A first for me......

Ok so I decided to change the name of my blog cause I am totally focused on doing my own thing, and also because it's my watermark..... But anyways this is a first ever post for me. I have been trying to get Photoshop for a while now but all of the copies have failed and have not worked. I recently discovered that one of my family's old computers has a version of photoshop 6 on it. I just started using it and am actually proud of some of the work i have done so far.....

I have always wanted to make a panorama of something. I got the motivation from Amos and a couple of his panoramas which are really beautiful. So I have looked through some of my sets of pictures I have taken recently and have found some that worked just perfectly. I took them thinking that some day I might be able to make something of them.

Here are the ones that I made today, they aren't perfect, but of course it was my first time trying all of this out and getting the hang of it. Also I didn't process the photos in Lightroom first so some of the colors are kinda wacko and don't go together, but they still look okay......

I used 4 shots for this one, 15 sec exposure f5.6 at iso 200. Besides the middle shot it looks pretty good. The Bay Bridge and San Francisco.

I used 7 shots for this one, you can see some of the lines where I put them together, not really sure how to get rid of those. Lake Tahoe from the top of Heavenly.

I used two shots for this one. Looking down into the American River from the top of Echo Summit.

These are two different pictures of the same thing accept the traffic lights are different colors. Stateline at Lake Tahoe, Harvey's casino on the left with purple lights

Well that is what I have so far, if anybody has advice or comments please let me know cause I need all the help I can get. I am just getting started with this and there will be many more to come.

If you get all the pictures together the right way panoramas are amazing.

-Kellan

Fire

My two main goals in life are to be a professional photographer and to be a firefighter. I am well on my way in both directions. This post will be on some of the firefighting pictures I have taken. For now they are only of equipment and the rigs that they use. I haven't gotten a chance to get them in action on a fire yet. Fires are incredibly rare around Piedmont and I am not familiar with all the surrounding fire departments.

I have spent a lot of time with the Piedmont Fire Department because I want to try and learn as much as I can about being a firefighter and EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). As soon as I get out of high school I am hoping to have half of fire science degree completed. Next semester I am planning on taking a Wildland Firefighting class. The class is mostly going to be about the technical aspects of wildland firefighting, ex. How to set a controlled burn, how to use different tactics to put out a forest fire not using water. Also some labs will be worked in at some point.

By the end of next school year I plan to have my EMT certification allowing me to work with AMR or some other company, basically all mobile ambulance units that dont work out of a firehouse.Photography for me will always be the same as firefighting. For me my photographing career has already started and I am already starting to lift off the ground and soar with it.

I have been at the Piedmont firehouse doing ride-a -longs, basically doing everything a firefighter does for a day for ex. going on calls and what not. I have had a bunch of opportunities to take pictures of the rigs and all the equipment. Here's one from a while ago....

This is a turnout jacket. Turnouts are the clothes that firefighters use when they are fighting a fire.

These are the different hose lines that are carried by the truck, they are color coordinated to show the width and strength the hose can carry, psi.

Now these shots are from a couple days ago when I ran into some Piedmont fire guys learning how to pump water through the truck. The truck carries all of the ladders and some hoses. The engine carries all of the hoses and pumps the water from the hydrant and usually has to pump water through the truck, the engine also has a huge tank that holds water. The unique thing about the Piedmont Fire truck is that it holds water in a huge tank and can pump water from a hydrant, the term for that kind of truck is a Quint.

This is a shot of the guages that are used to keep track of the pressure of the water coming out of the truck and also which line it is coming out of, hose or ladder.

Another shot of the guages.

The Tele Squirt 65, this is the huge ladder that is on top of the truck that is used to reach buildings and what not. It has a massive nozzle on the end.

The lights are guages to how full the the tank is in the truck or quint. The little wheel thing in the corner opens up the tank so water can go in or out.

Another shot of the guages. I was really intrigued with how they looked that day.

This was my favorite shot out of the whole day. I saw the reflection and just took a bunch of pictures of it. Looked totally awesome. It was wet on the ground from all of the water that was being pumped and it just gave it a kick.

-Kellan

Lightroom

I haven't really gotten into the editing and processing of pictures yet. I have Lightroom but am working on getting photoshop. I have started to play around with Lightroom more and more and have gotten pretty good at it. I havent ever liked to idea of taking away the real photograph and changing it, I like mine to be natural. But of course I like to play around with these programs quite a bit.

