Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Valentine's Day on The Rock

For Valentine's day, I went to Alcatraz with Krissy and we ran around the island. We took BART from Berkeley and arrived at Embarcadero around 10:15. The walk from Embarcadero to the Ferry building/Pier 33 was pretty scenic. There was a farmers market getting set up, but I didn't manage to get any spontaneous/impressive pictures from that, unfortunately... Along the way to Pier 33 (where the Alcatraz tour departs), we came across this big wooden door.

After converting to B&W in photoshop, I think it turned out pretty cool. (Thanks Krissy for being persistent, and getting me to take a couple pictures of the door).

On the ferry ride from Pier 33 to Alcatraz, a ton of seagulls were following the boat. This one in particular was looking at me wondering where I was going:


As we got nearer to Alcatraz, I started snapping away at the island. Even though it was drizzly on and off, the lighting was pretty nice:


On the island, we ran around and followed the audio tour. We paused here and there to snap more shots. For the majority of the day I had my 40-150mm lens on, but I decided to switch over to my 14-42mm to take some wider shots:


I feel like I often find it easier to just zoom around and snap narrow photos, but I want to train my eye to see wider pictures... I'll run around with the 14-42mm and force myself to get some practice with wide-angle shots.

but... speaking of wide angles, I got lucky with this one... I didn't have a tripod or monopod with me, but I did manage to find a little flat surface on top of a handrail. I switched my camera to complete manual settings (manual focus, aperture, and shutter speed) and started snapping a series of 10 photos. I stiched them together in Photoshop and cropped out the unnecessary bits, and voila:


For all the pictures, you can click on them to get larger sizes... else, you can always go to http://mattaphore.deviantart.com and download my full-size images. (After you click on a picture, there's a link bar on the left-hand side that lets you 'download')

If you're lazy, but want to see the full size large panorama picture, the link is:
http://fc46.deviantart.com/fs40/f/2009/053/e/b/SF_Panorama_from_Alcatraz_by_mattaphore.jpg

All in all, Valentine's day was awesome. We topped it off with a clam chowder sour dough bread bowl and then hopped BART back to Berkeley :)

3 comments:

Rylan said...

Those are great pictures, Matt! What SLR do you shoot with? Also, I think your wide angle was great and you should have that door picture made into a poster. Can I have the full res version so can print it out on my plotter?

Tristan said...

Beautiful photos as always matt! I especially like the SF panorama, and the wide-angle of the building and staircase... they're all good though :)

To answer Rylan's question, he uses an Olympus E-520 :) And he uses it well... hehe.

Matt said...

Thanks guys!

Yup I'm using an Olympus e-520. I bought it last thanksgiving on Amazon, and I've been super happy with it.

As for the door picture, I'll send that as soon as I get back to my laptop :)

Lemmie know if you guys want any other full sized shots.

Go Bears! :)