Eden... A Project In The Works, The Eden Landing Ecological Reserve

Egret Wading Through Water, Eden Landing Ecological Reserve

In California, we seem to always be trying to get things "back to the way they were". Case in point, the various salt ponds used for taking ocean water and evaporating them until large masses of salt is formed for bulldozing and harvesting. Many of those are being converted back into wetlands for birds and other dwellers.

Bridge To Somewhere

Bridge To Somewhere, a photo by wingtangwong on Flickr.


The above shot is my submission to the Strobist Boot Camp #3, Assignment #3. For folks living in Cupertino, this is the bridge that crosses the 280 freeway. I shot this late in the afternoon, hoping to get some interesting shadow play from the structure of the bridge.  While I live on the south end of the bridge, I walked across the bridge a few times and decided to take a photo of the bridge from the northern side, as I liked the way the light was playing off of the structure and the floor.


Photographed with camera on tripod, low to the ground. Flash was hand held and triggered with a pair of Pocket Wizard PlusII's. The bag in the picture is my camera bag, lit by the flash at full power, while the camera was stopped down to help over power the sun. The image was post processed in LR3 and submitted to the Strobist Flickr pool.


Lately, I've been enjoying photographing landscapes more, and trying to develop my creative vision with the help of my much more creatively minded wife. This photograph is an example of that awesome collaboration.


W.

Black Sea Nettle

Black sea nettle, a photo by wingtangwong on Flickr.

Trying for a different way of photographing one of my favorite sea creatures...

Re-iterating My Dislike of Photographers Who Can't Turn Off Their Flash

Will update this post more, but here is an epic example of why flash photography at an aquarium is a bad idea:

Photo ruined by someone's popup flash.

As you can see, I was unlucky enough to have taken my shot at the same time as someone firing off their popup flash. Yes, I can really see the value add of using your pop up flash in an aquarium... against a large 2 story window. That glare really adds to the look and feel. 

Seriously, why do people do this? I can't imagine people are thinking this is a "great" image of what they saw? 

Contrast the above shot with one I took, which was not ruined by someone else's flash:

Sea Turtle

I took a different post processing approach with the sea turtle shots this time around, vs past visits. You can check out the images, as well as the ruined shot in my sea turtle gallery:

• http://www.wingtangwong.com/Wildlife/Water-based-Wildlife/Sea-Turtles/12577580_Dq55Wn

Shrinking Down JPEGS! ( JPEGmini )

Recently, I came across this post from PetaPixel about JPEGmini

It details a company that has come up with a way to optimize an image so that it visually looks virtually identical to the original, but takes up a fraction of the original file size. That's awesome! I even tested it against some image files:

Black Sea Nettles - JPEG shrunk using custom algorithm.

• 24 megapixel JPEG / 12MB in size => 1.6MB resulting file after JPEGmini.
• 12 megapixel JPEG / 4.8MB in size => 1.1MB resulting file after JPEGmini.

I performed a difference test against the original and the JPEGmini version. They are virtually identical. If you take the resulting difference image and adjust the levels, there are in fact different, but the difference can be attributed to minor random noise vs compression artifacts. Amazing!

Panorama of Los Angeles at night from Griffith observatory

Panorama of Los Angeles at night from Griffith observatory, a photo by wingtangwong on Flickr.

Multiple long exposures shot with my 70-200/2.8 lens on a tripod. The images were stitched together using PS CS5. Amazing city of lights!

Long exposure shot of Los Angeles and its downtown towers

Long exposure shot of Los Angeles and its downtown towers, a photo by wingtangwong on Flickr.

During a recent trip to Los Angeles, I visited the Griffith Observatory with my family and got a chance to use my tripod to do some night photography. This long exposure shot of the city skyline was amazing to behold and alot of fun to shoot.