Ocean View Beach Park

A quiet afternoon walk on the beach

I was not the only one enjoying a quiet walk. This little guy just rambled on past me without a care in the world.

Hot Days

Living on the coast has a major advantage that on hot days there is always the ocean to help you cool down. The main drawback is the HOT sand.

 Linking up with Photo Theme Thursday

Converting to Black and White

While converting to black and white can be done in one step in Photoshop using any of several methods, the results are not always satisfactory.

While the deep blue skies in the photo above were nice for the color photo when converted to black and white the dark sky was not very appealing. This first conversion was created by simply desaturating the photograph.

Although the leading lines are still pointing to the people who were an important part of the image this method all but made them invisible. On my next attempt I decided to use the black and white setting in Image Adjustments. Here I was able to tweak it so that my focal subjects where still visible, however this resulted in a lot of noise in the sky.

 So I decided to go back to the start and adjust the levels on the original photo thus lightening the sky and then going into the black and white setting in Image Adjustments and tweak only the yellow and red. While the sky is smoother my focal subjects once again have faded into the image and worse yet the boardwalk is blown out.

Since I was happy with the sky in this last conversion and the foreground in my second conversion I decided to merge the two images to achieve the effect I desired. Here is my final image.

As most of my photography is done in color and I am not often  called upon to convert to black and white I thought taking part in Black and White Wednesday's would give me some needed practice. Any and all critique is welcomed so please let me know what you think and do hop over and check out what others are sharing.


  And at 

Loving Summer

Just a few reasons to love Summertime!

 I can wear flip flops and no one thinks I am crazy like they do when I wear them and there is snow on the ground.

 Summer wardrobes are simple.

 Opportunities for fun in the fresh air are as endless as the sky.

Thursday Theme Submission

Best of all I can capture fun photo's like this one.

Linking up with Photo Theme Thursday.

Smile Your On Candid Camera

Here are a few candid street photography shots from last week.

This last shot is my favorite. It was one of three shots taken while we were driving down the street. I could hear the motorcycle but could not see it at first. I took the first shot with just the lens outside the car pointing backwards. Then as they pulled up I snapped this one just as the driver was raising his hand to give me a peace sign. Then as they sped away I snapped a third shot.

Mine - Mine - Mine

How is it that something so aggravating can be so beautiful? Yes, I am talking about sea gulls!  I love watching and photographing them as they soar through the air and even dive and swop at unsuspecting goodies that are left unprotected. As long as those goodies don't belong to me. Or, as long as they aren't dropping bombs on me. Yes they bombed me this weekend while we were at the beach, fortunately the birds aim was off. This guy was intent on an open bag of chips.

My Sunday Best Submission

Linking up with A Rural Journal at:

Wordless Wednesday: On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!

For more wordless Wednesday photos visit these blog hops:

Wordless Wednesday at Mommy Head Adventures

and over at Java's Never Growing Old