Utica Reservoir, Alpine County, California.
“Solitude at Utica” is now available through our Fine Art America Website. Fine Art Photography Prints of this beauty start at just $25.00. There are several sizes and framing options to select from too.
Utica Reservoir is one of the locations included in my recent article “Top 6 Lakes to Kayak & Canoe in Northern California.”
As always, we love to hear from our readers. Comments or questions can be added in the comments sections below.
Cheers,
Sherri
Whitewater kayaking the North Fork of the American River, near Auburn, California.
Are you looking for something to do this spring in the Auburn area? This area offers tons of things to do, but here is one suggestion. Get your kayaks and rafts out and paddle the North Fork of the American River.
This fork of the American River is well-known for it’s beautiful scenery and offers some of the best class IV and V whitewater rafting and kayaking in California!
For more information check out The American River Website.
~Sherri
Little Jeff kayaking on Gold Lake, Sierra County, California.
It has been awhile since I have posted a photo with a person in it and that is what I am known for the most.
Kayaking on Gold Lake in Sierra County is pretty cool. Little Jeff pictured here paddled the entire shoreline and it took him 3 hours. That included stopping a few times for the wind to let up. Had he done this earlier in the morning, he probably could have done it in half the time!
Little Jeff makes a great model. He doesn’t mind sporting something RED and paddling around for the camera until I tell him “It’s a wrap!” Then, he goes and does his own thing. He got a little cold on this trip at times, as he had to take off a layer to get down to the RED. Now, he is looking for a RED windbreaker that he can wear on the outside. This winter, he wants to go snowshoeing with us. Maybe we should buy him a RED jacket for Christmas!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Sherri
Sunrise on Gold Lake, Sierra County, California.
Have you been following me on Facebook? I seem to be a little more active there lately, than I am on this Blog. If you have, then you would know that Jeff & I just returned from another adventure in Northeastern California.
We 4-wheeled in to the OHV campground at the back side of Gold Lake, one of our favorite off-the-beaten-path locations. Our friend, Jeff, came along too and he had never been 4-wheeling before! I hiked in to the campground with our dog, Cocoa, while spotting for the two Jeff’s. Cocoa thought that was pretty cool!
When we arrived, someone was camped in “our” favorite spot. We were really disappointed at first, but it didn’t take us long to get over it. We found a better spot, one which was always occupied before.
Oh boy, did we luck out. We ended up in a large campsite at the end of the campground. We had room for 5 or 6 tents and our own private beach for the boats! The campground was built with OHV Green Sticker funds and all of the sites had new tables, fire rings and some even had “Bear Boxes.” The outhouse near our camp was a room with a view (no roof). It was great on starlit nights, but not so good when it rained!
During our stay we kayaked, hiked, relaxed, told stories, ate great food, drank great beer and came home with lot’s of new images! 🙂 I’m giving this trip a 10 out of 10! I guess the weather and water could have been a wee bit warmer. But, there are always trade-offs! If the weather was warmer, chances are the sky would have been boring. We would not have had the wonderful light shows we had = less photo opportunities!
Fall Photo Tours & Workshops Coming Soon! I am really excited to announce that I will be leading several half & full day Fall Gold Country Photo Tours & Workshops, scheduled for October & November. Since there will not be much advance notice, they will be offered at a special “2 for 1” price. More information on this coming soon on this Blog, on Facebook and in our October Newsletter!
As always, thanks for visiting and your comments and questions are greatly welcomed and appreciated!
Happy Trails,
Sherri
Kayaking at Yankee Jim's on the North Fork of the American River, Placer County, California.
We are really excited. Our photo of the kayakers was published as the cover of the current Placer County Welcome Guide!
If you are planning a trip to Placer County, be sure to stop by the Placer County Visitors Bureau/California Welcome Center at 13411 Lincoln Way in Auburn and pick up a copy of this publication. It is located across from Raley’s Supermarket on the corner of Lincoln Way and Foresthill Road.
Thank you for visiting. We love your comments and questions.You can simply add them in the comments section below.
Have a super weekend ya all!
~Sherri
Couple kayaking Utica Reservoir, Alpine County, Northern California.
One of the questions I get asked a lot is “What do you like about your PhotoShelter Website?” Since there is so much interest in this subject, I decided rather than answering everyone individually, that it would be a good subject for a Blog post.
First of all, we don’t really have a PhotoShelter Website, we have our Website integraded with PhotoShelter. That’s how WE do it, but stand alone Websites can also be built in a matter of minutes, with one of several templates they provide.
PhotoShelter offers so many awesome features, but here are a few of my favorites. I’ll be adding to this list in future posts.
Best Bang For Your Buck!
If you are looking for a service for storing images, selling prints, licensing images to name just a few, I believe PhotoShelter is “The Best Bang for Your Buck.” They offer several plans ranging from FREE to $49.99. We currently have the Standard Plan, which costs us $29.99 per month and serves all of our current needs.
