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It's been a long time since I have blogged……

Well, my daughter is back to school, summer vacation is over & I can't wait for fall to get here!!!

Every once in awhile, I go out to shoot a sunrise close to the house. I am fortunate enough to live very close to the Kern River. I just love seeing & then getting to capture a beautiful setting like this!!! Even more incredible is when the full moon is setting in the west & the sun is rising in the east. This image was taken on that kind of early morning in August 2011.

Have you every watched a firework show at the beach? You should. It is really a fun & beautiful thing to experience.

This year I was fortunate enough to get to watch a fireworks show in Morro Bay California. It was beautiful! This is one of many images I captured during the show. I just love Morro Rock on the left of the image with the city & harbor to the right & the fireworks in the middle. It was a great family weekend!!!

I shot this image with my Nikon DSLR camera on a tripod. I had my camera set to Manuel. I used the BULB setting so I could keep the shutter open for as long as I wanted to capture the blasts. This image was open for 2.4 seconds. The f stop was f8 and the ISO 400. Just for those wondering.....

While on our Oregon family vacation we went to the Portland area. No visit to this area is ever complete until you travel up the Columbia River Gorge & stop at Multnohma Falls. This view is from the top of the bridge looking down as one the falls flow below. In the top of my image is people viewing the entire falls from the ground. I really like this image as it is a different viewpoint of the falls. One has to take care not to drop your camera as you are hanging over the railing of the bridge taking this shot.

Our next stop on this wonderful vacation was at my Uncle John & Aunt Joanna's house in Lincoln City, Oregon. Not only did we have a great family reunion with them, it was in a lovely place to see the wonders of the Oregon coast. It is centrally located on the coast, so we were able to take day trips to the North & South then still return to their home at night. I just love my family!!!

This image is from the shoreline of Devil's Lake State Park looking to the East. It was a foggy overcast morning when I took this image. So calm & peaceful. My Uncle & Aunt have a view of this dock from their balcony, if you look really close in the top right of the image you can see his house in the trees.

When shooting this image, I decided that a panorama would be the best way to capture this scene. I also love taking HDR shots, so I took 5 bracketed shots for the HDR part and 3 shots for the panorama part. Then when I got home, I processed the HDR of 5 shots each in Photomatix first, then stitched the 3 images together in Adobe Photoshop CS5. Finally, I took the image back to Adobe Lightroom 3 to enhance it.

I hope you enjoy this image as much as I do!

Just got back from a relaxing & memorable family vacation! We went to the Oregon Coast area. The 1st stop was Bandon. We had visited the area about 10 years ago and just loved it! So this vacation we decided to start our trip there. We drove 13 hours from home to Bandon on the 1st day.We stayed at a wonderful hotel overlooking this scene.

Most of the day was cloudy & overcast. I decided to call it an early evening. I prepared all my gear for an early morning sunrise shoot. I got my clothes out, gear ready & was laying in bed reading a book when my husband made the comment, "Wow! Look at those pink clouds outside!" When I heard that I looked out the window of the hotel & immediately flew out of bed, threw on my clothes, grabbed my camera gear & ran out the door. I literally ran all the way to the edge of the cliff to capture this amazing image. Now if you know me, I am definitely not an athletic person. I am more prone to clumsiness. I just kept saying to myself, "Don't fall down!" Needless to say, I did not fall & was able to make it safely to the edge of the cliff.

As I was running which was at least a block, I was thinking to myself, "Ok, what do you need to do to your camera to capture this?" So, I dialed in the settings, extended the legs of my tripod. I knew that my time was running out with the light, so I quickly went to work capturing this scene. I was able to click off a few images before that pink light disappeared. I should have never taken for granted that just because it was a cloudy day, there would not be a sunset. You never know what will happen, so you need to be prepared & ready for whatever there is out there in front of you!!! Yes, this is exactly how it looked that beautiful night!

I have been perusing my vast library of images that live on an external hard drive over the last few weeks. I have found many treasures that have been captured in the last few years by myself while out exploring the places I live & visit. I am doing this because of a contest that is going to publish images in a book from the Kern County area. When I saw the information on the contest, I thought to myself, "I have a bunch of images that I have taken in Kern County".

So, I thought I would share a link to this site that has some beautiful images where I live. Get a cup of coffee, sit back & go through the vast pages of all the wonderful images that people have taken & shared. You can even register with the site & submit your own images! Of course if you feel like you want to vote for any image, just click on the "dig it" button. That is how you vote for the images, but make sure you register to make your vote count.

Here is the link: http://www.capturekerncounty.com/users/Connie

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day! Here in the USA it is a Federal holiday honoring all the soldiers that have died in military service for our freedom.

I have driven by this site many times over the past 20 years, maybe longer. This is the 1st time that I actually stopped & tried to capture the beauty & magnificence of this historic building in Ventura Ca. It is early one spring morning before there is anyone out on the road or streets. So peaceful & serene! I just love the way the plants point to the building! It is a HDR image processed in Photomatix then finished up in Lightroom.

My only daughter is in driver's training school. Now that is scary!!! Anyway we decided to put her in a driving school that was about 30 miles north of our home, in a small town that I grew up in. As I drove around the familiar streets of my childhood, I had a flash of many memories flooding my brain of what I had done, felt & experienced as a child. The town was different, but so much the same.

When I drove by the above abandoned horse stables & track, I thought to myself, "Now, that would make a great HDR image in the morning or afternoon." So the next week when my daughter & I took that trip to one more lesson on driving, I took my trusty camera & tripod, stopped by the above site & got this image.

I really like the way that the light is on the stable doors, it kind of glows. Nice that we had so much rain this spring, as the wildflowers & weeds were in bloom. In a few weeks this will be all golden & yellow colored.

I thought I would share another image with you today from my recent trip to Ventura, Ca. On the last morning I was out shooting the sunrise, like I love to do, I went up in the hills above Ventura to catch that morning light. This is what was in front of me when I arrived. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did,

To capture this light, there is only about a 10 minute window, it is hard to figure out the exact timing, so I just get there early & start taking pictures. When it hits, I get so excited when I see it in the view finder of my camera!

This is an HDR image. I find that shooting at this time of the morning, with the brightness of the street lights and the dark shadows of the buildings, the image really comes to life when I take several bracketed shots, then merge them together in Photomatix.