Jim continues his Japan portfolio, focusing on 16×9 horizontal compositions in particular. Although many photographs in his archives are vertical – a suprisingly large percentage he realizes during this project. He’s recomposed verticals or selected mostly horizontal compositions to crop into this semi-panoramic format.
Jim traveled to Japan several times from 2004-2023 and wants to compile his favorite photos. It is not meant to be a travel log or photographic journal but a gathering of his favorite images. For his portfolio, he wanted to use a 16×9 horizontal format for stylistic consistency. So the images he is compiling fit this horizontal format.
Jim shared some springtime photos from his Easter weekend Joshua Tree National Park trip. Most of the Joshua Trees and plants were in some stage of bloom. He combined the Spring/Flowers with Before/After, sharing SOOC photos followed by cropped and processed images.
His Safari Park vulture and eagle shots were for Before/After. The eagle shot demonstrated the recent reflections removal AI tool in Lightroom/Photoshop, greatly improving the photo taken through netting with a single click. The eagle image was one of six images accepted into the SD Fair Photo Competition (6 of 9 entries).
The last two images were three minute long exposures of Clouds over Mission San Luis Rey.
Note: Jim was approched by security and told tripods are not allowed on Mission San Luis Rey grounds. So be sure to check the venue’s photography policy before assuming you can shoot without restriction. It is published on their website that tripods are not allowed on the grounds, not just the church. Learned something new – fortunately, he said I could continue “this time” since it was late in the day. Doing a three minute exposure absolutely requires a tripod.
Jim – took a recent daytrip to Sonny Bono Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge looking for burrowing owls and water fowl. No owls unfortunately, and the Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese aggregated on the farside of the ponds. So, to make the best of a long drive, he pivoted and focused on the great light at sunset and blue hour.
Jim joined the Safari Park meetup, practicing long lens and macro-with-flash photography.
A recent visitor to his backyard hummingbird feeder warranted a couple photos. He had never seen an iridescent orange Rufous Hummingbird before.
Lastly, he demonstrated the new “reflection removal” feature in Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop by removing the glare off the enclosure glass at the zoo.
Adobe Lightroom Reflection Removal Demo Photos:
Jim returned from a recent 5-day trip to Death Valley. He was lucky to visit during a fair weather window between rain storms. Much of Death Valley was unusually green and Badwater Basin was temporarily transformed into pluvial Lake Manly. Jim had one clear night to try out the Seestar S50 smart telescope he got for Christmas. This single image is actually a stacked mosaic of 180 20sec exposures. The Seestar iPhone app (also available on Android) makes often complicated astrophotography very easy. The app will stack the images, and denoise them automatically, creating a jpg. But the telescope can also save every (20sec) exposure for post-processing. Jim imported the 180 images into Siril, a free astrophotography image stacker & editor. Although the jpg produced automatically is good, processing the images in Siril can greatly improve the results. This photo is a 1 hour stacked image of the Orion Nebula (M42), a popular beginner’s target since it’s easy to find and visible on-screen after just a couple exposures. The Seestar was configured to track the nebula so stars are not elongated.
After returning to San Diego, he photographed the King Tide Jan 4th at La Jolla’s Children’s Cove. A mainly overcast morning had some sun break through, creating a favorable backlight.
Jim was unable to get out in December so most of the images he shared this month were photos from the Nov 27 2025 Oceanside Annual Thanksgiving Holiday Turkey Trot . This is a tradition in Oceanside on Thanksgiving morning. This year’s course was 5k starting by the Oceanside Library and ending at the beach south of the pier. Thousands participated, groups, families, young & old. There are staggered starts (“heats”?) often separated by speed or group characteristics like strollers or walkers (non-runners). The 4 and under kids have a shorter course (1/5mi) down by the beach. Their enthusiasm was wonderful to capture.
The other holiday image was from a 2019/2020 trip to Italy at New Years he hadn’t processed. His single b&w portrait was a homage to photographer Diane Arbus’s “Child with a toy grenade in NYC Central Park“.
Jim suggested the “nifty-fifty” theme as a challenge (mainly for himself) to not rely on a zoom lens or cropping. When photographing in college (a LONG time ago), he used a dslr with 50mm lens for many of his college photography projects. This theme was a chance to revisit using the limited gear you have instead of relying on a variety of gear. Although it was a struggle, using a prime lens has many benefits such as a faster aperture, shallower depth of field. He’ll continue to use a nifty-fifty or any prime and zoom with his feet when possible. But cropping in the final edit will be allowed cause framing perfectly in camera is often impossible for moving subjects.
Jim participated in both the Nov 1st Old Town Dios de los Muertos meetup and the Nov 5th UCSD Fallen Star moonrise. For the Old Town Dios de los Muertos images, he used a Fujifilm X100VI in 50mm mode to capture the portraits. This camera has a small built-in flash he used as fill flash to reduce shadows especially on backlit shots. This camera has a leaf-shutter so it can flash-sync at any shutter speed, even 1/4000. It has a 35mm equivalent fixed focal length lens, but can “zoom” (crop in-camera) to 50mm or 70mm.
For the moonrise, he used his Nikon Z8 with 100-400mm Nikon zoom. The two moonrise images he shared were exposure blend of two shots taken one right after the other (1sec f8 & 1/125 f8). The images were layered in Photoshop and blended.
Lastly, Jim reprocessed some sunset images from Grand Canyon North Rim he photographed in 2022 & Hawaii 2023. He hoped his improved Lightroom post-processing skills might make better final results.
Jim shared a sequence of photos of the moonrise Oct 6th over the San Diego skyline from Shelter Island. It’s difficult to get any further west because North Island hangers obstruct the skyline. PhotoPills suggested the moon would rise over One America Plaza if we setup at the fishing pier. But it came up a few buildings north and did not align with One America Plaza tip till it was higher in the sky. We’ll keep trying – the weather also was hazy so the first image of the moonrise were subtle. Plus, we hoped to get the building lights but they did not come on till after 7pm. When the moon was pretty high in the sky.
For scary, Jim shared photos from the Oct 12th Oaxaca Festival in Oceanside. It was the first time being held locally. The last festival dance was the Oaxaca festival “Dance of the Devils” where particpants wear elaborate costumes with horned masks. Perfect for the scary theme.
Finding a new Fall-themed image was hard but Jim shared a bee-on-marigold shot taken during a recent pumpkin patch visit. His other image of fall colors were from a drive to the Grand Canyon North Rim a few years ago.
Jim spent most of his time post-processing the Sept 7th Harvest Moon rising under/over the Coronado Bridge. When the moon first rose above the horizon, the ambient blue hour light and moonlight were pretty well balanced. Later, as the moon rose, the brightness of the moon required compositing a darker moon photo with a bridge image. He briefly demonstated a new (to him) Photoshop layer blending technique that helped feather the moon’s edge with the brighter moonrays.
For storytelling and still life images, he shared images from the Oceanside Museum of Art Fabulous Fabric exhibition. Combining several ‘storytelling’ images of the locale, plus detailed images of some art displayed.
Jim participated in the San Diego Velodrome meetup and photographed bicycle races for the 1st time. He experimented with long exposures with flash to combine motion and freeze detail. He also photographed the full moon rising over the California Tower August 9th. He added one reflection image from a SD Padres baseball game to fulfill the “reflections” theme.
