Archive for March, 2009
Giraffe on Serengeti
Caught a closeup of this giraffe eating on our safari in 2004 in the Serengeti. It really is an amazing experience to be so close to the wildlife – as sad as is sounds, you actually start to see so much wildlife that at the end of it, you’re like, “oh check it out, another elephant! Oh wait, I’ve already seen 70 of them today.”
Had a handful of good pics that I couldn’t find due to a server crash, but I had saved this one from another drive; good thing…
Twin Towers
Alex Ruiz is one of my favorite modern day artists. He’s got some really great visions and artworks that really cater to my SciFi nerve. I am a huge fan of the genre and he really takes it to the next level. His Shantytown pic really caught my eye; so I thought I’d take on a play of it.
I manually created similar brushes to the ones he used to build up the background. I set the flow and opacity of them both to 15 and 20 and slowly built up the background using layers (about 130 of them). Slowly would take out portions with the eraser and build back up to give it depth.
My uncropped version of the pic is actually really large (5000×5000) because I started out small, but the layers kept growing and not really turning out how I wanted them, so I would expand the canvas (about 5 or 6 times) until I liked what I saw… (more…)
Tropical Depression Waves in Saipan
This shot actually reminded me of Katsushika Hokusai‘s The Great Wave of Kanagawa. It was the backend of a tropical depression and made for some big waves in Saipan when Heather and I went there in 2007.
Across The Sand
This tut was actually a pretty interesting one to dig into. It brought me back a lot to the abstract days of kicking around the studio art degree at Whitman; it gives you a lot more creative challenges.
A couple of net adds I think that enhanced it were a few background textures to make it more 3d, I darkened the sky, added a few more clouds, tossed in lightening, reduced the amount of rain and ultimately kept some color in it. 
Sunset in Bothell, WA
Caught a last shot before the sun went down at home in Bothell, WA. The colors were pretty deep so I got up on my roof to snap this one. I may have overexposed it a bit much, but the colors are pretty strong and they don’t cooperate like that up here very often.
Blue Mountains, Three Sisters, Katoomba, Australia
It was cold in the Blue Mountains that day I recall. We had a bad parking place up the hill, but we came around and it was very windy out, but on the left you see Three Sisters, in Katoomba, Australia and it really was staggering as to how far back it went. To the right (out of the pic) is a huge gondola carrying people across the canyon to sight see. It was well worth the trip, cold, but worth it. Oh what, you mean to the gondola? No way, it was cold and that trek was about 10 miles worth. Would have been neat, but we had other things to worry about, like the trek back to the bad parking place.
Bike Ride Down Mount Haleakala
This actually was one of the most fun things I thought we did in Maui. They claimed a 28 mile bike ride which freaked me out. But it was more like a 28 mile coasting. I think I may have pedaled a total of about 4 minutes the entire ride. Certainly a unique trip and I got about 15 other photos worth something on it.
Well worth the money if you’re ever headed out that way. You get to see most of the island as it weaves its way down the mountain. 
