Los Angeles
Los Angeles at night. In this 180-degree panorama, we can see LA from Glendale on the left, all the way to Santa Monica on the right. I started taking the shots from the right, which is where the sun had just set in Santa Monica, to the left, that is Glendale. This is the primary reason that you can see that sky is actually having a blue tint to it at the right while it transitions into pitch dark to the left. I use this technique a lot in my panoramas because it gives another dimension to the image. Griffith observatory and the light trails of cars passing right in front of it can be seen at the bottom center of the image. The fog that covers LA in this image causes light to diffuse all across, creating a mystic feeling. But, all this beauty comes at a price, and that is that you cannot see any stars in this long-exposure image.
San Francisco
Golden Gate Park Ferris wheel at night, taken with a 20-second exposure. I was walking by the Golden Gate park (easily in my top three favorite attractions in San Francisco) and I saw that the Ferris wheel working with its lights turned on. I was thinking about composing a shot of the Ferris wheel that would be different. I then saw the water fountain, the Ferris wheel, and the light posts across and came up with this shot. It is taken at f/22, ISO 100, and an exposure time of 20 seconds. I used an f/22 because I could get the starburst effect on the light posts as well as having everything in acceptable focus from front to the back of the image.
Fall at the Japanese Garden in San Francisco, CA. The combination of trees, water, and pagodas creates an awesome environment to relax and enjoy nature.
Golden Gate bridge bathing in Golden-hour sun light while being covered under a thick layer of fog. San Francisco is foggy most of the time in spring and summer while Santa Clara 40 miles away is sunny at 90 degrees Fahrenheit! I was at Battery Spencer, looking for a shot of the bridge as it was coming out of the fog. But the fog never really let go and so after waiting for an hour, I took off my camera from my tripod and started heading back home. You might say “but why? Wait as long as it takes for the opportune moment to take your shot.” That is all good and well if photography was my job and not my hobby. But as I said before, I just try to take the best shot at the moment and do not wait for a long time or visit somewhere multiple times to take the perfect shot. Anyways, as I was about to open the car door, I looked one more time in despair to see if I see anything interesting and I saw this amazing scene. Some clouds let up over at the horizon as the sun was setting, resulting in sun shining at the bottom half of the bridge creating a beautiful orange and yellow tone over the bridge. See how the top part of the bridge is a gloomy, lifeless red while the bottom section is vibrant red and orange. Since I had packed my tripod, I was forced to to take this shot handheld at a high ISO. I took 16 shots at this ISO and then stacked them at postprocess, creating an almost noise-free image. But better than that, see how there is no car on the bridge!! That is the beauty of stacking that you can get rid of crowded scenes. This is what I do when I go to crowded places and want to take photos. Do not be afraid of crowds, try to work with them, we are a social species not lone wolves!
The miffy of San Francisco wearing an orange cloth to celebrate along San Francisco’s Dutch population a special occasion.
Santa Barbara
Fourth of July fireworks at Santa Barbara, CA. The first photo that I took is the top left photo, and the last photo that marked the end of the fireworks is at the bottom right. See how there is only smoke in this photo and no fireworks! I really liked the photo just on top of the last photo, it looks like a Phoenix rising from the ashes! It looked pretty cool to me, at least!
Boulder City
Hoover dam and the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (its shadow albeit) standing tall on the Colorado river. An amazing show of how humans can conquer almost everything.
Monterey
An artistic version of the beautiful 17-mile-drive loop in Pebble beach, CA, but made from candies was on display at The Inn at Spanish Bay hotel in December of 2022. Kudos to those who made this amazing show of diligence and artistry. This photo was a very challenging photo for me. I did not have my tripod with me and the lighting inside the lobby was not great. I took images at an f number of 1.8 but I could not get the whole table in focus. I tried to use a higher f number of 11, but photos came out too dark. I increased the exposure time to 1/30th of a second, but the camera shake resulted in a blurry image. So, I increased the camera’s ISO to 5000 and took 12 shots of this scene and then stacked them in Photoshop to get an almost noise-free image. However, since I had used f/11 for my photos, the background was also in focus, which was too distracting with the chairs, couches, and people in the frame. So, I ended up making another copy of this image and then applied a Gaussian blur filter to it to make it blurry. I had to then mask out the candy land from the blurred image to create the final image. This is why you can see that the metal poles on the right and left of the table are out of focus. In reality, this does not happen, because the focal plane is a flat plane, meaning if the table is at focus, the poles should also be at focus. But I did not like the poles to be in focus, so I blurred them. Remember that you can always make a focused image blurry, but a blurred image cannot be made perfectly in focus with currently used image processing algorithms (it may in future). So, always try to check your photos to make sure they are in focus once you are taking them at the scene!!