A lot of these are from the day that I shot at the Piedmont Fire Department because it was really bright and reflective.

These are my recent photos I've experimented with......

This image was in color and I messed around with the vignettes.

In this one I sharpened the image and changed the exposure and brightness. Before it completely washed out.

I sharpened and played with the vignettes a little. It was really reflective before.

I sharpened this image and made it less reflective before I played with the lens correction and post crop settings.

I took this picture when I was out with Amos. The colors in the sky weren't as vibrant before and I changed the sharpness.

Any input would be great cause I am really just getting started with this program and need all the help I can get.

-Kellan

Snow

I took a trip to Tahoe during winter vacation. My family owns a cabin in South Lake Tahoe. Our street is located in a very unique place. Our house backs up to thousands of acres of National Forest Land. Desolation Wilderness is about a mile to the left of our house and we have lakes in the surrounding area, small and large. You can walk for miles and be out in the middle of nowhere for days.





This is the view and part of the hundreds of acres of national forest land in our backyard. This is Mt. Tallac.







This was the first opportunity that I had to take the Xsi up to the mountains. Since I recently got the olympus I was using a point and shoot camera for years. I took around 3-4 thousand photos in a week vacation. I was able to travel a lot of places by snowshoe or skiing. there wasn't a ton of snow but about a couple feet so it was easier to get places. The only problem for shooting, it was cloudy everyday because it was snowing almost constantly. I got some pretty good shots though.






Before we got over the mountains and into Tahoe we stopped a couple of times. We first stopped at Lake Natoma outside of Sacraemento. The only reason we know about is because I used to row with Oakland Strokes and a majority of our races were at the same lake. There are all sorts of paths and docks that go up the lake and have some excellent picture opportunities. When we got past Placerville we started to climb up the hill. We take Hwy 50 into Tahoe because it shoots you right out to where our cabin is. Anyways we stopped at a couple locations, along the banks of the American River, and Bridal Veil Falls.



This is one of the trails that go along the banks of Lake Natoma.






Some berries I found at Lake Natoma, it had just rained.





A huge steel girder sitting on the side of the American River. It has been there for years.





When we stopped at those two locations it was dark enough that I was able to get the water to look really smooth with a longer exposure, about 1/20 f5.6. I have always thought these kind of shots look absolutly amazing. Its an unreal effect.

















I took this shot when I was sitting in the middle of the river, I tried many times to get the shot because it was so dark and I had the shutter speed at 1/5 f5.6 but it was also at 100 iso making it harder.








Bridal Veil Falls

Right after the river we started climbing up Echo Summit. I got these shots before we went up and over the mountain.



The fog that day was amazing, it was covering everything like a blanket. We got there jsut as it was breaking up.


This is looking down from higher up on Echo Summit. It is basically looking down to where I took the picture thats above this one.

On Tuesday I was able to make it up to Heavenly ski resort for the day. The snow was relatively nice and there was powder everywhere from the night before. It was freezing cold when I got to the top, around 10 degrees. It was sooo cold that they were making snow all day which was a sight to see, never seen them actually making it before. The really cool thing about Heavenly is that it is the tallest ski resort in Tahoe, around 10,000 feet. The other incredibly unique part of the resort is that it covers two states, California and Nevada. You are able to see all of Tahoe and if you just go over the hill you have a beautiful view of the valley and Carson City in Nevada.

This the view from the top of Heavenly. In the picture is Mt. Tallac plus most of the whole mountain range and most of the National Forest land behind my house.

This is an extension tho the picture above. The lake, West Tahoe, the Tahoe Keys housing area and some of Heavenly at the bottom of the shot.

I took these two the last day that we were there. My brother and I walked out on a dock in Camp Richardson which is a couple miles from our house.

This was the only sailboat anchored on the whole South Side of the lake. Pretty amazing to see only one boat....

During the winter all of the boats that are usually anchored up in the lake get taken out and wrapped with this plastic protection. They all get stored right next to the lake in this big area with racks for jetskis and then they just line the boats up in the middle like this.

I know its a lot of pictures but I couldn't choose just 1 or 2. I took a total of 4,136 pictures while I was up there. It was a really fun trip.

