Posted on by Anne Sandler

Just a little exercise: Effie Yeaw Nature Center, Sacramento, California

Walking on river bed rock can give you a workout. The Effie Yeaw Nature Center is a place you can continually go back to and see different things each time. This time my photo buddy Rita and I walked near the American River which is low due to the drought. I keyed in on trees and mostly used my 55 – 300 mm lens that was mounted on my D3100. They were so expressive. Meanwhile Rita kept her eyes on smaller objects like birds and crawling things.

You see, I was raised in the city and suburbs, and I’m not used to finding the small wonders of nature. I’m learning though. We do want to go back for sunrise so we can catch the sun’s beauty and the deer. Getting there at 7 a.m., Rita saw a lot of deer. However, I didn’t see one, getting there at 8 a.m. The last time we were there, we saw one deer family.

After a two-hour workout, we left. I’ll be going back on Sunday for their Nature Fest. They will have many activities I’m sure my young grandkids will enjoy. We won’t be walking along the river though!

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 1 Comment

Pointing and shooting: Baking honey cakes with Haddassah

Yes, I did point and shoot at our Haddassah study group yesterday. It was a perfect time to try out the new camera, and it did a good job. It was fair at low light, but very portable and able to shoot into things without me climbing on a chair.

So, what was the Haddassah study group doing? We were baking honey cakes for the residents of the Einstein Residential Center for seniors in Sacramento. Our goal was to bake, give each resident a cake and visit with them. During Rosh HaShana (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) it is customary to eat honey cake and apples dipped in honey. Honey is a symbol for sweetness in the new year.

The residents were very happy to spend time with us and receive their honey cakes. For us, it was fun to get together, bake and meet new people. Unfortunately, we were only allowed to have five women in the kitchen at once so we took turns. And, we also had a few minutes to continue our study.

And me? I took time out to break in the point and shoot!

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 2 Comments

When life hands you lemons; shoot anyway: Rodeo Beach, Golden Gate National Recreation Area

We weren’t exactly handed lemons at our Rodeo Beach visit, but the dead seal, dog poop and crustacean pieces didn’t help create an atmosphere for beauty on the beach. I just decided to make the best of it, wait for the sunset and do the best shooting I could do. After all, the beach itself was nice.

But then, my shooting was hampered when I needed to clean the inside of the filter on my main lens. I couldn’t unscrew the filter and neither could three other photographers. So the day’s shooting was done with my 300 mm telephoto and ultra wide lenses. I enjoyed the day, meeting two great gals I carpooled with and more from the Meetup group, Exploring Photography.

When 29 photographers get on a small patch of beach, it can get crowded; but, everyone cooperated. I would go up to photo enthusiasts and ask them what they were shooting, what they were using, etc. In the end, the fog made the sunset less than spectacular, giving us an orange glow before it went behind the fog bank.

Life may have handed us lemons, but we did shoot and I did get some very good images.

Posted on by Anne Sandler

There’s gold in them their hills: Gold panning, Bear River, Colfax, California, part 2

What is your passion? Do you find fulfillment from it? The Dirt Bags, as Jim and Jos are called by their gold panning community, found their passion and work hard at achieving it. They have an elaborate set up for gold panning, and, yes, they get dirty doing it.

In this post you’ll see how they find that sparkling treasure. As for me, I’ll stick with photography. Last night I chased my passion to the Marin Headlands–more to come on that outing. For me, each image is my gold and my passion.

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 2 Comments

There’s gold in them their hills: Gold panning, Bear River, Colfax, California

I like to shoot photos, Richard likes to image the stars and Kenny Nichols likes to pan for gold. It relaxes him, and gets him away from work and home. Gloria, his wife, goes along to get away and enjoy time with friends. Fortunately, we are among their friends, and I finally got a chance to visit them while they were out on a gold panning weekend.

Everyone has their own way to capture that precious metal. Some have elaborate machines (I’ll call them that for lack of knowledge!) and others prefer simplicity. No matter which they choose, it’s very physical. After a day of panning, the club members relax and enjoy duck races, evening board games and other activities.

Their weekend was dampened by the huge King fire that filled their campground with smoke. The fire, which was arson, has been raging for a week and a half and is only 65% contained now. When we were there, the smoke had just come into their area and hung heavily over the river blocking out the sun.

