As I start to slowly start to clean up this website a bit, I thought I would put out one quick post on my latest toy. My primary camera is a Canon 5D Mark II. Love it, for landscapes and low light shots it doesn't get any better. However, I have a big investment in Nikon lenses and my lovable D300 was getting a little dated (plus probably has a million clicks on it by now. As a belated Christmas present I got a Nikon D7000 to replace. Haven't spent a ton of time on, but so far I am very very pleased. Bigger change and update than it looks like in the stats. Nikon slipped in a new sensor and it is amazingly fast. I always liked Nikon a little better for wildlife and speed shots anyhow, and even more so with this new model. Anyhow, great bargain for the cost in my mind. Below are few shots taken recently (I was also very impressed with the low light shots (all the night shots in here are hand held, and it did very well). BTW, the dolphin shots were taken at 1/6500 of a second. They were zooming, and the boat was moving at top speed, so I literally tied my self to a post to get the shots, I was amazed the D7000 handled without a problem. 

Wow, just realized I need to really update this website. Ignored the blog for quite awhile, and the site utilizes several products, all that need to be updated. I also want to add a better IPAD interface, and have tons of photos to update. For now to see more updated shots feel free to visit me on my flickr account below, and there should be a new look and feel on this in a the coming weeks. Thanks for visiting!
Ed
Click Here to Visit me at flickr

Visited one of my favorite places (Davenport, California) over the weekend, awesome as usual. A real photographers paradise. Then spent the night in a new spot (for me), the Seascape Resort in Aptos. Great place, we did the dinner on the beach option, where they set you up with a fire, a bottle of wine, food including smores etc. Best thing was the sunset was amazing. Posted quite a few shots out on the homepage.

Just returned from a three day photo trip to Oregon. Beautiful weather, and the first time I've really seen Oregon (one other trip to Portland was totally fogged in, couldn't see a thing). Stayed in Porland, traveled down the northern cost and also visited the Columbia River Gorge, which has the amazing waterfalls. Used either a Singh Ray Vari ND filter for all the long exposures as well as a new Singh Ray Combo LB (birthday gift) for many shots as well. Had a great time, wish I would of had a couple of more days. I posted a set of shots on the home page, or there are larger versions and more shots if you click on the "FULL SCREEN" photo window on the bottom menu below:

Finally got my camera back from the shop. The main memory board and memory card reader had to be replaced. So I ran down to Pacifica for some shots. The infamous Maverick's surf contest was going on over the hill with 40 foot waves (yep the one where the rogue wave clobbered a bunch of viewers. It's almost impossible to get a shot of the competition without being in a boat, so I stuck around Pacifica, which still has some beautiful 20 footers. Below are a couple. Going to head to Oregon the rest of the week to catch up on some photography, see you next week.

Unfortunately my primary camera (Canon 5D Mark II) has been in the shop for repair for a couple of weeks. So mainly just editing older shots, or ones I never actually looked at. Good news was that it broke three hours before the warranty ran out, so at least Canon is picking up the cost. Compact Flash card reader would not work with any cards, may have been related to all the high surf shots I was taking. Oh well, I might get the back up camera (Nikon D300) out for some shots this weekend, if the rain lets up.

Took my first photo trip of the new year. Weather is pretty crappy everywhere, but I hit it just right in La Jolla. 75 degrees, plus great large waves. Most of my shots were in La Jolla, but also swung by Seaworld, since it is off season and the crowds were low.  I posted quite a few on the home page.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years Everyone! As you can tell I haven't done a very good job updating the BLOG portion during the holiday, high on my resolution list... Have many been making local trips of late, as well as visiting family in Colorado for the holidays. Hope to have a photo journey after the first of year. I was pleased to have a fair amount of images selected for publication this year (several more are due to be published soon, so more about that in future entries) as well as winning an occasional contest. First year I ever seriously submitted many shots, so it was a learning experience. I also made a big switch during the year from all my Nikon gear to my first Canon, the fantastic 5D Mark II. I'm not a religious fanatic when it comes to brands, it was more of a desire to go to full frame lenses and pricing at the time. But, no complaints love that Mark II, I haven't even bought a flash because of it's great iso handling in dark situations. The second great choice I made (not going to talk about all the bad choices...), was getting a Singh Ray Vari ND filter. Just had a hard time justifying the price, but it turned out opening up so many more options for long exposures during the day that it's allowed me to have fun when the suns out again. Had some great photo trips (Alaska, Victoria, Chicago, Seattle and San Diego), and hope to continue that trend in 2010. Hope everyone got their dream camera kit this Christmas, please visit my regular site at http://www.neonphoto.com (I do sneak in the latest photos on a regular basis), and you can also find my on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/edpuskas/ . Feedback is extremely helpful as is viewing other photographers work out there, so stop by and say hello!
Ed

