Alcatraz Island

I've lived in the Bay Area all of my life and not once have I gone to Alcatraz Island, I've never even been on a ferry! That's actually not as unusual as some may think, I know a ton of people who have grown up here and never been. I always just thought, "It's not going anywhere and I live in the area, so it can wait."After 26 years, I finally got an opportunity to go (it's actually not that hard to go, you just need to buy a ticket!).

It was a cloudy, windy, cold day in San Francisco. Just how I like it. I love the crisp, cold air. And the fog! I love fog! Haha. At the time, I kind of wished it was clear skies so my pictures would look 'better'. But after going through and editing them, I think the gloomy weather totally fits the theme, wouldn't you agree?

Alcatraz is such an amazing place. So much history and so many interesting things to see. The bad thing about me is that my mind tends to wander in its own direction when people try to give me a history lesson. We sat down for about ten minutes to watch a brief documentary on Alcatraz Island, and I retained a little bit of it. We all know that Alcatraz is known for being a prison, but I had no clue that after the prison closed, an Indian tribe (umm...my mind was somewhere else when they mentioned the name of the tribe) tried to claim it as their land. And another thing I found interesting is that when it was a prison, the workers and their families actually lived on the island, too. Well, I'll stop my poor attempt to dazzle you with my Alcatraz knowledge. Haha...here are a few pictures the Cellhouse Audio Tour.

Ran into this little guy while waiting on the fairy...

Check out that wonderful fog....

There it is, The Rock

Using Textures ... Dun Dun Duuunn...

I've been wanting to play around with textures for some time now. They can have a really nice effect, if done right. And that was the part that was delaying this experiment. I didn't want it to look like i just copy and pasted a new background. I wanted to know how to blend it into the image, how to make it look 'natural.' I've seen some really good uses of textures, so I guess I got intimidated. Tonight, I finally just dove in to the world of textures.

I'm pretty satisfied with the way they turned out. I'll probably start to incorporate textures into other projects, but promise not to over do it. Playing around with textures is pretty fun. It totally changes the vibe of the photo. And it's also a good way to 'cover-up' a busy background.

If anyone has any good suggestions (free!) on where to get textures, lemme know! =D

This is what happens when you get too busy...

You remember you entered a photo contest two days after the polls are closed! I can't blame anyone by myself on this one. FAIL!

I entered a Summer Photo Contest on Tiffiney's Photoblog a few weeks back. The rules were simple, just submit a photo of a summer day. I chose a picture I blogged about earlier in August and voting started on Tiffiney's blog on Sept. 5th. I am totally FIRED because voting ended on Sept 12!

I have to thank Tiffiney of Tiffiney's Photography for posting my picture! It such a good feeling seeing your work posted somewhere other than my blog. I'll have to be better about this next time!

Here's the photo I entered of my two neices: