SB Sunset from Cliff Drive overlook

Since I brought the good camera equipment from home for the Christmas holiday, and had a weekend to hang around Santa Barbara, I decided to do a little photography on the side. For the first day, I drove up to East Camino Cielo, back through Solvang/Buelton to Nojoqui Falls, then back down the 101 into Santa Barbara for the sunset.

I had read about a new technique for “Polar Planets” I wanted to try out. I went and took some pictures of the Santa Barbara Mission and West Beach to see how they’d turn out. You can try out this technique yourself, but I will say that I’ve learned that having the bottom 10-25% of the entire panorama (vertically) be a fairly boring, consistent texture (i.e., grass, sand, concrete, etc) makes for a better picture.

On the second day, I just walked around town. Up to the Mission, down to the Harbor, then back home for some rest and to watch the Patriots smack the Broncos back into reality (which was really needed) while I processed pictures.

I’m also posting a “post-processing” cut at the two polar planet pictures I uploaded earlier. Those were experiments, as are these, but I’m learning fast….

All in all, a nice, relaxing weekend.