I've been busy setting up my first flickr web site. Never have used before, so I'm still learning the right way, but a valuable tool for seeing and sharing with a new massive audience. Please visit me at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edpuskas/

Just received a new toy. It's the Singh Ray Vari ND Filter. It has the potential to make noon fun again for taking shots. It works a bit like a circular polarizer but does not change the color. By slowing the light entering by up to 8 stops, it allows you to take more advanced long exposure shots during the day, or to extend time during night shots. Because I am using on a Canon 5D Mark II, I was aware that it will vignette on wide angle. That's due to the high quality of full size lens that are used. Not a major problem, I noticed it a bit at 24mm but you can easily adjust when shooting for a crop. At $390 (for the thin filter) it is a bit too pricey but everyone raves at their quality and it is an impressive bit of technology. They have a new DUO model with a polarizer added in also, but thought that might be pushing extra glass too much for my camera. There is a little less expensive standard size that probably will vignette a little more than the thin version, but has a screw in adjustment on it for other filters. The thin model I got, doesn't allow add on's. Still learing but so far I have been very impressed. Here are a couple of shots I took the first day. One is a noon 15 second shot in San Francisco (the rocks), the other is a sunrise on the bridge that was only about 1.5 seconds. If you get addicted to long exposures of water (easy to due) it is a wonderful tool.

Returned from a two day trip to the Santa Cruz area, spent most of it taking long exposures in Davenport and Pescadero at night, love the rocks in those areas, and the weather was excellent with large surf. Posted a bunch of shots on the home page. Now I'm off to Marin County for another couple days, once again concentrating on long exposure ocean shots. Below are a couple of shots from the last trip, one at Capitola and one at Davenport.
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Heading out for a couple of days (and nights) down to the Davenport area of California (north of Santa Cruz). I scouted some sites a week ago, but the 60 mile an hour wind limited my photo taking. Concentrating on night long exposures, and will try a little light painting as well. Here are a few shots I got last week,  I like the hidden beaches in the area, and nice time of year, now that the tourist season has wound down.

Stopped in at the annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin festival this weekend. I was amazed in the crowds.

Half Moon Bay - Images by Ed Puskas

Triptych art goes back at least to the 10th century, when it was common to divide sculptures or paintings into three sections. It has also been a very popular framing option for photos. You certainly can create your own effect in Photoshop or other tools, but it is a slowwwww process. One of the sites I have mentioned a couple of times in here, panosfx.com, just released a free Triptych option as part of their also free reflection action software. It took me about 3 minutes to create the triptych below. The effects are most useful for web display, A big thanks to the Panosfx folks for another outstanding (and free!!) time saver.

Back from a week in Victoria, British Columbia. What an amazing place! Fantastic site for whale watching, saw dozens of Orca Killer Whales, and the Butchart Gardens will knock your socks off even if you aren't a big garden person. We actually got stuck an extra day due to a plane problem, but were thrilled. I put 4 portfolios out on the main web site for now, while I am in the process of reorganizing it a bit. Will take me a bit longer to go through the 3,000 shots I took (groan) but the light and color in Victoria were too hard to pass up.
   

I'm headed out for a few days in Victoria, British Columbia. Been to Vancouver but not to the island so looking forward to it. I'll be testing a Photo Safe II backup unit from Digital Foci. I have lot's of backup units, but this is a portable that is a memory card reader. I'm always running out of memory cards no matter how many I get (per the 25mb raw files the Canon 5D Mark II creates), and tired of lugging my laptop with me. Looks pretty cool, 250gb so will review after I get back (hopefully with photos on it). 
 

