North County - Color or not

There are still some colorful spots around San Luis Obispo county, but the leaves are falling rapidly and vineyards are becoming bare.  Street and parking lot trees are still the most colorful items around.  The recent rains have added green grass back into the color pallet - the prolonged drought gave us dead brown hills until these last few storms.

Small trees - Santa Margarita

Old oak - HW 227 near Creston

Templeton Panoramas

I took these photos on Sunday - light was relatively even, and I was experimenting with hand held linear (not rotating) panoramas.

The first one shows the siding from an industrial building which has been painted with a terrific mural.

The second pano shows Santa and his friends enjoying some "down time".

Pours 4 Purrs - North County Winery Photos

I visited 12 wineries this weekend for the Pours 4 Purrs fundraising weekend for the North County Humane Society cat shelter.  Here are a few photos from the weekend.

There are additional photos on the North County Humane Society web page.

Fall Colors at Hidden Oaks

Graveyard Vineyards

Brochelle Vineyards tasting room

San Miguel Mission

Kittens

They are cute.  Rascally.  Always moving.  Always getting into something.  Adorable.  And tough to photograph.

Here are a few of the kittens from the North County Humane Society in Atascadero, CA.

Raymond

Maynard

Taffy

Taz

New Times 2014

The photo below was taken in old Harmony, CA.  The Harmony creamery has been converted to space for local artisans, and there is a small recording studio - Painted Sky Studios - which holds occasional concerts.  This picture was composed during the intermission of a concert - the moon light and light fixtures made for interesting lighting, and the textures in the building, trees and brickwork are very cool.

Technically, the photo is a 3 shot raw HDR processed in Photomatix.  There was not much color in the scene, so it was converted to black and white using NIK Silver EFX.

This photo took 1st place in the adult, open division of the New Times 2014 Winning Images photo contest.

Lunar Eclipse

Here are a re photos from the recent lunar eclipse on October 8, 2014.  Photos were taken from my front porch using a 400mm lens and 1.4 extender - all on a very steady tripod.