Catalott On The Road: August 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

This is just a test ....

Hey, it worked!!! (This is the geek in me, amazed at technology.)

I took a close up digital pic with the Pentax, then used the in camera processing to alter colors, rotate 180 degrees, crop and re-size. I also applied a pastel filter and increased the sharpening slightly. I saved the processed photo back onto the memory card.

For memory, I took the Micro SD card from my phone, put it into an SD holder and put that in the camera. After transferring the pic to this card, I removed the Micro SD from the camera and put the chip back in my phone to send this picture to my blog page via Blackberry e-mail.

Next, I opened the photo in Pixlr on-line and did some more tweaking - adjusting levels and using the clone tool to remove a few spots.

Ok, its not the perfect picture, but I proved that I can do it. I'm sure this will be useful some day. For now it is just for fun.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Stone Soup Music Faire Photos

You can view some of my photos from this year's music festival at

http://catalottonthego.blogspot.com/p/stone-soup-music-faire-2010.html

For more details on this year's musical groups, see

http://groverbeachchamber.com/cm/Calendar/stone-soup.html

Friday, August 27, 2010

Midnight Moonlight Madness

(subtitle - I really should have been sleeping when I took these pictures)

The full moon this week presented some good photo opportunities - I just wish I knew better what I was doing with long night time exposures. Fortunately, digital film is cheap.

So I was up through some late night and early morning hours this week, but it was pleasant, mild weather, and good photo practice.

Photo to left is the moon about ready to set, around 5:45 am along Hiway 46 above Cambria, CA. 1700 ft above the fog. Pentax K20D with 300 mm lens. Underexposed -2.0 EV to show lunar details.

The Carlton Hotel, in beautiful downtown Atascadero CA, shortly after moonrise

Atascadero Feed and Grain elevator highlighted by moonlight

Golden hills, creeping fog, moonset and sunrise combine for interesting textures and colors.
Thursday morning around 6:10 am. Sunrise is still coming at 6:30 am.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Local Atascadero Photos

Here are some pictures from Saturday's car show in Atascadero, which gave me the chance to get some practice editing photos with the Gimp. First there was a very cool pink Cadillac. Then there was the car that looked more interesting without paint - just the rusty unfinished surfaces were very colorful. The final picture is the Atascadero Feed and Grain store along Traffic way, processed to look like a colored sketch. What do you think?

Hot El Camino Cruise Night

Atascadero's officers leading off Cruise Night in front of Rancho Tee

The first real mini van

Vista Cruiser - our family traveled across the west in one in the early 1970's

Red Woody Wagon - never seen one in red before

Baby take me back to your Pink Cadillac ....

Lon and Eileen Allan in their vintage Navy Jeep. Eileen was the director of the North County Women's Shelter Program, now retired, and Lon is a local historian/author and regular columnist in the SLO Tribune.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

North County Humane Society

Chloe say "I'm just waiting for your to take me home".

Another of the "old girls" at North County Humane.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

SpaceX Dragon Parachute Test at Morro Bay

Space Exploration Technologies Corp, also knows as SpaceX, a private spacecraft development firm, conducted a test of their Dragon capsule parachute recovery system in Morro Bay on August 12, 2010. Morro Bay was selected as the test site because it had a large, secure area which was very close to the ocean. Here are some pics from the test.

For more information, please see the SpaceX website at www.spacex.com

Erickson Air-Crane Helicopter

Erickson helicopter above Morro Bay Strand Beach

Very cool Erickson helicopter at work over Morro Bay

SpaceX Dragon capsule lift off, Morro Bay

SpaceX Dragon test capsule over Morro Rock

SpaceX capsule parachutes deployed - about 5 miles offshore from Morro Bay

SpaceX capsule parachute test - water landing - 5 miles from Morro Bay
Recovery tugboat is in the right side of the pic.
Photo taken from Morro Bay Power Plant roof - elevation 150 ft.
Pentax K20D - Pentax 500 mm f 5.6 lens (750 equiv), ISO 100, 1/320