Been traveling a fair amount. Just returned from a Colorado trip, more to see friends and family than to take shots, but managed to get to one of my favorite sites (I lived in Colorado for 25 years) at Rocky Mountain National Park. Posted some shots on the home page. Short break than I'll be in Victoria, British Columbia for a week.

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Entered a few contests this month. I have one photo published in Digital Photographer Magazine in issue 85.
Also had one category winner (5th place overall) at the National Photo Awards, which I had won the top award for last month. I have a couple of shots competing for publication in JPG magazine. If you get really bored and like them, all votes are appreciated. You can view (and or vote) on the links below:
Foggy Sunrise
Seattle Center

Took quite a few shots on a seaplane flight from Sausalito to San Francisco. Not as easy to shoot as the Zeppelin or Helicopters trips I've taken lately, but fun and each give you different pov's.

Just returned from a few days in Las Vegas and the highlight was a sunset Helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon.

Vegas & Grand Canyon - Images by Ed Puskas

This week I purchased a few inexpensive products from shutterfreaks.com. They are photoshop actions that automate quite a few creative tricks including collages, 3d Popout simulation, and frames. Worked very well, takes a little practice, but saves ton of time by automating a lot of the repetitive work. Below are a couple samples, the first is a collage of a dozen recent Alaska shots, and I also played with the frames on those shots. The second is the popout function, similar to the OutofBounds freebie I covered in a previous article. P.S. Collage processing takes a lot of memory, but I created a 60inch, 40mb monster without blowing up.

I've always heard that Berkeley Hills was a great place for a sunset shot, but I was a little stubborn and never tried it till last night. Everyone was right. The secret is to get to Grizzly Peak road. Either take Claremont from Berkeley or you can take Fish Ranch road off of 24 if coming from the north. Then once on Grizzly just pick any pulloff. Views of bridge and San Francisco when clear, or maybe even better when it's foggy like last night.

360 degree photos are growing in popularity. There are many variations, full panoramics, round panospheres etc. etc.  There are special cameras, software, tripods, lens and lot's of ways to spend money on it. If you are intriqued by the science behind it, there is a lot of math concepts you can study. If you just want some very quick abstracts and want to experiment, there is a filter called "Polar Coordinates" in Photoshop that can create nice effects within seconds. Below is a field in Alaska and a Vegas storm shot  I picked to give a fast example. Just go into the "Distort" menu under filters and click Polar Coordinates, and that is pretty much it. Usually you would use some cloning to clean up the lines where it joins. Even better if you take some 180 shots of cities, or landscapes. Below are some examples I did fast.
  
Check out this link on Flicr. http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/360,polar for more examples.

Just returned from several days of shooting around Juneau, Alaska. Beautiful area. Weather was tough, rain everyday, but the whales were great, as was the Helicopter flight I took. Unfortunately my trip to an island with brown bears (i.e. grizzleys) by seaplane got cancelled because of the weather as we were taking off. The whales were bubble-feeding, which basically means when a school of fish goes by, the birds dive for them, and 5 or 6 whales would all jump up at the same time. Really gets the adrenelin going. You only have about 2 seconds in a bouncing boat to get a shot, so it definitely is a challenge but if you ever have a chance to see it, you won't forget it. I posted some shots on the homepage.

I'm heading up to Juneau, Alaska and surrounding areas for several days, with as many cameras as I can carry. Weather looks pretty shakey but always thrilling to visit a new area.

Cool, I was was thrilled to win the National Photo Awards for June.  I had two photos that placed, the $250 is a nice surprise for the top spot.

http://www.nationalphotoawards.com/Junemonthlyphotocontest.html

Time to go shopping in the camera catalog!

Bored with the presentation of your photos? Here's a few great "Free" add-ons for Photoshop from PANOSFX.COM.  They all use Photoshop actions, which automate complex adjustments. Easy to use (the 3D one is a little more complex the first time, but read the excellent instructions or videos on their site. 

The first is a "SNOWGLOBE". Great for Chrismas photos. Just open your picture, hit start on the action and it does the rest! 


