Although folks on the East are having snow storms, weather in California has been sunny as ever. Despite the concern of drought in California, I decided to take advantage of the great weather and take a day trip down from San Francisco to Point Lobo's and Monterey.
Point Lobo's is a beautiful national reserve just south of Carmel-by-the-sea and just north of Big Sur. The area has some great hiking trails and seaside coves. I spent the entire afternoon at the beach-y hideouts of Point Lobo's, watching waves crash into the shore and the scuba divers occasionally coming to the surface.
While in the quaint town of Monterey, I discovered a great coffee spot called East Village Coffee Lounge before sampling my weight in clam chowders on the boardwalk. There's no better way to spend an afternoon.
There are a lot of photo apps for the iphone, but as an Android user I’m always on the look out for quality photo apps that I can also take advantage of. I use a few different apps as part of my mobile photography workflow. Most of these are free, although some offer in-app purchases. Here are the 5 photo apps that I can’t live without:
In the world of photo apps, Instagram still wins. These days, I no longer edit photos using Instagram or bother with their filters. But even then, there is no other photo app that’s better for getting social and sharing your phone photos.
A stellar photo editing app and my go-to for each new photograph. My most used features in Aviary are illuminate and color fix. I like having control over a photo’s composition and Aviary gives me a lot of control by providing the ability to adjust a photo’s brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. Even though I don’t always use a lot of pre-programmed filters, I do prefer the effects in Aviary to those in Instagram. As far as filters go, I tend to default to Arizona or Sage in Aviary.
I discovered Snapseed after I already became a committed Aviary user, but these days I find myself using Snapseed more and more often to edit my photos. I like using the Selective Adjust feature in Snapseed because it let’s me edit just 1 part of the photo so I can correct overexposed highlights or dark shadows. Not a lot of photo editing apps offer that level of flexibility. Snapseed also has great Drama and HDR scape filters. Unlike the filters that come in Aviary and Instagram, Snapseed lets you choose the strength of the filter you want to apply.
PicLab is a recent but fond discovery of mine, allowing users to add text to an image. Adding typography to images is a growing trend. Fonts offered in PicLab is artistic and clearly curated with design in mind. The app interface is easy to use, allowing you to switch fonts, edit sizes, placements, and mix different fonts. This app is free to use and offers in-app purchase to remove the PicLab watermark and purchase additional fonts.
For a long time, it bothered me that Instagram photos are square. Quite simply, not all photos look good in a square frame. This not only deeply bothered me but prevented me from using Instagram to share my photos. Then I realized there are apps out there that turn an image into a square shape by adding borders. I haven’t looked back since. There a lot of apps that can help you square an image but my favorite is SquareIt. It’s super easy to use - 1 click to turn your photo into a square and share it on Instagram directly.
I've been to over 30 countries and seen a lot of pretty places, but Antelope Canyon in Arizona is still one of the most amazing place I've ever seen. It's no wonder that it's the most visited and most photographed slot canyon in the world.
Antelope Canyon is divided into 2 parts - Upper Canyon and Lower Canyon - on Navajo land, near Page Arizona. Upper Canyon is more popular location and where I visited. I arrived in late afternoon to capture the narrow formation of eroded sandstones. I was mesmerized by the shapes of the canyon, and the way the light bounced around from the canyon walls.
If you are ever even remotely close to Antelope Canyon, you will not regret a visit. I could have stayed there for hours taking pictures.
After 3 months of living in sunny California, I discovered it's entirely possible to miss snow. No matter how miserable the endless snow days in Canada felt, I deeply miss seeing snow to my knees, walking out the door to crisp refreshing air, and memories of tobogganing down the hill outside of my grade school.
In an attempt to find snow this winter, I took a road trip to Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah where I shivered in my snow jackets and hiked in the brisk air. It was a breathtaking trip and I fell in love with Utah in a way that I never expected.
Here's to more winter hikes and beautiful sights in 2014. Happy new year!
Welcome to Just-in-Time (JIT), a travel photography blog by Tracy Zhang. Began after a year of backpacking around Europe, JIT is a time capsule of 6 years of wanderlust.
As of August 2016, JIT is no longer being updated. For more projects from Tracy, find her at www.tracyzhang.com.
To read more about JIT and its original purpose, visit our About page.
