Lagunitas Creek in Marin County is a “must see” destination for salmon. They have arrived. Here’s a really lousy picture of one I took today. It’s dark in there and I don’t have a 600mm f/2.8 lens so it was a difficult shot. This one was hand held at 1/10 sec. You can see a better shot, and read about tours on the SFgate website.

BTW, the docent was incredibly informative and helpful. I recommend a trip to see the salmon. It’s a great experience. Here’s the location, I think. (Didn’t have my GPS receiver on.)

Later — Today’s Chronicle has a front page story about the salmon. I might disagree with the statment, in the article, that says ” Dozens of coho salmon have been spotted.” According to the docent yesterday, they are aware of six salmon in that area of the creek. But the Chron may be referring to all of Marin. Who knows?

The most recent issue of Sierra, the Sierra Club magazine, has an article with some awesome photos of waves. Check it out on the Sierra Club website. Makes me feel beat up just looking at them.

For some time, I’ve been using CHDK with my Canon SD1000 to shoot RAW. I like the advantages of RAW so this made sense for me. The IQ of the SD1000 doesn’t get any better, it’s just easier to deal with processing. One disadvantage is that the format- CRW – isn’t supported by Adobe. So, you need a program to convert.

I had been using dng4ps, a free program but somewhat unreliable – not to mention slow. I recently came across Raw Photo Processor. After some testing, I find it to be much better than dng4ps. The only real drawback is that it produces tiff files instead of dngs. But it is much faster and free also. Check it out.

My “recent work” gallery has been updated.  Took a trip to Marin, yet again, and went to Dawn Falls.  I thought there would be more water since we’ve had several days of rain but it wasn’t spectacular – just nice.  Finished up at the Marin Garden Center in Ross.  Nice Color there.

It’s that time of year again and my 2010 Calendar is now available. The theme this time is the Sierra Nevada featuring Yosemite, Mono Lake and Lake Tahoe. You can preview and order the calendar here.
Because of the continuing hard times, I’ve dropped the price again this year to a rock-bottom $14.99.

Ever so often, I run across an idea that really works for me. One such idea is this article by Ray Maxwell on how to set your camera for more accurate histograms. Explained some things I had wondered about.

There’s an interesting interview in Lenswork No. 84 about printing. Richard Benson, Professor of Photography and author of a book, The Printed Picture has many interesting things to say about printing and photography. The interview is not available on-line, you’ll have to purchase a copy but here’s a quote I found interesting:
“The digital revolution makes all that old stuff[platinum printing, etc] just garbage. You can make an inkjet print that beats any platinum hands down.” Later he says that he is referring to matte papers and that semi-gloss/gloss papers still need work. Both he and the interview(Brooks Jensen) seem to believe that Hahnemühle Photo Rag papers are the best.

Interesting stuff.

This bike race is just down the hill from me so I took my 70-200mm lens over and took a few dozen shots. Here’s one. You can see some others at my seldom used Flickr account.

I came across this recently.  Hope it helps.

Tomorrow, the pictures come down.  I want to thank everyone who went to the Cafe to view the pictures.  It has been an exhilarating experience for me.  And a very special thank you to those folks who purchased a picture.  You more than made my day.