This is my favorite that creates a "3D effect" (it's called Out of Bounds). You have to select the part
you want the effect on (use a lasso, polygon or magnetic tool in Photoshop). Once you do one,
you will be able to think in terms of what might be effective. This was just a train in San Diego
that I used, animals can be especially effective, especially if they are attacking you...


The last one is "Reflections". Just simulates a reflection and provides nice boarding
effects. (Photo is of a 30 foot statue in San Diego).


Great tools, bravo to Panosfx for providing, and they have many more. Enjoy!

DSLR Remote is an iPhone application that allows your iPhone to remotely control your camera (Canon for now, Nikon version is coming). I installed the Pro version ($19.99) on my 3GS iPhone and it worked 1st time. Your iPhone shows the same view as your camera viewfinder, and you can adjust most settings on the camera through the iPhone as well. You then snap away with a fire button on the iPhone. You do need the camera connected to a PC with a USB cable, so not a great feature when in the field, but for portraits or locations where you can have the laptop it is very cool. Nice job for the first version. Also valuable for playing with adjustments and special effects. The photos save to the PC, and you can drill down and zoom in on the iPhone to see details. I'll be testing wireless connections on the camera next, would love to use this without the laptop, and it's getting close, a lot of technology coming out fast for both the iPhone and the WIFI memory cards are available, but so far only in SDHC (see Eye-FI, the current leader in this technology). Click below to get more details from onOne Software about DSLR Remote, and keep an eye on future enhancements.


P.S. My installation was on a Canon 5D Mark II (which uses Liveview), make sure to check  current models supported.

I posted a number of shots from my trip last week to San Diego under New Projects on the home page. Also made a fast trip to Napa and Sonoma to meet some friends. DId spend the morning taking some shots there as well, which I still need to edit. I'll be working with some new photography software on the iPhone this weekend. I did use the GPS a lot on my last trip, but still need to go check on the results. Hoping to sneak in a photography trip to Alaska in July hopefully.


San Diego - Images by Ed Puskas

I added a link on both the BLOG and LINKS page called SAN FRANCISCO PHOTOS.  I mapped quite a few photos to spot they were taken at. So if you are planning a visit to San Francisco, it could be helpful in getting your bearings on places that have photo opportunities. I will be expanding it in the future to other sites. It already has some as far south as Big Sur and up to Point Reyes. At the bottom of the page you can click on full site at Googlemaps that  gives you a larger screen.

I'm off to San Diego to shoot for a few days. I've been there several times, but never with a camera so it should be fun.

As I mentioned in a previous post I went out and bought a new iPhone 3Gs primarily to use as a Photography tool (and because it's cool too of course..). Really impressed with it so far, amazing technology. The first app I loaded was EveryTrail. Only cost a few dollars, and it's extremely cool. You just click "Start Trip" on the iPhone and it does the rest. It has a photo feature in it, that saves the photos to the exact location. Press stop trip when done and it uploads to a web site, where u can edit. My intent is to take an iPhone shot at each location on trips where I take DSLR shots. Then I'll replace the iPhone photos later and a have a detailed log of photo journeys. I went around the neighborhood fast to create the map below. Click on the first line to see a full version. The web widget and Facebook interfaces are very cool, but still need have a few bugs. If you move the mouse over the dots or go to the full version you will see the iPhone photos (nothing special on those, just for demo purposes. Great new app,  Note, that there are many modes, I like the Hybrid terrain the best myself. Although it works great with the iPhone GPS, you can use it on the website with just about any GPS unit and no charge there for a signon. I will venture into San Francisco later this week to give it a little more intense test.

ClICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL VERSION

Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps

One of the next "big things" for photography will be more advanced networking in the camera itself. There's now plenty of pixels (possibly too many), most of the new units have video, RAW and HDR are now evolving well. BUT, networking on a camera stinks. Ok, they are starting. I have a Canon 5D Mark II and I can buy a heavy $900 brick to add very very boring limited WIFI or you can carry a laptop and the brick and a few cables and  (nevermind it stinks). So I decided being a geek at heart that I was going to try to build my own more portable camera network. I want those 1,000 photos per trip waiting at home for me.
 
