Yesterday the wife ane I brought our guests from NYC to another friends house down at Venice Beach. While the wife and frineds decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather by lounging on the sand...I decided to go on a photo expedition on the Venice boardwalk...always plenty of interesting subject to capture.

I happened on a group of sidewalk performers called The Calypso Tumblers...three words...OH MY GOSH!!!!! These guys are a team of acrobats with a sense of humor like nothing I have seen on the Venice boardwalk in all my years in So Cal. I happened to catch several fabulous shots of these guys performing unbeleivable stunts...I will have more incredible shot in both my flickr and Zooomr photo stream soon!

Boy oh boy...I hate traffic!!! Last night I had to visit a client after hours to take care of something one of my engineers could not. I got in my car at 6PM and headed twenty miles away...bumper to bumper for half the ride...good thing my camera was on the passenger seat to keep me busy :)

Because I had a meeting with a client in Cabazon last Thursday I decided to spend the weekend in Palm Desert. My wife met me there Friday afternoon and we did absolutley nothing! I did take a ride out to Joshua Tree on Friday...only problem it was mid day and the sun killed what should have been a fantastic photo opportunity. I promised I would wake up early either Saturday or Sunday and make the trek to catch early morning light of the beautiful national park...unfortunatley a small stomach virus prevented that from happening. I will definitley be capturing Joshua Tree at dusk and dawn in the near future...what a fantastic place! The only shot I got over the weekend was of the T-Rex at the Wheel Inn restaurant...I shot at an interesting angle in order to make it seem as thought the T-Rex is breathing smoke : )

"This memorial is dedicated to the over 3,000 people from more than 80 countries who were killed September 11, 2001 when terrorists hijacked four US planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The commitment of those merciless acts have forever changed America and the world. The death of each person ripples in the lives of so many others and we are poignantly reminded that freedom is not withoutcost. These horrific acts have served to strengthen our spirit and our resolve ot fight and overcome destructive forces. We honor the memories of those who lost their lives on that tragic day."

Captured this shot last night just after taking some very cloudy sunset pictures at Santa Monica State Beach. Not they type of weather I had hoped for, but I still managed to take a few decent shots including this one. This is the tunnel that runs from east/west underneath Pacific Coast Highway that is truly a portal for pedestrians. This portal delivers you from the city to the sand.

I decided to Zooomr's new feature, "Portals" a spin with this photo. Checkout this photos page at Zooomr and see where this portal took me, and what I saw.

Speaking of Zooomr, I wanted to thank Thomas Hawk for featuring the lifeguard tower shot I took last Tuesday on the Zooomr blog yesterday, 9/8/2006.

If you have not checked out Zooomr yet...do yourself a favor and do so...it is a fantastic photo community. I am hoping that they will add groups like those on flickr...I will be one of the first to create and administer a few if they do.

Well, I managed to finish going through the remainder of RAW files, and post process some ot the images from my Tuesday at dusk excursion at the Santa Monica Pier. I have been asked serveral times about my workflow when it comes to post processing...so here it is...

Weed out the garbage & backup your files!!!
My typical workflow begins by reviewing all the images in Adobe Bridge. Once I weed out the ones I am not going to keep, I make a copy of all the images on a CD for backup, and then move the RAW files from the compact flash card to a dedicated external hard drive that contains only RAW files.

White balance and curves and saving to JPEG
Once the double backup is complete (you can never be too safe!!!) I then use Adobe Camera RAW to miostly just correct white balance. When I am finished I create a folder in "My Pictures" with the year, the day, the month and some sort of title...for example, all of my Pier pictures once converted to JPEG were copied to a folder titled, "2006-09-05 - Santa Monica Pier Sunset.

Remove noise, convert to LAB Color and sharpen
Once I have saved all the JPEG's I then remove noise if needed using Picturecodes Noise Ninja CS2 plug-in. After i have removed the noise I run two different filters to enhance the photo...I usually, not always, run a filter that converts the color from RGB to LAB which gives some of my photos richer colors. After that process I have a sharpening filter I use to bring even more life to the image.

When I have finished I upload to flickr and then the real fun begins!

Ahhhhhh!!!! I managed to get out at around 5:30 today after a long days work...I spent a good 2 and a half hours shooting down by the beach...I shot many great sunset shots...I look forward to post processing and sharing....stay tuned!!!

I finally was able to spend some time taking pictures Sunday. I actually headed to Santa Monica Skate Park on Saturday to shoot some of the skaters...unfortunatley I did not bring a helmet and they did not have one I could borrow. Perhpas next week I will blog some skaters catching air. Anyway, yesterday the wife and I went to visit friends in Huntington Beach. We had a greay day just lounging in the sand...not a cloud in the sky...perfectly relaxing. After the beach we showered up caught an amazing sunset and had a very nice dinner. Sunsets in Southern California are truly spectacular...it is too bad not everyone here gets to enjoy them every single day.

Man do I love poker!!! Won $200 playing in a home game last night...decided to ditch work today...office was closed anyway...bought into a tourney for $50. I won the whole thing and now I am taking my wife for a steak...she is pregnant, so no bottle of cab, perhap a glass for me...

I would say that I am buying some "L" glass, or a Macbook, or a Dual Core 2 laptop....but in all honesty...the money is going to the wife for our baby fund.

:)