-Kellan

The First Post!

Where to start.......

A little about myself, I am currently attending Millennium High School and live in Piedmont, California. I also have a small cabin in South Lake Tahoe on the edge of El Dorado National Forest Land, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

As of now my life consists of various activities,

Photography

Biking

Long boarding

Sailing

and much much more.....

I am dedicating this post to mainly my photography but will also keep you updated with my crazy life! I started taking pictures when I was a little kid with a small camera that used film and started moving up to bigger and more advanced cameras. My friend and I own a Canon Rebel Xsi and have taken many wonderful pictures. We also started a photography company, Aperture Photography, http://www.aperturephotographs.yolasite.com/. We do events for our school all the way to portraits and also sell our own prints. Feel free to contact one of us and we can order some prints for you.

I am starting to break off from the business and go my own way. I now know that the company is going well and surviving. I will still continue to work with Aperture, hopefully for the rest of my life. Anyways I have kept all of my photos in a separate folder so I know which are mine and which are my friend's. I own two cameras right now, the Canon Xsi and the Olympus 5050zoom. I use the Olympus because it has excellent picture quality for its time and it has a fold out screen allowing it to get into small places and weird and hidden angles while still being able to see the screen.

These are some of my favorites.........

I took a trip to Point Montera Lighthouse and this is a view of Hwy 1 with some construction during the night.

This is a Cairn, it marks the path in which you should take. It was on the coast below Point Montera Lighthouse.

A view of an over pass right above Grand Ave in Oakland.

Fire marbling off of a torch soaked in white gas.

Morning dew on a lawn.

The back of a leaf with the sun shining through it showing all of its main veins.

A shot of a rose in the sun.

Right now photography is my life and I love it to death! It has givin me so many amazing and fantastic opportunities. I will start back about a month or so ago because everything is starting to get exciting and this was the beginning of it. During winter break my very good friend and main inspiration Amos Terry came back home for the holidays. Amos has helped me get where I am today. He has taught me so much and helped me out through the last few months with everything that I have done. He has also been available whenever I need him for advice or a completely random question that I would have while I'm in the field.

Anyways, He told me that he was taking his friend Jessica out to do some shooting around the bay and he told me to come along. It was a very hazy day to be shooting and was a challenge but I am happy with the shots that I got. We first ventured out to Treasure Island. We went into some old barracks used by the military but are now abandoned. The walls are covered in so much graffiti that you would never be able to see all of it in one day. We went up to the top of the building and shot down into the middle of the complex which was covered with broken mirrors and a ton of trash. On the surrounding walls there are windows which are covered with all sorts of different designs and writing, some of which I don't know how it got there........ The designs around the inside of the building and at the level we were on were some of the most amazing pieces of artwork I have ever seen. I was able to capture them with a setting that wouldn't make the colors look fluorescent and fake, 1/200, f7.1, iso 100. The lens I was using for most of the shots I took at that location was the kit lens, 18-55mm.

A look into the center of the barracks and with all of the windows covered in graffiti.

A circular window covered in years of graffiti giving it the stained glass effect.

After we shot inside the barracks we moved out to the edge of the island where we had a beautiful view of the bay and the 2nd half of the bridge entering San Francisco. I was also using the kit lens so I could get a very wide angle. The clouds were starting to get thicker and darker so I moved to a slightly slower shutter speed and lower aperture. The sun was shining through a less thick patch of clouds and creating a sunset affect behind the bridge. I then used a faster speed to focus on the sky, but also bumped up the aperture to focus on the background and get more depth of field.

A view of the Bay Bridge and the city from Treasure Island.

Amos making his panoramic view of the bay.

After we finished shooting on the island we debated going over to Baker beach but concluded that it was too hazy and cloudy and decided to go back to the East Bay and test our luck over in the hills.

Once we got back over we went up to Tilden and went to inspiration point and tried to shoot up there but there was a combination of fog, clouds, haze, and it was getting dark unfortunately. We then ended with Amos making a ring out of a quarter....... don't really know where the idea came from, but it was really freakin cool!

Well I think I have said enough for my first post. I think the next few will be focused on some of the trips I have taken during the past few months, or maybe just some cool places I found to shoot at.

- Kellan