I need a new phone anyhow, so I will be at the Apple store to pick up a new 3Gs unit this Friday that I ordered. Ok, overkill for a phone (other than the cool thing), but it's the data part I was after. There is a lot of very cool iPhone photography software, and my goal is to use the iPhone as a remote tool for the Camera  (and me) but without cables of or a laptop.  Since the iPhone has 3GS, WIFI and GPS I think it's very doable, Below is just a small sample of some photography iPhone apps, and a couple of misc. that I will be experimenting with to make the networking cleaner.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/iphone-apps-photographers
P.S. Look at the Every Trail app in the link above, that alone sold me on the iPhone

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=38
This one is almost there (at least for a Canon, I'll play with my Nikon if I get the first working), they just need to overcome the laptop requirement.

http://www.eye.fi/ 
Ah ha! Put's wifi on the camera, of course my camera uses CF cards, and there is on SD so far  (groan) but there is a CF adapter to fit the SD card in..

Working on editing last weeks trips. Primarily Carmel, Big Sur, Moss Landing and Academy of Science in San Francisco. Press Play below to see some of the photos.

Just got back from a couple of days in Carmel. As usual we visited Big Sur and Monterey and this time I spent quite a bit of time photographing wildlife at Moss Landing (appx. 12 miles north of Monterey). It is one of the best otter spots in California. Take Jetty road north of the small town and it will take you into an excellent  quiet cove with lot's of wildlife (herons, pelicans, sea lions, seals, and otters). Great spot.

 


View Larger Map

Heading to Carmel and Big Sur for the next couple of days. Hoping the fog lifts in Point Lobos.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography opens up an amazing range of options. Basically it combines light from multiple photos, but with Raw native files it can do much more. Photomatix is without doubt the most powerful HDR product, Photoshop can do a very basic ok job. If you Rollover your mouse on the Seattle photo I took below, you will see the Before shot before combining a couple of others taken with a couple of other exposure settings. Nothing special, but after combining, the After shot won an Award of Excellence award this month in the National Photo Awards.  I am testing another product that can simulate HDR very nicely with only one JPG photo, and will post an update and some examples on that in a future entry. Tripods used to be mandatory for HDR but now the software is getting good enough that it can automatically align multiple handheld shots. Fun stuff.  P.S. HDR is the way to also get panoramic photos (using software stitching) with Digital cameras (I miss those cheap Kodak panoramic cameras..), which I plan to do early next week in Big Sur (fog allowing).

Below is an example of some more fun software for your photos, when you get totally bored.  
It is an inexpensive product from PanosFX.com. This is a film strip option, but there are
many others. The nice part they do all the dirty work, and can save you hours in Photoshop.
Just pick your favorite effect (Photoshop actions are used behind the scene), and it
steps you through it.

Digital Photographer Magazine published one of my photos this month (issue 82). I also had one Award of Excellence winner in the monthly National Photo Awards.

Ventured into San Francisco yesterday to take some shots at Yerba Buena Gardens. It's a good location to get some water shots, with pretty impressive fountains. Unfortunately the fog was super thick so it was a fairly quick trip.


Yerba Buena Gardens - Images by Ed Puskas

I just updated the home page with a number of shots taken in Big Sur, Carmel and Monterey last weekend. I'll be going back again in a couple of weeks to focus on Point Lobos which was a bit too fogged on this trip.

Big Sur - Images by Ed Puskas

Just returned from a couple of days of shooting in Big Sur. I'll be editing the plethora of shots for a few days.
That is the always impressive McWay Falls below.

It isn't too difficult to create a photocube in Photoshop, there are a lot of tutorials online to walk you through that. However, it is time consuming and hard to recreate without going through the same lengthy process.  A much easier way to do it, is to use Photoshop actions to perform the tasks automatically. I like to use a fairly inexpensive product from PanosFX.com. You basically just choose
the type of cube you want, it steps you through loading of photos and then you can still tailor as much as you like. They also have quite a few other products using Photoshop actions that create some fun effects. It makes a perfect cube if you use square
pictures but I also like the effect of using full size landscape shots like the example I did below using a few Seattle pictures I just took.

Just returned from Seattle. Had a great time snapping away for two straight days. Take me awhile to go through all 800+ shots I took, but I posted quite a few on the home page. Traveling to Carmel and Big Sur this weekend to do more of the same.