Sell Products & License Images
We upload our images to our Photo Archive, which is where all of our online images are stored. Images can be ordered as prints, or licensed for personal use, directly from our photo archive. We don’t offer automated Rights Managed images through PhotoShelter. For Rights-Managed licensing, clients contact us directly for a stock photo quote. After a fee has been determined, we invoice the client. After we receive payment, we set up a Private PhotoShelter Gallery for the client, where they can download their images.
Great SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
PhotoShelter has been working hard to improve their SEO and it and it’s finally paying off. During the last few months, we have been seeing an increased amount of traffic to our Website and we have to give credit to PhotoShelter for some of it!
Easy To Create Galleries
I love how easy it is to create galleries, copy the same images to other galleries and rearrange the images within a gallery however you want. For instance, you can find this image of Auburn, California in our Auburn Gallery. Auburn is located in the California Gold Country, so we copied it into that gallery as well. We even took it one step further for this image. Since it is a landscape image it also went into our Landscape Gallery.
Slide Shows
Slide shows can be created from any gallery with a click of a button. You can group together a selection of images in a gallery, click the slide show button and use it like a portfolio. Here is a slide show I just put together for this post. If you hover over the top of the image, you will see the photo caption. It’s pretty cool!
Free Photography Reports
PhotoShelter provides an incredible amount of marketing tools for the photographer. Their free photography reports (PDF) on blogging, social media, google analytics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and what photo buyer’s want in photography websites are very informative.
Blog
PhotoShelter also distributes great information via their Blog “A Picture’s Worth.” There you can find a ton of really helpful articles including these:
“Top 10 Ways To Piss Off A Photographer”
“Top 10 Ways To Make A Photographer Fall In Love With You”
“Top 13 Ways To Piss Off A Photo Editor”
Grover was also kind enough to include a mention about my post on “Shooting the Amgen Tour of California” in their weekly Friday Shout-Outs!” Thanks again Grover!
Free Training
If what you have read thus far isn’t enough to convince you to join, maybe this will. PhotoShelter also offers a variety of FREE Webinars and I can tell you from personal experience, they are worth the investment in time. They even welcome suggestions for future Webinars.
Post To Social Networks
The ability to post a gallery of images directly to Facebook, Flickr, SportsShooter and Twitter is a really nice feature. Here is a gallery of images I posted directly from PhotoShelter to Facebook.
Coupons
Everyone is jumping on the “coupon bandwagon” these days including PhotoShelter. They make it really easy to offer discounts on prints and products to your customers. I thought it was so cool, I decided to give it a “test drive.” Check out my “Fans Only 4th of July Coupon Sale”, to see how I incorporated coupons into my marketing plan. I will be using them on a regular basis!
I hope this has shed at least a little bit of light on PhotoShelter. Your comments and questions are certainly welcomed and appreciated as always, so fire away!
Thanks for stopping by and be sure to visit again sometime!
Cheers,
Sherri
Kayaking on the North Fork of the American River, near Auburn, California.
We are really excited. We just licensed this photo of the kayaker’s for the cover of a Northern California Travel Guide. When we get our tearsheets (copies of the publication) from the publisher, we will scan the cover and post it here on the blog.
See more of our Northern California photos .
See all of our online photos.
Thank you for visiting. Your comments and questions are very appreciated! 🙂
~Sherri
Active Baby Boomer Peg Challender kayaking on Lake Clementine, Auburn, California.
Could I possibly be dreaming of warmer weather?
Yep, that is one reason why I choose to feature this photo of Peg kayaking on Lake Clementine for today’s post. Also, Peg is a great friend and model, who appears in a lot of my Outdoor Lifestyle photos.
You, go girl!
See more of our kayaking photos.
Thank you for visiting. If you would like to leave a comment, simply click on the “comments” link (add your message in the box) at the bottom of this post.
Jeff Hartnett and Kim Brown kayaking on Utica Reservoir, Alpine County, California.
This image was also captured during our camping trip to Alpine County last month.
If you would like to know how this shot was captured, how it was developed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, or you would like more information on Utica Reservoir, simply leave a comment below.
You can also read all of my previous posts on Utica Reservoir here.
Thank you for visiting!
Morning paddle on Utica Reservoir, Alpine County, California.
Jeff and I have kayaked and canoed on a lot of beautiful lakes and reservoirs in Northern California. If I had to choose the top 5 best places we have ever paddled, Utica Reservoir would definitely be one of them!
5 reasons why it is in the top 5.
You can read more about Utica Reservoir here.
I have many more images to share from our recent trip. I will be spacing them out a bit, as we are in the middle of some very BIG Website projects. For that reason, I will also be spending less time on Twitter and Facebook, until those projects are a little further along.
Thank you for visiting. If you would like to leave a comment, simply click on the “comments” link (add your message in the box) at the bottom of this post.
You can also sign up for a “free” subscription to this Blog. Just look in the upper right hand side of the Blog under “Subscribe to Sherri’s Blog.” Then, either click on the orange button, or enter your email address and click on “subscribe.”
Visit our Stock Photo Website for links to photo galleries.
