Be happy–that you are able to get the medical care we have today. Of the three museums we visited, this was the scariest. When you look at what the doctors of years gone by had to work with, thankfulness and fear comes to the surface. The progress we have made is amazing.
Photographing some of the old tools was difficult because of the small quarters, glare and glass cases. Again, I shot tight. As you look at some of the images, be thankful!
Muscle cars, race cars, classic cars. You can find them all at the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento. And we found them all, including lots of people. You sort of expect that when it’s free museum day. We were’nt allowed to bring in our tripods because of the crowded condition, so we made the best of it.
I decided to shoot parts of the cars rather than the entire vehicle. A surprise was the small cafe made to look like the interior of a 50s ice cream parlor. That was fun to shoot. I also met a nice couple who were curious as to why I was shooting the top of a table. I wonder what they were thinking until I explained that I was shooting the reflection of the neon sign.
I was also surprised to learn that this museum changes exhibits quarterly. Marlene and I are going back to shoot the next exhibit. You’ll see what it is next month.
Meanwhile enjoy the best of the classic, antique and muscle cars.
You make plans and then need to change them. But, this was a welcome change. It’s raining here in dry California. Although this is a warm storm and will do nothing to help the snow pack, it will help put some water back into the lakes and rivers.
We, photo buddy Marlene and I, had planned on visiting museums for about 2 hours on Saturday, but changed it to a day of shooting when we knew we couldn’t go to Crockett on Sunday. The three we visited were the Leland Stanford Mansion State Park, the California Automobile Museum and the Museum of Medical History.
It was a full day of walking, bending and kneeling. Great exercise! In today’s post I’ll show you images from the Stanford Mansion. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t allow us to shoot inside the mansion. It was beautiful, with some of the restored, original furniture like a side board that looked like a locomotive. Leland Stanford was President of the Central Pacific Railroad of California.
Build in 1857, the Stanfords purchased the home in 1861. Over the years the home grew from its original 4,000 sq ft to 19,000 sq ft. After their son’s death 1884, Lealand and Jane endowed the Leland Stanford, Jr. University in 1885. Today that college is a part of the University of California system. It was amazing to go back in time, yet be surrounded by today. The home is tucked in the midst of office buildings.
Enjoy the outside of the Stanford Mansion.
Walking through a graveyard may not be the ideal place to shoot photos, but the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery is rich with history, unusual grave stones and beautiful flowers. My photo pal, Marlene, and I went there last week and spent some time walking, reading and taking pictures.
It’s not unusual to see photographers out there. I was disappointed that many of the flowers weren’t blooming, but it’s not that time of the year. This just gives me another reason to go back in the spring.
What impressed me was the way they inscribed the tombstones in the 1800s and the type of loss. One family lost two sons at the same age. Having lost a son myself, I could feel their grief more than 100 years later. I found large monuments and small, simple stones.
I’ll go back in the spring and walk the graveyard again. Maybe I’ll go on one of the cemetery tours that take us back into the history of Sacramento. Meanwhile here are my images from this outing.
The drought is now severe in California. Less water in areas means less wildlife. It is dismal here right now. Fortunately, we live in an urban area, and, although we are on water restrictions, we have water. As I said in part one of this post, there were few large birds to be seen during our outing.
But that didn’t stop us from trying to find them. On our way home, we stopped at a wildlife view area off the freeway. Again, no birds, but nice scenery. And, we were able to help a family stranded after they locked their keys in their car. There was a reason for us to pull off the highway.
Then we stopped at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area which is just about 25 minutes from my home. We did catch some wildlife there. I think my bird shooting is over for this year. I might go back to Yolo, but I won’t make the 90 mile one way trips again. We are still hopeful for rain, but we’re mostly getting overcast skies and fog.
Here are the images from our stops along the way home.
Photography may be ducky, but most of the wildlife at the Las Gallinas Ponds were ducks! And to go that far, about 90 miles each way, to find mostly ducks wasn’t ducky! At least we found sun, and other things to shoot.
The ponds are next to a water treatment plant, so I was hoping for more wildlife than we saw. I looked at images posted by photographers who went there the day before, and it looked like there were more large birds. I’m thinking it may be the time of day also. We left Sacramento at 8 a.m. and got to the ponds about 10 a.m. But, we walked the trail, met other people and found good stuff to shoot.
I had difficulty shooting the larger birds (mostly gulls) in the air because I’m having a difficult time holding my 300 mm lens still. This is something new for me. I guess it’s back to the gym. I need more upper body strength.
So here are some images. Don’t worry, I won’t burden you with a whole lot of ducks! This will be a two-part post.
In addition to Mother Nature, sometimes WordPress makes things tough. I think some of you may have received all the images for both parts of this post and some I didn’t intend to post. I truly don’t know how that happened. However, I don’t know that all of you did. So I’m going to do the last part of this blog post anyway.
We are still fogged in during the morning and early afternoons here in Sacramento, and photographing is still difficult. Difficult unless you want to shoot foggy images. But, we’re trying to shoot wildlife!
And, here’s some more (or once again) some wildlife!
Wow, that’s a heafty title! But, that’s what it was. We gathered at the Aerospace Museum for a workshop sponsored by the Sacramento Photographers Facebook group given by Pedro Marenco. We covered topics including HDR, DOF, Focus Stacking and more. (Did you like how I threw out those acronymns!)
Except for the dismal weather, it was fun. My big take away was how much I already know. I keep berating myself about the technical aspect of photography, but I have learned quite a bit. And when there’s math involved, I can get around it. I’m much more confident now.
Most of the images I’m going to show you are HDR. High Dynamic Range explained simply takes three or more shots taken at different exposures of the same image. These different exposures are then brought into a software program that compresses the shots into one image. This eliminates the washed out skies, dark areas, etc. Most HDR programs have presets that can create all sorts of looks. It’s really fun. These old planes are perfectly suited for this.
I also realized that I need to be inspired about what I’m photographing. Although this is an interesting museum, it’s not what I would abosultely go out of my way to shoot. Once we got outside photography got a litlle more interesting. Oh, Richard is totally into planes and docents at this very museum!
Wow, what a busy photographic weekend. But, you’ll hear more about my Saturday and Sunday outings soon. Now, I want to finish up on my visit to Midtown, Sacramento. Midtown is not a separate city, but a community within Sacramento. We have the various directional communities (north, south, east) and in the middle is….Midtown! West Sacramento is in Yolo County and is a separate city. Sacramento City is in Sacramento County.
Now that I’ve thoroughly confused you, here are more images from last week’s visit.
Actually, I’ve renamed this area of Sacramento Morristown! Yesterday afternoon, I went along with Photo buddy Greg Morris to shoot some of the wall murals. As a former resident, he knows the area well and is always discovering new places to shoot. I had a lot of fun seeing awesome murals, old buildings and decay.
There are a lot of stories to be told in Midtown: the art, the people and the structures all give you an inkling of how people live there. Withing a few blocks you can go from decaying buildings to upscale eateries and shops. Well, I’d better let the images tell you more. This will probably be a three part post. I’ll begin with a couple of murals and people.
Welcome to Morristown!
Slow Shutter Speed 