Aleksandr and Victoria Gallery

This year in Yosemite is special. A lot of water and floods. Usually moonbows are more intense during snowmelt in May. This year because of late spring and rainfalls in May, snowmelt reached maximum in June. Waterfalls are still abundant in July by the way.
Here’s my attempt to reshoot moonbow in 2001. Waterfall was very strong, you can tell that from the picture. I have not seen bow that long in other pictures actually.

3D Animation Short, Victoria produced produced all by herself (Vimeo)

As you can tell from title picture for this blog, I really like natural bridges. Most popular natural bridge is located in Santa Cruz. Another one is father south down the Pacific coast in Big Sur in Pfeiffer State Park. It’s somewhat hard to find, but it’s definitely worth the effort if you happen to be driving by Hwy 1. Pfeiffer Beach is gorgeous and words hardly can describe it. Long and wide strip of sand framed by sheer mountain ridge, pink sands (yes it’s really pink in some spots!), big natural bridge and rock formation, high and strong tide waves make it picturesque in all respects. Unfortunately Big Sur is famous for its foggy and windy weather. So usually during summer days you should expect beach being covered with thick layers of fog. Photographers however prefer to shoot this location in perfect weather. One classic shot is when sunlight lits up inner side of the bridge. Here’s one of the examples:

Rock formation on North side of the beach becomes photogenic during sunsets, but without help of sky colors it may look too dull to shoot. Fog is not a helper in that situation.
Anyway, I’ve done my homework and finally was able to find the place. Well, weather was very sunny and warm along the Pacific Coast from Half Moon Bay all the way to Monterey that day, but Big Sur was covered with fog. Pfieffer Beach was not an exception. I did few test shots and was about to leave the beach as weather did not promise anything. To me reward, right before sunset multilayered fog opened up the sky a little and created weird orange saturated ambient light. It lasted literally for couple minutes and then became dull and gray. Anyway, I was able to take several shots of the bridge with orange cast and think they’re worth to show.
I liked the place and will most likely come back there in October/November when fog usually less intense along the coast.

Like always, you have to click on the picture to open up full size version. I like this vertical composition over horizontal which you can find in the gallery as well.

* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 48533 *

My frist attempt to photograph well known phenomenon called Moon Bow in Yosemite. June’s Moon Bow was perfect in sense of intensity and also because occurred at nights from Friday and Saturday and then with less intensity from Saturday to Sunday which is very convenient for working people like me.
Anyway, my first attempt of taking picture of bow was close to blow… no pun intended here. First off, me and my friend were too late for event. Second, when we finally arrived to Yosemite valley, we rushed toward the lower fall Vista Point and got lost in the middle of woods. When we reached the Vista, it was already packed with literally hundreds of photographers and tourists. I was impossible to get a spot for picture. It was also a bad idea to be there because lower fall was at its peak and was making everything including lens and camera wet in seconds. I missed on everything: exposure, focus, composition…. When I eventually figured out right composition and exposure, I forgot about focus and clean up the lens. And then bow disappeared. It was sad. Anyway, we’re learning on our own mistakes. I promis not to make same mistakes next year.

Looks like Gallery2 is getting obsolete. Actually WPG2 plugin is getting out of date and sometimes pain to work with, as it was not updated in long time and has definite compatibility issues with WordPress 2.7. And, frankly, Gallery2 is way too slow, though it’s one of the most flexible and powerful gallery scripts out there. It’s time to try out alternatives. Here’s a good start point, post about gallery plugins for WordPress:
http://www.blogohblog.com/wordpress-gallery-plugins/

What do you think?

Sony finally showed a successor of popular and highly regarded (according to dpreview) A700. David Kilpatrick as always has a good insight on new gear from Sony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCLZ9Z3gJQ8&feature=player_embedded

Besides A7XX and A5XX Sony showed mockups of a new compact equipped with either APS-C or 4:3 lense mount. 2 more DSLR lenses were shown as well.

• 24mm/f2
• 500mm/f4 G

Victoria’s site with Animation Demo Reel and Art Gallery is finally up. Check it out!

Hey!

You would ask how this news is related to this site? The answer is simple, this game is our baby where Aleksandr was a programmer, Victoria – a designer and animator and Diana – tester. We’re proud and happy to announce its release in the App Store.

Our family studio website is www.fruitbyte.com

We have a limited number of iTunes promocodes. So if you want to try this game out, let us know.

Here’s few screen shots from the game.

That’s probably my favorite subject – Ocean Sunset.  This picture was actually taken this evening at Rodeo Beach near San Francisco. Gallen Rowell made it even popular with his famous pictures of rock formation on the north part of the beach. This beach is also famous for its black sands. Surprisingly enough this November evening was very warm and windless, though morning was really windy and uncomfortable. Sunset was not as spectacular when after rain horizon got painted in all shades of red, vanilla red and magenta. And today sky was clear. That was my first try to take pictures of famous rocks. I did not try to copy Gallen’s work. In his picture he used very long exposure to wash out waves and water. Also his picture was taken at low tides, so he was able to create interesting foreground with small rocks which were hidden today.

I must admit, my composition is simpler and somewhat boring. But in my picture I was able to capture last rays of sunlight and unique color of sands at Rodeo Beach. Yes, sand there is black! Hope you like this picture.

I can’t give a direct link to Gallen’s picture, but you can easily find it yourself by clicking on Coastal California folder on his website:

http://mountainlight.com/gallery.coastal/images.html

I’ve been asked about how to follow updates in our gallery. That’s right, we have RSS feed here and you can easily subscribe to it. Just click RSS icon in the right upper corner. That’s it! We don’t use twitter much to post updates, so RSS is the best way to get updates right to your favorite RSS reader.