4th of July

Photos from this morning at the pancake breakfast in Atascadero Lake Park.







God bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home

Atascadero - The ARTery Tree Mural

The new mural on the ARTery in Atascadero has stirred quite a debate in the community.  You can read some of the details on the Tribune website or at the ARTery Facebook page


I won't get into the discussion regarding permits, but I do like the mural and think that it is perfectly appropriate for an art store downtown.  Other residents in Atascadero may feel otherwise.







The ARTery is a wonderful small store in old downtown which sells art and craft supplies and does custom framing.  They support community art events and frequently display local artists' work in the store.  While the shop may be more "colorful" than surrounding businesses, my personal view of downtown is that it does not have to look drab and uniform - the design standard doesn't have to be the same as when E.G. Lewis founded the community.  We should be encouraging stores to move downtown and fill in some of the vacant buildings rather than putting up roadblocks for downtown businesses.

And I would certainly rather shop at unique local stores than spend my money at Walmart - talk about an eye-sore!

So here is a photo of the Tree Mural - you be the judge.

Elvis Is In the Building

The Community Presbyterian Church of Cambria hosted a fundraiser this weekend; entertainment was provided by Elvis Presley!!



The program was a benefit for the Church's youth programs, and also featured and Elvis inspired dinner of fried chicken, cornbread, potato salad, and for dessert, peanut butter and banana sandwiches.



Raymond Michael portrayed Elvis and has been doing it for many years. He has a great voice, fine moves and costumes made by Elvis' designer. And he made the event quite participatory, pulling ladies from the audience for the love songs, and men to play the "air guitar" solos. The "hula" was quite memorable - look for the video when I get it put together!!

Aliens in Morro Bay

I frequently walk around Morro Bay with my camera, sometimes at lunch and often after work. With the camera, I am just a tourist and I can watch other tourists stare at Morro Rock or browse through the waterfront tourist traps.

 I recently took a half day workshop on creative photography in Morro Bay. The workshop was a bust but it got me to think about other creative ways to view the town. So I spent an hour of walking around Morro Bay with my digital camera, a LensBaby wide angle lens and the digital filters turned on in the camera. Some of the photos required additional processing on the computer at home.



 You may not like some of these pictures but they provide an alternate view of Morro Bay. And if you are interested in some of these the effects you might check out the Lomography website.

The Lomograpy credo is:

1 › Take your camera everywhere you go.
2 › Use it any time – day and night.
3 › Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it.
4 › Try the shot from the hip.
5 › Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible.
6 › Don't think.
7 › Be fast
8 › You don't have to know beforehand what you captured (on film).
9 › Afterwards either.
10 › And don't worry about any of the rules

A fun web site for retro photo effects is Pixlr-o-matic.  They have both an on-line photo editing tool, and a downloadable version.  Additionally, the latest version of Google's Picasa photo software also has a nice collection of artistic effects and filters that you can use to alter your photos

More Fluffy Kittens

The North County Humane Society has about 50 kittens who are looking for new homes.  Most are too small to leave the shelter right now, but they will be growing up quickly, so if you want one, the time to look is now.  They have all colors - black, white, tabby, orange and several Himalayan kittens.  The little ones are incredibly cute right now, so don't be surprised if you end up taking more than one.

Rose Colored Glasses

My sunglasses are a few years old now, and they seem to have grown darker with age.  The optometrist describes them as "empurpled" as the lens hue has changed to a rosy red purple with time.  This really make for a photographic challenge, as I see colorful sunsets where there are none, and I'm always amazed that the light on the golden California coastal hills even when my friends only see dry grass.

So I've been trying to capture the colors that I see with the camera.  Some of it I can do with processing, but I can't seem to get the combination of polarization and color just right.  So I bought a new filter for the camera - a daylight fluorescent filter that I can stack with a polarizer to the get the effect I'm looking for.  Here are some of the results.

I think it looks pretty good on the grassy landscapes, but don't care for it that much on the seashore.  I have not yet had a chance to try it with a sunrise or sunset.