Rainy Day Shooting

It was a rainy day today in Southern California. It rained most of the night and into the afternoon. Usually, I get quite lazy when it rains. I'll admit I sleep great when I can hear the pitter-patter of falling rain through the night but, once I wake up, I have a hard time getting motivated to do much of anything.

Finally upright, sipping coffee and at my computer, I exchanged a few messages back and forth with a local photographer who is one of my newest MySpace friends. (Like that really counts a lot in the realm of actual friendships.) This particular shooter is a she and she does seem quite cool and quite interesting and she is a photographer so, who knows? Maybe, at some point down the road, we'll graduate from being MySpace friends to becoming real-life acquaintances... maybe even real-life friends. Ya never know, ya know? I've heard things like that happen ocassionally, even on MySpace.

Leesa, my new MySpace friend, told me she was heading up to the mountains to shoot some stuff for a calender she's working on. I don't know this for a fact, but I got the feeling the calender might be a personal project. Regardless, I wished her happy hunting (for a great pic or two) and sat back only to realize I'd just been guilt-tripped. Not that Leesa guilt-tripped me purposefully, but the result was the same. There I was, sitting on my ass, wishing another shooter well as she was about to go OUT OF HER WAY and DRIVE FAR to get some pics -- possibly more for the love of shooting than anything else -- while I was planning to simply waste the day away doing little more than updating this blog. (Not that updating the blog isn't important.)

Then I went from guilty to angry... at myself. So I cleaned up, got dressed, grabbed one of my cameras and headed out the door intent on shooting something. Anything!

It probably will come as no surprise to anyone that I don't shoot much else other than pretty girls. I've tried my hand at street photography a few times but, last time out, a bunch of homeless people (down in L.A.'s skid row) chased me off with threats of violence. I don't scare that easilly but this one, big, fat, homeless woman put the fear of God in me as she charged me like a pissed-off, out-of-control, elephant-on-a-rampage and that was that. That was the last time I went out and did any street photography.

So there I was this morning, in my car with the rain coming down thinking to myself, "Ya know what? Landscapes are safe." Besides, I figured the low cloud cover might offer some cool skyscapes to go with whatever landscapes I might decide to shoot.



The picture above is the road that leads to Vasquez Rocks. Lonely looking, ain't it? Moreso on rainy days.

Before long, I found myself driving on the slippery mud at Vasquez Rocks County Park. You might recognize Vasquez Rocks -- see the pic at the top -- as it's been featured in more movies and television shows, mostly westerns, than any other location in Southern California. And, it's only about 15 mintues from where I live.

I had earlier noticed, from her MySpace page, that my new MS friend, Leesa, has shot at Vasquez Rocks. She refers to it as a "A big pile o' rocks." (She seems pretty funny.) Anyway, there I was, in the rain and mud at the big pile o' rocks with my camera set to the "landscape" program function (Did I mention I don't know what I'm doing shooting most anything besides pretty girls?) and snapping away.

No offense to people who shoot a lot of landscape photography but I got bored pretty quickly. I'm not saying I absolutely have to have a pretty girl in front of me, often-times unclothed, to maintain my photographic interest... but it sure as hell helps. At least for me it does.

I returned home, loaded the images into my computer, kick-started Photoshop, picked a pic and began screwing with it. The first result is what you see at the top of this post.

But the more I looked at it the more it just didn't do much for me. Leesa was right. It simply looked like a big pile o' rocks. I had to screw with it more. Besides, what good is knowing a little something about Photoshop if you're not going to have some fun once in a while messing around with your images? I decided my image needed a bit more drama. Quickly, I Googled for some images that might help me to do just that, i.e., put a bit more drama in my landscape shot. By the way, for those of you who, rightfully, get your panties in a twist when you read about someone ripping someone else's images for their own use, please note that the image I ripped was uncredited and I found it on some U.S. government site that says the picture was shot by NASA. Not an actual person at NASA, but simply NASA. I'm thinking it might have been captured by a computer-controlled camera that didn't have a photographer attached to it.

So here's the results of my image of Vasquez Rocks, ripping off NASA, and playing with it in Photoshop on a lazy, rainy day. Hopefully, these combined efforts added some much-needed drama to an otherwise novice landscape effort. (Ansel Adams I ain't.) If anyone, after looking at these pics, wants to suggest I don't quit my day job, I won't be offended.

As always, you can click on the pictures to see bigger versions of them.