Northern California Stock Photos

Gold Lake Sunrise

by Sherri on October 11, 2010

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Gold Lake Sunrise, Sierra County, California.

This was taken from our campsite and it is also the first image in our 3 image Gold Lake Panorama, I posted a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for visiting! ~Sherri

Kayaking Gold Lake

by Sherri on October 8, 2010

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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

Gold Lake Panorama

by Sherri on September 29, 2010

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Gold Lake Sunrise Panorama, Sierra County, California.

Our trip last week wouldn't be complete without a panorama photograph of Gold Lake! You can't get the whole lake in just 1 image, so this was a perfect opportunity to try a panorama (pano), which is something Jeff & I have only done once before. This image was created by stitching 3 horizontal images together. I did the photography and the developing and Jeff stitched the images together. Now that I look at it, I wish I would have cropped a little off of the right hand side, but I can always do that later! Enjoy and thank you for visiting! ~Sherri

Gold Lake Adventure & Fall Photo Tours

by Sherri on September 27, 2010

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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

Shoot a Scene With and Without People!

by Sherri on August 24, 2010

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Fishing on Lake Almanor with Mount Lassen in the background, Plumas County, Northern California. This lake is well-known as a fishing hot spot!

Most people love to photograph landscapes and nature and so do I, but when possible I shoot the scene both with and without people. Including people in your photographs can increase their marketability. Quite often, images of people interacting with nature are published over images of nature alone. Many landscape and nature photographers go out of their way to eliminate human beings from their photos. That's cool, but why not shoot a couple of extra frames which include people, while you have this great scene in front of you? Last month, we visited Plumas County in Northeastern California. While we were there, my goal was to capture photos of Mount Lassen with and without people. While I really love this photo of Mount Lassen and this one, the photo featured above is more likely to get published. It illustrates people enjoying the area and what it has to offer. On the other hand, this photo would not likely bring in any print sales. The one exception might be to the people in the boats! What do you think? I'm all ears!!! Thanks for visiting! ~Sherri

Mount Lassen at Sunset

by Sherri on August 20, 2010

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Mount Lassen at Sunset with Lake Almanor in the foreground, Northern California.

You might remember this photo of Mount Lassen I posted a couple of weeks ago. I was standing on a moving dock and I was having a very difficult time keeping the horizon straight. First, I shot this scene without the lake in the foreground. Then, when there was a little break from the wakes, I shot a few photos which included the lake. This one came out straight, but many of the others I captured did not. I am going to try straightening the horizon in a few of them in Photoshop and see what kind of results I get. I would love your opinion on these two images. Do you prefer this image of Mount Lassen without the lake, or is the one above your favorite? Thank you for visiting and for your comments! Cheers, Sherri

10 Reasons Why I Love PhotoShelter!

by Sherri on July 13, 2010

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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

Northern California Travel Guide Cover

by Sherri on June 23, 2010

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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

The BIG Sierra Snowstorm

by Sherri on December 10, 2009

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This snowy landscape image was taken in the field below our cabin (Auburn, California), during this weeks "Big Sierra Snowstorm." It was developed using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.

WOW! In what seemed like a split second, we went from Fall to Winter here in the Sierra Foothill's! A major storm blew through here on Monday and it was (and still is) a winter wonderland! The big storm dumped about 8" of fluffy white stuff here at our cabin, which made for unlimited photographic opportunities. Jeff & I captured nearly 600 new images. Some of the "keepers" have been uploaded to facebook already on my personal page. Soon, I will be adding more to my Business Fan Page. I will also be adding additional images to this Photo Blog. Here is a partial list of subjects we photographed:
  1. Scenes in our rural Auburn neighborhood - barns, landscapes, cabins, unique scenes and more.
  2. Nature close ups including leaf patterns, ice cycles, red berries.
  3. Unique holiday decorations - peace signs, Santa riding on a Longhorn and more.
  4. Old Town Auburn all dressed up for Christmas.
  5. Scenes along Lincoln Way including the Chamber of Commerce, & street scenes.
  6. Adventure - 4x4, cross country skiing.
  7. The American River in the snow.
  8. Some of Auburn's Icons - Historic Auburn Courthouse, Volunteer Fire Department & Foresthill Bridge.
NOTE: If you are looking for any of these Auburn subjects that were captured during this weeks Sierra Snowstorm, let us know. We can arrange to send you a private gallery of those subjects. The images will be available for ordering as a print and for licensing. We offer commercial, editorial & personal image licensing. To learn more, please see our Ordering Information page. Thank you for visiting! ~Sherri

Questions? Jusk Ask!

by Sherri on September 14, 2009

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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!