Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and White or Sepia Tones

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This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is black and white or sepia tones. Now that’s quite a challenge for me because I shoot all my photos in color and I pick my subjects because of their specific colors and tones. I’m not an Ansel Adams fan either. I think Mother Nature spent a lot of time assigning colors to each of her small parts, so I often feel the lack of colors on some photos doesn’t give nature enough credit for the great job she did.

I had to dig through all of my photos and find a few that I thought would look good in black and white. I have no idea if I pulled it off, so you’ll have to let me know what you think.

Remember you can click on each photo below to see a larger version of it.

This is a small stream in Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego, California. I still have to do a post on the several photos I captured that day. I think water may be something that looks OK in black and white, especially when it flows fast.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white water stream
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white water stream

I tried to use a photo of rain clouds and make it black and white for this exercise. Here is the original post of these creepy crawly clouds over the San Diego hills.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white creeping, crawling rain clouds
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white creeping, crawling rain clouds

This next photo is a sunrise where the sun tried very hard to pierce through the clouds. It  created an orange yellow glow mixing with the gray clouds that was just gorgeous. I’m not too crazy about the lack of color of this photo, knowing how beautiful the colors of the original sunrise were.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white cloudy sunrise
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white cloudy sunrise

I found the tree below at Balboa Park. I love all the giant thorns poking out of its trunk and I think the black and white format doesn’t take anything away from the original.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white, very pointy tree trunk
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white, very pointy tree trunk

This is my former neighbors’ cat. She’s dark gray with bright green eyes. I think most animals and people can look beautiful on black and white photos. Isn’t she a cutie? I want to caption this photo “the great horned owl cat”.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white, beautiful cat
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white, beautiful cat

I took this last photo at the San Diego Zoo. These are two brother bears – grizzly bears – enjoying some cuddling and hugging time. I used the color photo to participate in the Project 365 -2013 on Facebook and I hope to feature it in an upcoming post. The white at the bottom is actually snow the zoo keepers made for the bears that day.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white grizzly bears at the San Diego Zoo
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Black and white grizzly bears at the San Diego Zoo

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that San Diego has been my home for a little over 15 years now. In a way, it feels like it wasn’t that long ago when I drove cross country from Connecticut to California. San Diego has grown on me as my new home over the years. Besides the worrisome wildfires, random earthquakes, and lack of greenery, there’s a lot to like about San Diego and its surroundings. San Diego is my home and here are a few things I enjoy about it. Remember you can click on each image to enjoy a larger view. San Diego is home to the big waves of the Pacific Ocean under a bright blue sky.

Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California

San Diego is home to a large agricultural community, including a lot of citrus (lemons and oranges, mostly).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - oranges in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – oranges in San Diego

San Diego is home to not just one single season year round, but also Fall and its bold colors.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - changing seasons in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – changing seasons in San Diego

San Diego can even be home to frost in the winter, especially inland. This is as much cold as I can take!

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - frost in winter in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – frost in winter in San Diego

San Diego is home to beautiful sunrises, especially in the winter.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunrise in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunrise in San Diego

San Diego is also home to beautiful sunsets. This one is from Christmas evening 2012.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunset in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunset in San Diego

San Diego is home to hundreds, probably thousands of different species of animals and plants. It’s also home to the most amazing topiary I’ve ever seen (view more topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden here).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

And as of this week, San Diego is home to some beautiful pear blossoms in Balboa Park. You can view more photos of these pear blossoms in a post next week, so I invite you subscribe to this site if you haven’t already.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - pear blossoms at San Diego's Balboa Park
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – pear blossoms at San Diego’s Balboa Park

I’m happy to call San Diego home.

Happy new year 2013!

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

Alfred Lord Tennyson quote
Alfred Lord Tennyson quote

I wish you a great 2013. May this be a year of new experiences, new endeavors, exciting challenges, more happiness, more niceness, more laughs, and more love.

What do you hope 2013 to be, for you and for the rest of the world?

By the way, if you like this winter sunrise photo, check out my 2013 photo calendar for more photos from Southern California.

Sunday Post: New Year 2013

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

Today I’m participating in Jakesprinter’s Sunday Post photo challenge. This week’s theme is New Year 2013. I’ll keep this post very simple. Remember you can click on each photo below to see a larger image.

I’m waving 2012 goodbye with this beautiful San Diego sunset photo I took on Christmas evening.

Beautiful Christmas sunset in San Diego
Beautiful Christmas sunset in San Diego

I’m greeting 2013 with this beautiful San Diego winter sunrise that I selected for the month of January in my 2013 photo calendar (for sale on Zazzle).

Beautiful winter sunrise in San Diego
Beautiful winter sunrise in San Diego

Let’s hope the year 2013 features even more beautiful San Diego sunsets like this one:

Pink and gray sunset with clouds in San Diego
Pink and gray sunset with clouds in San Diego

and inspiring sunrises like this one:

Photo of a winter sunrise - clouds on fire
Photo of a winter sunrise – clouds on fire

I’m looking forward to a year full of wonderful photo opportunities, and I wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2013!

The challenges of photographing a great sunset

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

I love watching sunrises and sunsets – the moments when the sun greets us and waves us goodbye every day. I think most sunrises and sunsets look prettier when you add a few clouds to the sky. The clouds make the light reflect its many shades of color rather than come out as a mostly monochrome event.

Here’s my challenge when it comes to photographing a beautiful sunrise or sunset: my camera. My Canon Powershot SX130 does a wonderful job in broad daylight situations, but as soon as I try taking photos in low light, it seems to give up on me. The camera sensor’s quality is not good enough to handle the job in many situations. And forget about using a flash when you try to take a photo of the whole sky.

This is the photo of a gorgeous sunset I captured last November, a little over a year ago. I love the many colors of the sky, the shapes of the clouds as if they were writing secret messages in the sky, but the slight pixelation in the dark areas drives me nuts. It’s good enough to look at on a computer screen, but not good enough for print.

challenges of photographing a great sunset
challenges of photographing a great sunset

I hope to have solved this problem with my new Canon Powershot G1X, which is supposed to have a much more sensitive camera sensor to handle low light situations better. Now, I just have to wait for a beautiful sunset opportunity to occur to try it out and compare.

Do you have a hard time taking nice pictures of sunsets and low light situations, or does your camera do a great job?