Seattle - Images by Ed Puskas

I am heading out for a few days of shooting in Seattle. The weather channel promised a couple of days of dry weather, so should be a fun time!

If you are interested in taking some aerial photos or just  on want a very unique sightseeing adventure, there is a relatively new option in San Francisco from a company named Airship Ventures. It's a Zeppelin ride, which presents some great photography opportunites. I won't go into detail of the differences between a blimp and Zeppelin, visit their site for that but it is the first one to fly in the U.S. since the Hindenberg (but it's non-flamable now, which was a wise enhancement..).

They have regular flights during the day taking off from Oakland and flying right over all the favorite sites around San Francisco. There is a one hour or two hour flight  including new sunset and Monterey options, plus charters are available. They seem very open to trying new routes, and tend to mix them up quite a bit so keep an eye on their website. They are discussing a possible Sunrise tour, which will be a popular choice with photographers. The flight is incredibly comfortable (the bathroom actually has a great view). You can walk around through the entire flight,  there are huge windows for each seat and best of all a couple of windows that open to stick the camera out on. If you are afraid of flying, don't worry this is better. It's like a safer version of a giant hot ballon which seats 12. I plan to fly again and will cover the other flights Two of the ladies on the flight I was on were there for a birthday celebration (one was 90 and one was 80), and they stood up the entire flight. I'm dying to do the Monterey flight.  I was very impressed with the service, nice people and a unique service. For anyone in Europe I believe they also have flights in Germany. Below are a few shots from a great trip.  CLICK HERE TO VISIT AIRSHIP VENTURES SITE. Below are some shots I took:


Zeppelin2 - Images by Ed Puskas

Since I am a life-long geek, I love technology including good photo software. I will give some demos of my favorites here periodically. One that I've used for years (maybe it's decades now) is called 3D-Album. If you click on the play button in the middle of  the demo I created below you will get a rough idea of the concept. They have hundreds of templates, many for special events (weddings, birthdays, or just strange ones). All intended to keep your friends from falling asleep while showing photos. You can add sound (which I didn't in these), and get very elaborate. I usually put the end result on a DVD or on the local PC. Quailty is outstanding in those modes. Gets a little trickier over the web, but it should give you an idea on ways to create a more interesting display of your plethora of photos.

I revamped and enabled the web page that allows for purchasing of prints. It is under the Archive menu option. I utilize Photoshelter to store and archive images (30,000 or so) but not too many archived yet. Just put in a few categories for now. View free to browse, there will be many additional photos that are not located on the primary viewing areas. I'm still learning the Photoshelter options, they have an interface/partnership with Livebooks that I use for the main site. Below is a little widget that is pulling from a gallery I added on the Photoshelter site. It has a Thumbs option as well as full screen option on the bottom. Pretty cool software,

San Francisco Photos by Ed Puskas - Images by Ed Puskas

We have a lot of visitors living near San Francisco. Since I am a fanatic about taking pictures, they usually get a free photobook of their travels. I've used a lot of services, but by far the best for me has been PhotoWorks. They are fast, customer friendly and best of all have never screwed up an order. Personnaly I like their photo book options the best. I put together a fast demo. I just grabbed a bunch of miscelleaneous pictures, uploaded, and built the photo book online in exactly 48 minutes. Didn't add a lot of text, which normally I would, but it will give you an idea of how it can look. CLICK HERE to see a demo. You can store photos online there, then order individual prints etc. You can also email the results to others. Have fun, and yes they are now an affiliate so if you click on any links in my pages including the banner below, they do send back a bit to help to pay for my website. P.S. They always have a lot of discount deals, I think I paid the full price the first time, but after each order they email you a discount (usually at least 15% off).

One site I didn't mention that is fun for contests, and photo input is Photovoice.com. They have some contests, news and always nice to get a Photo of the DAY (POTD) selection just to make sure others like what you do occasionally. Haven't used for awhile, but got a couple of POTD's the last week, and always a friendly and supportive crowd on the site.

Just added two locations from the last week of shooting. Alcatraz (which also has a few night time San Francisco shots), and Point Reyes. You can find those in the Recent Projects menu option.