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    About the Artist

    Essence in Photography - Photos more real than life! Keith Cuddeback-Photographer

    Keith Cuddeback

    I have been taking photographs for 35 years. Ansel Adams was still alive then and he was my mentor & inspiration.  Landscape photography has always been my passion.  Today I feel ready to offer the world my style &vision via my fine art photography. Enjoy the pretty pictures or obtain one for home or office decor.

    I also am the only photographer in the world specializing in fine art environmental golf portraits. They are really something very special and any golfer receiving one will own a very personal treasure to cherish for a lifetime. If you are a golfer, or want a gift for one, please see YourGoldMoment.com

    Stohan’s Gallery on Cannery Row

    66558a311b7d0cff1165f9e3a5c4b620 Stohans Gallery on Cannery Row

    Stohan's Gallery on Cannery Row

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    The scene of the crime was right here. A chain-link fence surrounds this lot at the north end of Cannery Row in Monterey where the once thriving Stohan’s Galley on valuable oceanfront property now barely stands in wait for the bulldozers. At least, that’s the story I make up about this.

    This photo op appeared while on a photowalk with Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms.com. The groups was meandering down Cannery Row making photographs along the way and Trey saw this scene and stopped. Even though his tripod is one of those monster super tall ones the chain link fence was even higher. well, why let that deter us. By simply untwisting some wires holding some of the fence fabric we were able to open a hole large enough to stick a lens through. 11ce7c9403802297733c80e1d589d061 Stohans Gallery on Cannery Row f675cc25bd767501e1bdb8d53a77fd34 Stohans Gallery on Cannery Row

    My Affair Exposed – Glowing Naked Dancer of Treasure Island

    1546250bad84ffa9a0e4960008127f44 My Affair Exposed Glowing Naked Dancer of Treasure Island

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    Maybe I’m having an affair with this gorgeous dancing goddess who resides on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.  This is the fourth time I’ve been out to pay her a visit.  Each time I come away with a new and great image of her and maybe some of you are getting tired of seeing her, but I don’t.

    The occasion this time was that I needed a photo to contribute to aday.org.  They are sponsoring a photographic exhibition and everybody is invited to take a photo on May 15th and upoad it.  Hundreds of thousands of people from around the globe are participating in giving a view of their daily life.  The upload period goes through May 22nd so if you have taken any photos on May 15th, please upload one of them to their website.  You can actually contribute up to 10 photos.

    On prior rendesvous’ with this naked dancer I always used my 11-17 wide angle lens, which is my favorite and is used for 90% of my photos.  To get something different this time I used my 55-200 and backed off from her so that the San Francisco skyline with the omnipresent fog would become a much more significant element in the photograph.  It was getting very late in the day and the low sun angle really made her glow.  Yes, I think I’m in love.

    Sky, Pier, Sand-Avila Beach

    bfa104884d3916b0f861b8d747b19008 Sky, Pier, Sand Avila Beach

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    On a golfing vacation to the California Central Coast in December we were lucky to be staying at the San Luis Bay Inn at Avila Beach.  Both my girlfriend and I went to college up the road 5 mile at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo so this was sort of a coming home.  When I was in college we would arrange our class schedule to give us a beach day or two every week and Avila Beach was our favorite.  This photo is a typical nice Winter sunset on the central coast of California.

    Chinatown Mural Interrupted

    439f37d8b0de50172b16f32dfbf8abf2 Chinatown Mural Interrupted

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    There are times I’m not sure why I take a photo.  Something in front of me just calls to my brain which engages me to raise the camera and shoot, not quite knowing what it all means at the time.  Well, what got me here initially was the super bright colorful mural which is stunning!  There is even more to it that isn’t in this frame, a lovely Buddha and more animals.  While I was looking it over a man walked up the hill towards Grant St, the main drag of Chinatown in San Francisco, and I happened to catch him engaging the doctor in the mural who is diagnosing the condition of the Peace-Love heart.  Then, looking a little closer I noticed that he is smoking and exhaling a billow of smoke right at the doctor. Does this mean anything to you?

    Fly Like an Eagle

    cbe976ab351329011b1d8422b2c5d50f Fly Like an Eagle

    My annual salmon fishing trip to Alaska a couple years ago was self-guided. That means we do everything ourselves. The shopping, the cooking, the boat, the bait, figuring where & when to fish, cleaning the fish, cleaning up after cooking. It’s a lot of work and we found we spent too much time on the logistics and less time fishing than when we go on a fully guided trip. Maybe the worst part was running on so little sleep because of taking all the time doing the chores and still trying to keep all of our precious fishing time.

    This particular year we went to Petersburg and had it relatively easy since we rented a house and a car. Normally our trips are out to Western Alaska where life is a lot tougher.  Out west we always have fully guided trips and it is such a pleasure to be in the wilderness of Alaska and, at the same time, be very comfortable, catching lots of salmon and char, having our meals cooked for us and served with nice wines, having our tents all setup and taken down for us, and the fish cleaned. Really the fully guided trips are so luxurious! The best outfitter we have ever had, by far, is Mike Trotter who owns Beyond Boundaries Expeditions. Mike runs float trips on the Chosen River and also has a lodge and a base camp on Baranoff island. we have been with Mike’s very attentive guides three or four times in the past 16 years we’ve been fishing Alaska. We have also had some horrific experiences from lesser guides so we really appreciate Mike’s trips where everything is first class and we always feel so well cared for.

    Well, here we were, in Petersburg doing our own thing without guides. It was a ton of work and the fishing wasn’t as good as we are used to. It rained. It rained some more. In Alaska the rain is first class rain too. In spite of what may sound like grumbling, we still had a wonderful fishing trip and I got to do plenty of photography every day in addition to my fishing.

