Napa Valley Pictures

I had some pictures from a short visit to Napa Valley in California from a while back that were just sitting on the computer, waiting to be processed and published.

There are three photos I especially like - some grapes ready for harvesting, the wine tasting bar, and a shot of vineyards along some hills ... had to drive around Napa a bit to find this particular shot, since the classic shot of vineyards on rolling hills is apparently not really seen in Napa, but in Sonoma, which is further out. Maybe I'll go there the next time I am in that area.

I usually get some emails asking about my gear and what I do in terms of processing, so here goes... I shoot with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (see my about page for more). Since I shoot in RAW mode, I get to manually do the processing/conversion to .jpg, and I do that using Adobe's Lightroom, which is really nice. It does take time, but the results are quite good. In addition to basic settings like exposure and white balance, I'll play around with the color curve sometimes, or the specific color intensities. A couple of my favorite settings are the clarity and vibrance levels. For more information on these and other sophisticated controls offered by Lightroom, you'll want to check out something like the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book. I'm always finding something new while reading or processing a batch of photos.