My pictures will show the smoke, and because of it, we didn’t stay long. But, we did stay long enough to get acquainted with the community and their passion for their hobby. One couple took a good deal of time with us, and you’ll see their pictures in the next post. Kenny wasn’t panning because he fell the day before and was resting. I’m sure he panned the following day.

For Richard and I, we are back following our hobby passions.

Posted on by Anne Sandler

Back to where I started: A point and shoot camera

It might seem like I’m going backwards, but I’m not. I’m simply covering all my photography needs. Well, not maybe all, but at least the need to not get caught without a camera.

You must have been caught in a circumstance where you said, “I wish I had my camera!” That happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I had just left a meeting about 35 minutes from home and there was the most fantastic sunset, and I didn’t have my camera! By the time I got home, it was over. To overcome that, I purchased a Sony Cyber-shot camera. This morning I gave it a trial run while walking my dog.

It did well in the areas that I would use it. This model detects whether you are shooting a landscape, portrait, close up, night shot, etc. I haven’t figured out whether I can override its Auto Intelligence mode. What it calls macro doesn’t give bokeh (blurry background).

Of course, there’s nothing like my Nikon DSLR, but the Sony fits in my purse (It’s smaller than my cell phone.), and I’ll have it with me at all times. It’s also useful when you’re at a wedding and want to take your personal shots. Its small size won’t interfere with the professional photographer.

So here are some shots from today’s effort in going backwards.

Posted on by Anne Sandler

Capay Valley–after almost a month’s absence

Do people really forget about you when you don’t blog for a while? I hope not! My spirit was wanting to blog, but that 4-week long cold kept saying, “Stay home. Rest!”

Resting is boring; shooting photos is exciting. I had a wicked good time when Jayne West and I joined other photographers from the Exploring Photography meetup group in Capay, California. I’ve never been on a trip like this. We met each other for lunch at the Road Trip Bar and Grill, had lunch and then went on our individual road trips. I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if Jayne hadn’t been in the car with me. Two women from the group met a landowner prior to our lunch, and he invited the entire group to come and explore his property. It was amazing. A literal junk yard for old cars and other stuff. Jayne encouraged me to try some bracketed shots. I managed to set up the tripod myself (A feat!), but I couldn’t get my new remote shutter release to work. It worked the night before! So I’m not sure how the bracketed shots will work on Wednesday when Jayne shows me how to use the HDR and Lightroom software.

After that, Jayne and I went to find Peacocks that were supposed to be at a park nearby. They were there, but stubborn and didn’t want to spread their beautiful feathers. After that, we drove on to find Lake Berryessa. But, it was closed by the time we got there. We did shoot some images from the side of the road just to prove we were there.

Just going out with this group makes me feel like I’m still spinning wheels. Most of the photographers do HDR and are more advanced than I am. So, I need to catch up! I’ve decided that every Tuesday will be practice day. Most of it will be local, maybe even my back yard! But, I will practice!

The added bonus to learning will be the routine blogging I hope to do. I have quite a few images from the Capay Valley so this may be a two or three part post.

Posted on by Anne Sandler · 1 Comment

Birthday and practice, practice, practice

Did you ever have those days where what you did was governed by outside forces? Today, I wanted to go photograph the Sandhill Cranes–the very same cranes that have been eluding me. Well, they still are!

Here’s how the day went. With gift cards in hand, I went to Action Camera in Roseville on Friday. Now that I have two cameras, I needed a way to carry them on all-day photo meetups. I’m so glad I was using gift cards because the Yeti Slim that I bought was expensive, but durable and would hold my cameras safely. It was figuring out how the Yeti Slim worked and setting it up that closed the slim window of my being able to go to Galt and photograph the cranes.

But all wasn’t lost. I did go to nearby Dry Creek for practice with the D7100. By the time I left for my practice session it was 3:30 p.m., and a great time to shoot photos. I practiced using different exposures and close ups. The D7100 makes it easy to change the exposure, and now that I understand what the sub-command dial does, shooting on aperture priority is easy. I’m putting some of these in the gallery.

More important than the practice was my granddaughter Madison’s 19th birthday dinner. We celebrated late, her birthday was in December, because I was in Simi Valley at the time. She’s an amazing young lady and is beautiful inside and out. I don’t have too many images from the dinner to show you, but you’ll get to see all the grandkids.

Tomorrow, we are going to the U.C. Davis Arboretum. I went there with a group last year, and it is a beautiful experience. I just hope the day goes as planned!