Alan's Place : /photos/index.1024px

Fri, 11 Mar 2005

Big Day at Swamis

We've had some very large surf over the last few days, with the peak appearing later Wednesday afternoon and through most of Thursday. So, on Thursday I took some time off out of the water to take pictures of those lucky enough to be in the water and enjoying the magical rights at Swamis. Here are my pictures:

This woman was absolutely killing it out there:

One kneelo was in the lineup that I saw:

The set waves had nice open faces on them at first:

And as the wave made its way inside, this is what happened:

The area to the North was a bit more fickle, but a few nice rides showed their faces:

Nice bottom turn, followed by a sweet carve off the top of the wave:

It was definitely a good day for waves:

However, from the following picture you can tell than just about everyone and their mother were out there:

posted at: 15:39 | path: /photos/2005-03 | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 09 Feb 2005

Four Billion Pixel Images

The Gigapixl Project is a fascinating look at high end photography, and what can be accomplished with old and new technologies when combined. While the camera which takes these gorgeous pictures is not digital (it uses negatives which measure 9 inches by 18 inches), the negatives are scanned immediately after the film has been developed. Once scanned, the film is archived in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, with all further work done using the digital scan.

To give you an idea of how large a four gigapixel image is, each uncompressed digital image requires approximately twenty-four (24) gigabytes of storage. If your computer monitor is set to a 1280 by 1024 display resolution, then you would need a grid of monitors seventy wide and 44 tall. Yowza! Take a look at the images up for display, and be amazed at the details!

posted at: 14:12 | path: /photos | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 24 Dec 2004

Merry Christmas!

Two nights ago, in a late nigh pre-Christmas panic, I realized we didn't have any pictures to include in our Christmas cards this year. So I sat down at the computer and went through the digital pictures I took during the year, and settled on one featuring our three rugrats while we were on vacation in San Francisco during the summer.

Using Inkscape, I imported the image and added a bit of text to it. Here is the final picture (reduced in size by 25%):

Costco now prints out digital prints in around an hour, so I dropped off the image on my lunch and picked up 40+ prints of it after work. I was very pleased with the quality of the Costco printing, so I'll probably be doing a bit more of this in the future.

Have a merry Christmas, as well as a safe and prosperous New Year!

posted at: 13:22 | path: /photos/2004-12 | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 21 Dec 2004

Pictures of Last Big Swell 12/15/2004

Last Wednesday, the largest swell of the winter so far showed up. With a shredded finger, I decided to take pictures of the surf instead of bleed in the line up. It was probably a damn good decision, as the waves were big and closed out at our local beach break. Unfortunately, on our lunch we don't have much choice in our surf spots due to time constraints, so Bob decided to go for it. As the pictures will show, it was quite an impressive display of nature's power.

When I arrived at the beach and saw the waves coming in, I thought to myself: “The sea is angry my friend...”

Bob paddled out to meet his maker, and maybe get a wave or two.

He quickly found one to his liking.

The offshore winds were a-blowing.

There was only one other person out in the lineup while I was there. Here he is on a nice sized wave.

It was a truly beautiful winter day here in Encinitas, with temperatures dropping into the low 70s. Hehehe!

Bob's final wave of the day produced a nice little cover up on the inside section. And with that, we called it a day.

posted at: 09:27 | path: /photos/2004-12 | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 15 Dec 2004

Oceanside Pictures

Last Saturday, on the way to pick up balloons and a cake for my son's 6th birthday party, I stopped by Oceanside Harbor to get a few pictures of the beautiful day which was just starting out. Here are a few of the better pictures: