Here is another picture I took last year which I modified with the Snapseed HDR filter. This is the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Category: Photography
HDR photos of New York and Philadelphia
I have had the opportunity to make recent visits to New York City and Philadelphia and I’m always taking pictures when I make these trips. I selected a few of my favorite pictures from these two great cities and modified them with the Google Snapseed app on my iPad to create HDR (High-dynamic-range imaging) photos using the HDR scape filter. Here they are…
New York

Philadelphia

Visit to Philadelphia
I made a day trip to the City of Brotherly Love last Friday. It was my first time in Philly in over 15 years. I had lunch with a friend who works in the Center City area and after lunch I took a walk around a few of the neighborhoods near the iconic City Hall. I was very impressed by how clean the city was and found the contrasting architectural styles very interesting. The city has a mix of well preserved very old buildings and gleaming new skyscrapers that work well together. The Center City area is also very walkable and in general I found the atmosphere very friendly. I hope to return to Philly fairly soon. There is a lot more I want to see there.

I took the Bieber Tourways Bus down to Philadelphia from Bethlehem. The bus drops you off right on the Market St. Bridge, right near the 30th St. Station, which is where Amtrak and a variety of commuter trains stop. From this location it is any easy 10 to 15 minute walk right down Market into Center City.



Now here is something I came to miss while I was living out in SoCal, the classic Newsstand. You simply don’t see these types of Newsstands in downtown San Diego and Los Angeles. In major NE cities such as Philadelphia and New York they are ubiquitous.
A walk along the Delaware
I currently reside in downtown Easton, PA, which is located right on the western side of Delaware river, across from Phillipsburg, NJ. I frequently take walks along the river, sometimes just because it is scenic and I enjoy taking in the view and other times simply because it is easiest way for me to get from point A to point B. Today was a little bit of both. The view along the Delaware today was more captivating than it is most days because of how reflective the water was on this beautiful, sunny day. I’m glad I had my trusty Canon S90 with me today.

My new profile picture
I updated my profile picture on this blog yesterday. The head shot of me which is displayed in the upper right corner of the blog home page is indeed new, although it is similar to the picture it replaced. The old picture was taken a few years ago in Balboa Park in San Diego and the new picture was taken a couple of weeks ago during my visit to Spring Lake, NJ. The original pictures in both cases were much larger, I just cropped them for the purpose of producing a head shot to serve as a profile picture. In the new picture I’m sitting on a bench on the Spring Lake boardwalk.
Why the change? I just like to keep things such as profile pictures fairly recent. I liked the picture in Spring Lake and I thought it would be good to use for a profile shot. So, yup, that’s me. That is what I look like right now.
UPDATE: I just changed my profile picture again. I found a small flaw in the Spring Lake picture and decided to replace it with an even more recent picture I took of myself in Easton, PA, with the Delaware River in the background.
Visit to the Jersey Shore
I had an opportunity to make a day trip down to the Jersey Shore last week and I throughly enjoyed seeing an area of the shore where I spent many summers in my younger days. I visited Pt. Pleasant, Spring Lake and Sea Girt. It had been quite a long time since I had last visited “the Shore”. In fact, I don’t remember exactly when I was there last, but I do know it had to be at least 5 years since I was there and certainly long before Super Storm Sandy inflicted so much damage on coastal New Jersey. I had read that most communities on the shore had since recovered from the monster storm, but I was eager to see it for myself. I was very pleased to see that the three towns I visited had indeed completely recovered. Other than the rebuilt boardwalks and the slightly bolstered dunes on some parts of the beach in Spring Lake and Sea Girt you could not tell that Sandy had visited just a couple of years ago.
Here is a picture a picture I took on the Point Pleasant boardwalk. I spent many summers at “The Point” as a youth because my grandparents owned a summer home only about 25 yards off the boardwalk on the northern end of town, near the inlet.
The beach at the northern end of Point Pleasant is one of widest beaches on the Jersey Shore. When I was a kid I loved going down to beach late in the afternoon, after most of the crowds had left, to do some kite flying
Here is the view north from Pt. Pleasant across the inlet to Manasquan…

Took a walk over to the docks to see the fishing boats over at Ken’s Landing.

Later in the day drove a few miles north to Spring Lake and neighboring Sea Girt. I’ve always enjoyed visiting these two towns.
Both towns have many elegant homes, great beaches and wonderful boardwalks. At 2 miles in length the Spring Lake boardwalk is the longest non commercial boardwalk on the Jersey Shore. I discovered this boardwalk in my late teens and became enamored of it almost immediately because it is such a terrific place to run and I was a fairly serious runner back in those days. In the 1990’s I briefly lived in Spring Lake and commuted to NYC via the New Jersey Transit commuter train. That is a long haul every day and I ended up moving north, a bit closer to the city after a few months, but I enjoyed living there in the off season for a little while and I loved taking runs up and down the nearly empty boardwalk.

Also paid a visit to The Parker House in Sea Girt, one of my favorite restaurant/bar’s in that area. The Parker House was built in 1878 and it retains the charm of a building from that era. I first remember going there back in the late early 1980’s with my Dad. The place certainly has not changed too much in the last few decades. Great place to go for lunch or dinner, especially if you dine out on the porch during a warm summer day.
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Bethlehem, PA
I took this picture a few days ago from the plaza next to the Bethlehem Library, which is located in Bethlehem’s Historic District. This is the view south, looking out over the Fahy Bridge, which spans the Lehigh River. South Bethlehem is on the other side of the river and Lehigh University occupies much of the mountainside visible from this location.
Visit to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery
This past Friday I visited Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery for the first time. I’ve lived in San Diego for over 10 years, but I had never before walked the grounds of this historic place. With Memorial Day approaching it seemed like an appropriate time to finally visit.
The cemetery is located high above the Pacific Ocean on the southern end of Point Loma in San Diego. It was established in 1882 and there are over 100,000 graves on the grounds of the 77 acre military cemetery.
Fort Rosecrans is a very solemn place, but also a beautiful place and a fitting resting place for some of our nation’s military heroes.
If you would like to learn more about Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery please see the Wikipedia entry on the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Rosecrans_National_Cemetery
Watching the waves roll in at Ocean Beach
Photo taken on Tuesday, May 6, 2014, which was a very windy day at Ocean Beach in San Diego. After I took the photo above I moved south to Sunset Cliffs and took a few more shots. This one is one of my favorites……
After walking up and down Sunset Cliffs I headed back to the OB business district. I took this picture of the iconic Ocean Beach pier from the sea wall right off the corner of Newport Ave. and Abbott.














