Posted on by Anne Sandler · 3 Comments

Rain, rain–stay, stay: All About Photography Toastmaster club

It’s finally wet out there, and Mother Nature is being very kind. It’s raining in the evening and through the night. At least it did last night. But, what’s that got to do with my Toastmaster photography club? Nothing! California is just happy that it is raining.

And, I’m happy with this Toastmaster club that is like no other. Wanting to combine my two passions, I started All About Photography almost a year ago. It’s been fun finding our way, keeping the Toastmaster structure and making the meeting all about photography. Now you see how we got our name.

We are the same as any other Toastmaster club except all our speeches are on photography and our table topics are basically critiques of images. Last Monday I was the Table Topics Master. I selected some images I wanted feedback on and presented them to the club. Before I selected the member participant, I gave a brief background on the picture. The selected member then gave a 1 – 2 minute critique. We do vote on who did the best job and present them with a ribbon.

I’m going to try something new and insert the pictures in the blog individually, not in a gallery.

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This image from the ghost town Bodie was well received, mostly for the color and texture.
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When I shot this, I was trying to show the musician’s emotions. However, the participant felt there wasn’t enough contrast for his face to be predominate. I need to figure out how to darken the tent top.
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I put this one in because I happen to love it and it didn’t get great play on Facebook when I posted it. I wanted to know why and what I could do to make it better. The participant loved it as much as I do, but she noticed the neon open sign in the window furthest away. Can you see it? She thought it was distracting. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed it until she mentioned it!
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This, from near Sedona, AZ, was liked because of the action and depth of field. I thought it might be too busy, but the participant didn’t think so.
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I showed this one because I almost didn’t process it. I thought the vertical orientation made it too tight. The participant thought so also. He thought a horizontal orientation would have shown more of the landscape, giving the viewer an idea of the image’s context. I agree. However, I do like the texture of the wood and grasses.

So there you have it–a glimpse of what we do during an All About Photography meeting. And, to top off the meeting, the former District 39 Photographer told me how much he enjoyed my pictures and thought I had a great eye for composition.

It’s going to possibly rain again tomorrow, so I’ll be busy processing this week’s Tuesday With Seniors photo outing.

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 4 Comments

On the road again: Bodie and Mono Lake, California, final chapter.

Catch a breath, relax and gaze. That’s one way to take in Mono Lake. Photo buddies Marlene, Laura and I took it in with our cameras. We were there as part of our weekend trip to the ghost town Bodie.

Mono Lake is a large, shallow saline soda lake 8.321 miles long. It’s at least 780,000 years old and is among the oldest lakes in North America. While we enjoy its beauty, migratory birds call it home for a while and brine shrimp swim its waters.

You can see Tufa Towers as you walk down to the lake. These salt towers are formed because having no outlet, trace amounts of salts and minerals brought into the lake by freshwater streams have accumulated over the centuries. This resulted with Mono Lake having a salinity two to three times the Pacific Ocean. Tufas are the result of the combination of minerals in fresh and salt water. They take on all sorts of shapes and various neutral colors.

The images you’ll see in this post are of sunset and sunrise (Only Laura can get me to wake up at 4 a.m.) when the lake looks most beautiful. Just catch a breath, relax and look.

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 5 Comments

On the road again: Bodie and Mono Lake, part 2

I can’t believe I left my tripod home! I’ve worked hard to become “one” with it, and I left it home. As I post about Bodie and Mono Lake, we are visiting Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Parks and Fresno, California. I’ll post about this visit back to the parks after a more than 30 year absence next.

So far, I haven’t needed the tripod, but I did need it in Bodie. Why, to get great HDR images, you need to bracket and that’s difficult to do handheld. I’ve done it, but it’s much easier with the tripod. I did a lot of bracketing in the ghost town, because that seems to be a good way to present the decaying buildings and machinery.

Founded in 1876 as a gold mining town, Bodie is a now ghost town in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of Mono County, California.The nearest is Bridgeport,  where we stayed. I talked about the altitude (Bodie is at 8,379 ft or 2,554 m.) and my reaction to it in my previous post. Bodie is also recognized it as a National Historic Landmark, became a California Historical Landmark,  and officially became Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. We were three of the about 200,000 yearly visitors.

Because of the ghost town’s altitude and other health issues, I had a difficult time. However I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just took my time and rested when I needed to. Back home, I had a lot of fun with pushing sliders in Lightroom and processing images in black and white.

Here are some of my favorites in Bodie. Mono Lake will be in my next post. And, I’ll tie a string around my finger regarding my tripod when we head out on the road again!

Posted on by Anne Sandler

On the road again: Bodie and Mono Lake, California

Altitude–I guess I can’t do much of it any more. On a recent trip, the weekend of June 26, to the ghost town Bodie which is located east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California and 75 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe, I experienced the effects of altitude sickness.  Now a California State Park, Bodie is located 12 mi east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8379 feet.

So, what does all that mean? Probably when you’re 72, you should take oxygen with you! I went with photo buddies Laura and Marlene. All of us were affected by the altitude. But, it was worth it as you’ll see in the images I’m posting. In spite of the altitude, the two-day trip was fun. Only Laura could coax me out of bed at 4 a.m. to catch a Mono Lake sunrise.

But, let me start at the beginning. The scenery was so beautiful when we were driving to Bridgeport, our home base that I finally started shooting out the car window. Laura would have pulled over, but there was no place for her to park. I did the best I could. We got to Bridgeport, Bridgeport, the county seat of Mono County, California with an elevation of 6463 feet. just in time to get settled and go to dinner. This is a small town and it was decked out in red, white and blue for the July 4th festivities. I do wish we could have stayed.

I’ll begin this multiple post with scenes shot on the way and Bridgeport.