Month: August 2013

San Diego12 Comments

Secret Gardens of Balboa Park

Kongo

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Visitors to San Diego’s Balboa Park have much to thank the original planners early who worked tirelessly early in the last century to lay down the bones of today’s wonderful setting.  Visionaries like Kate Sessions, the “Mother of Balboa Park,” envisioned a broad urban park that rivaled the grand parks of Europe and the East Coast.  Throughout what is now Balboa Park they planted hundreds of trees, laid out stately gardens, and hidden alcoves that the public could enjoy year round.  They were known as “progressives” and how progressive they were!  Read on to discover a few of the many gardens you may have missed in your visits to Balboa Park. Continue reading “Secret Gardens of Balboa Park”

Travel14 Comments

Ailsa’s Travel Theme: Distance

Kongo

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Ailsa’s Travel Theme this week is DISTANCE so Kongo has included a few distance images from travels over the past year.  See more distance photos at Ailsa’s Where’s My Backpack blog and join the fun in her weekly theme challenges.  The shot above is of downtown San Diego, California.

Travel Safe.  Have fun.

Continue reading “Ailsa’s Travel Theme: Distance”

Travel10 Comments

Ocean Beach Sunset

Kongo

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It was a great evening for sunset photography at the Ocean Beach pier in San Diego tonight.  The first picture is shot with two layers of neutral gray filters which added about 2.5 stops for 3.2 seconds, f32, ISO 100.  I used a Tamron wide angle 10-24 mm SP lens at 24mm.  I could see the sun sinking fast so for the second shot I quickly changed to a Canon 70-200mm EF “L” Series lens and took the image at 144mm.  I didn’t have time to do a complete filter swap so I just held a single square of gray neutral density glass over the lens, which added about one stop, set the aperture to f32 and the shutter at 0.4 seconds for the correct exposure.  When shooting from a tripod I always use either a 2 second timer or an auto shutter release (as in this case) to reduce camera shake.  Both images were taken with a Canon 7D. Continue reading “Ocean Beach Sunset”