Author: circadianreflections

My name is Deborah Zajac. I'm a photographer living in Nevada at the base of the Eastern Sierras. I am a passionate nature, landscape, night/astro photographer. I shoot predominately in color and use Nikon Digital Cameras, and lenses. I hope you enjoy seeing some of the photos I've taken while on my travels. Please feel free to leave a comment I'd love to hear from you.

Simple Pleasures

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Simple Pleasures, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004.

Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

We went for an evening walk up to the nearest Starbucks for my caffeine fix on the second night of visiting Big Baby Boy, and on the way home we passed a convenience store and I popped in to purchase a pack of gum. I wanted Big Red.
The warm, sweet cinnamony taste when it first hit my mouth was delicious!
So what’s your favorite flavor of gum? My least liked flavor is Bubble Gum.

PP- a little curves, layer mask to whiten the background more, vibrance, clairty, cropped and resized.
Thank you Jason for your technical support and walking me through the masking! My new layer max is 3 layers.

I learned that I need to get out my lights and light the white backboard to combat the gray dinghies. If I want to get it right in camera.

Santa Barbara Mission

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Santa Barbara Mission, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004.

Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I took US 101 down to southern CA to visit my son. This route is the Historic El Camino Real, and the Mission trail. I visited 4 missions between June 25 and 28th. This is the first of my Mission stops.
To see my entire set of 11 photos of this mission follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmzajac2004/sets/72157624415574456/

History
Old Mission Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Mission was the tenth of the California Missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans. It was established on the Feast of St. Barbara, December 4, 1786.

Padre Junipero Serra, who had founded the first nine Missions, had died 2 years earlier. It was Padre Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, his successor, who raised the cross and made the first converts.

The original buildings were unpretentious and made of adobe. Over time three adobe churches were constructed on the grounds, each larger than the one before until the fourth and present church was built in 1820. The third was destroyed by earthquake in 1812. The fountain in front was built in 1808.

At long last…The Rest of the Story- Horsetail Fall Yosemite

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Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I went up to Yosemite with a group of photographers from the Bay Area for the sunset on Horse Tail Fall. An event that happens only twice a year. We left at 4AM on Feb.18th with one stop in Mariposa to meet up with more photographers. We spent the whole day shooting Yosemite Valley. The weather was cold, and overcast in the morning and perfect in the afternoon.
We had a picnic lunch at Bridalveil Fall, and dinner in Mariposa at Taqueria at 8:30PM.
I walked in my front door at 12:15AM Feb. 19th.
I was up for 22 hours in all for this shoot. It was a wonderful day.

I shot several frames in RAW on this day because I thought I might get more detail and color than shooting in my standard JPEG mode.
I really don’t see any difference between the shots when looking at them both side by side.
I shot this whole event in Wide Angle. Next time I will also add a telephoto to the mix and get two different perspectives of the sunset on Horsetail Fall. It was pretty golden light for such a short time. If you blinked you missed it!

PP- recovery, WB adjustment, vibrance, clarity, curves a little adjustment; a wee bit of color saturation, and sharpening, a little crop off the bottom to take out some snow, and resized. You really do lose all your “in camera” settings shooting RAW don’t you.

Bits and Pieces

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photo

Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

This band plays 60’s and 70’s classic rock. Songs from the Kinks, Turtles, Beatles etc. The music was great. There was music trivia. I got one question right! The only question I made in time to hear. The answer was Chubby Checker. Can you guess the question?
The lead guitarist is the father of one of Big Baby Boy’s room-mates.
The band has been together for more than 20 years.

Thanks for asking me to come to the Westside Bar and Grill to hear them play Rachael. It was fun. We left this club and went over to Durty Nellie’s pub for Karaoke. I did not sing.