Point Lobos is one of the world’s beautiful places, and every visit has photo opportunities. There is one spot where low tide reveals rock strata with tide pools, ideal for closeups. I was tired from lugging around an SLR with a lens assortment, and acquainted with the old-guy-on-slippery-rocks-while-balancing-equipment problem, I walked around with just my pocket camera. That works great for closeups because the camera focuses very close and is easy to hold with one hand. A shot of the general scene proved irresistible, and that led to some Adobe Photoshop™ retouching of original images that could have been better.

When summer is fading there are days that still look more like summer than autumn. The leaves haven’t started to change. Nonetheless, the cloud patterns change, the sun is lower, and air feels sharper. I like this photo because it captures some of the change-of-season, even though the subject is more snapshot than classic. Some work in Photoshop™ helps.

Spring means spring flowers, and this week we have progressed from daffodils to wisteria. Our subject wisteria is at Filoli Center in Woodside, California.

Woodside is now home to many of Silicon Valley’s uberrich, continuing a tradition of habitats for the wealthy. Filoli was once the estate of the Roth family, who ran the Matson shipping line. In 1975 Mrs. Roth donated the estate, including 43 room mansion and sixteen acres of formal gardens, to the National Historic Trust. It is open to the public, staffed mainly by volunteers. For photographers, the combination of old stone buildings and gardens has a special attraction.

Sometimes pictures seem to have potential, but they are missing something. Then the hope is that a Photoshop™ adjustment of contrast or saturation will summon up the spirit missing from the photo. When simple adjustments fail, the next step is to use filter plug-ins to apply a heavy had to the scene. I’m a fan of the Topaz Labs plug-ins, and among the most extreme of those is Adjust > Spicify. The results can be, well, awesome.

I have quite a few pictures of parking lots. They are are an overlooked resource for photographers. Perhaps someday I’ll convince a publisher to put them out as a coffee table book, America’s Most Scenic Parking Lots. I shall be the Ansel Adams of parking lots. Yes, for sure. For now, however, I’m still building inventory, and the other day I took one in a parking lot in Coyote Hills Regional Park near San Francisco Bay. It had the potential for high drama, at least as parking lots go.

Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. It spans the border between California and Nevada, southwest of Reno. One of the streams feeding the Lake forms Eagle Falls as it cascades into Emerald Bay on the California side. The top of the falls is only a few feet from the road, but I had driven by several times in the past without noticing it; waterfalls are not so exciting from the back. On a cold day in mid-May I took a two-frame panorama, looking towards Emerald Bay. The scene had interesting elements, but lacked punch. That is, until I unleashed the Topaz Labs Spicify Photoshop plug-in filter.

Spring flowers are slowly appearing on the California coast. On the beach near Monterey recently I found purple sand verbana. (There is also a yellow variety.) The purple variety it quite striking close up, but the flowers are so small it can be missed. Each flower in the cluster is about a quarter inch (6 mm) across. As the season progresses the flower becomes common in the sand along the coast.

Larger version “here”:http://quickshotartist.com/blog/images/250.jpg