Land Park – Slow Shutter Speed

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Anne Sandler · 44 Comments

Lens Artists Challenge #311: What’s in a Garden

When I started photography, the first thing I wanted to learn was how to get that soft background behind a flower. I didn’t know the term for that was macro photography and that soft background was bokeh. This led me to truly appreciate floral beauty and the gardeners who create that beauty. Ann-Christine’s challenge this week is on gardens.

I do appreciate the wonderful volunteers who work hours to keep our public gardens looking gorgeous for us to enjoy. One of those gardens is the WPA Rock Garden in Land Park, Sacramento. It’s a small one acre hillside garden comprised of a series of rock-lined beds and meandering paths. The garden was established in 1940 through the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

Aside from one paid employee, the garden is taken care of by volunteers who do a fantastic job. Whenever I see a volunteer, I always thank them for making this possible for me to photograph.

Here are some photos I took on a recent visit this month.

Situated in Land Park and near the pond, the garden gets a lot of park visitors who are curious and just enjoy both the park, pond and garden. It’s a wonderful place to relax.

There are many gardens in Sacramento for us to photograph and I appreciate this opportunity to show you The Rock Garden. Thank you Ann-Christine. When you post your response , please be sure to place a link to Ann-Christine’s post and use the Lens-Artists tag. Last week we zigged and zagged. What a fun challenge from Patti. Next week Sofia will present her challenge so be sure to look for her post.

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Anne Sandler · 6 Comments

Wearing suspenders and a belt: WPA Rock Garden

I love macro photography! I love the WPA Rock Garden in Land Park, Sacramento! But, do I love making mistakes? Not really, but I love learning from them.

The Rock Garden is an excellent place for macro photography so I brought my D7100 and macro lens. I also wanted to see how well the Fujifilm XT3 and its 55 – 200 mm lens would do close ups. My Nikon and 18 – 200 lens does close up photography beautifully.

First, I found out that my Fuji, like my Nikon, puts itself in various modes without telling me. It put itself in a different focus mode, making it difficult to focus. One mistake solved and learned from. Watch those fingers!

I saw macro opportunities and started shooting with my D7100 and macro lens. Best to do it while the breeze is down. Here’s the result:

Still wanting to use the Fuji, I wandered over to the small Land Park lake and saw lotus buds and leaves in the water. Yes! we would soon have flowers to capture in our cameras. Here’s where the second mistake occurred. I was having a difficult time shooting on manual with the Fuji and didn’t realize until I got home, loaded my pictures into the computer, and saw them on my monitor, that the images were super noisy. Looking at the data, I saw that some of them were shot at 12,000 ISO in sunlight! Did I mistake the ISO ring for the shutter ring? What did I do wrong? This was to be solved during my next Fuji outing! Here are some images shot with the Fuji:

Yesterday, I took pictures of a couple, Carol and Paul, I wrote about in for our community newsletter. I photographed them with the Fuji and the 18 -55 mm lens. They were beautiful. The shots and the couple!

So, lessons were learned. And, practice makes perfect as you’ll see in my next post.

Posted on January 18, 2016January 18, 2016 by Anne Sandler · 2 Comments

Rain, and I’m liking it: Tower Theater, Sacramento

What do photographers do when it’s raining or rain is unpredictable? Some go out in the rain anyway, some do studio work, some go through old images and edit or re-edit them, and then others run out when the weather breaks for however long.

I’m one of those who run out during rain breaks. Today would have been the perfect day to do that, but unfortunately my scheduled did not permit it. However, I am wanting to try shooting in the rain after seeing many rain shots in the Sacramento Photographers Facebook group. We’ll see. Apparently, the rain is here to stay for a while.

With this post, I’m wrapping up our visit to the Tower Theater. When we moved to the Sacramento area in 2001, we heard about the theater, but never made it down to visit it. Opening in 1938 as a single screen theater, the Tower was converted to a triplex in 1972. Tower Cut-Rate Drugs, a drugstore named after its next door neighbor, opened and starting selling records in 1941 and was the beginning of Tower Records. It eventually moved across the street.

By the 1980s, Tower Records sold records, books and videos. succumbed to the digital age and closed in 2006. I remember the news coverage showing devoted fans mourning their loss at the record store’s closing.

Now Dimple Records is in that same place, the Tower Cafe, which opened in 1990, feeds movie goers and the Tower Theater stands above the tree line with it’s art-deco design.

Maybe during the next rain break, Marlene and I will go down to take more photos of the theater and enjoy lunch at the cafe; but, only if the weather permits during the week so we can avoid crowds at the cafe.