    This shot of an eagle I got as we were fishing (in the rain) in a fishing hole above what the locals call, ‘blind slough.’ There are usually king salmon holding in this spot after they come in with the tide on their way up the river. Some of them don’t make it… those are the ones we caught and are in the freezer now at home.

    Processing this photo

    Just a note on the processing this photo.  To get the stylized background, I used Topaz Simplify which is a Photoshop plugin filter that can give several different unreal looks to your photos.  I left the eagle rendered realistically by using a layer mask on the background layer and punching through to the bottom layer only in that part of the photo.  Really easy to do and gives a very nice effect and the eagle really pops out of the photo.  Before the background was stylized and simplified, the eagle sort of got lost in all the detail of the trees and didn’t have the impact that this version does.  I hope you like it.

    Since this shot is so unique, I’m only going to sell 10 prints of it.  If you want one I’ll also sign it for you at no additional cost.  Please just contact me now., instead of ordering it online, and I’ll make all the arrangements to get the print to you.

    Courtyard of the Maharaja’s Palace

    29a2439e99afdb5bc3ef7592d95d537a Courtyard of the Maharajas Palace

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    Everywhere in India things are so colorful! Even in the poor villages the houses are done up in nice bright festive colors. So both the rich & the poor in India have an appreciation for it. Here in the Bangalore Palace of the Maharaja, this courtyard has bright colors everywhere too. Even the woman in the Sari on the far side in dressed in bright blue.

    To get these photographs inside the Maharaja’s Palace cost a bundle. There is the normal price of admission. Then, if you have a camera, that’s where you get nailed if you choose to take photos you can buy a one-day photographer’s license for about 5 times the cost of admission. Yes, of course, I paid it. This might be my only time to get inside such a piece of Indian history like this gorgeous palace. If I only had time right now to process all the great shots from this cool place.

    Fairytale Golf Sunset

    1177bbc0e39319aa9b5c72b6b5234099 Fairytale Golf Sunset

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    Right behind photography, golf is something I’m very passionate about. I’m not saying I’m good at it, only that I love playing.  Since I happen to live right on a golf course, I do try to get out to play twice a week.

    Usually when I play, I take along my camera just in case the light is good and the sky is favorable. By doing this last year I had enough really nice shots of the Crow Canyon Country Club to assemble a really nice 2012 Golf Calendar. The club ended up buying a large batch of them for the purpose of giving to every new club member in their gift basket. It’s really great how much the people at the club love my work, they even recently bought 5 of my best photos to display on the walls at the club.

    This shot of a golf sunset is one of my most favorite and when it’s printed on metal paper it’s just a stunning piece of art. It’s so luminous and has a radiant inner glow about it.

    Here now is my little confession. In addition to all the random landscape photos and photography of other cool things that I feature here on my blog, I also have recently created a new business and website; YourGolfMoment.com. that’s the website I feature all my golf photography. My idea in creating this business was to marry both of my passions into something bigger so I now also do special golf portraits worldwide to capture the power & confidence we golfers feel so strongly at the time we make one of those fabulously perfect golf shots. I call it your Tiger Woods moment that I capture for you in a fine art portrait that will last more than a lifetime.

    What I would REALLY like to do is to photograph some of the other golf courses owned by ClubCorp in the same style that I did for their Crow Canyon Country Club in the shot above.  The photos I make actually seem more real than life and evoke so much more emotion for golfers than the typical golf course photography that is displayed by almost all golf courses around the world.  My feeling is that a golf course or country club that would use my style photography in their clubhouse would definitely be one committed to making a quantum leap of elegance & class that their members would be proud of.

    De La Salle at Saint Mary’s College

    b91d488395990e4166c21831db14ddd9 De La Salle at Saint Marys College

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    Sometimes I’m surprised where a photo can go when I’m processing it. This one was taken just before the sun set and you can see the last rays of light glancing across the front of the church and bell tower of Saint Mary’s College. Now normally, HDR photos taken at this time of day end up with a rich orange light to them and that’s what I was expecting to end up with when I began processing this one.

    What happened though is that the sky looked so much better as the deep blue it was as I experienced it when I took the photpo and I didn’t try to give it any extra help or try to bend the colors warmer towards orange. Then, seeing the book in the statue of De La Salle at Saint Mary’s College also have a cold tone, I did bend that a little more towards cool colors to match the sky. Now the sky and the book are very complimentary and both are in cool tones instead of having the usual sunset warmth.

    It feel like a very nice photograph to me.

    Blue Barrel in Belize City

    27291d2fc478f989a233c3ed1bcf67f8 Blue Barrel in Belize City

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    Everybody in my group went on the cave tubing excursion after the cruise ship docked in Belize City.  Not me.  I stayed back by myself to photograph since we were only there for a few hours.  that’s one thing about cruises that’s a compromise for me in only getting a small taste of any port.  Not even that really in most cases because of the way things are built to attract tourists.

    Belize City is a litte different.  Once you get more than 1 block away from the port, the character of the city changes a lot.  Almost scary when you are by yourself.  But, being there for only a few hours I was determined to see what I could see and continued out into the city.  The other factor for me to be aware of was rain.  The clouds were pretty dark.  I

    I was gone only about 30 minutes and exploring a shell of a building that would have been torn down if it were in the US when the rain started.  It came fast and hard.  Across the street was a Belize equivalent of a strip mall, although nothing like what we think of as a strip mall, and I ducked over there under an awning to keep my camera dry.  I got totally soaked but the camera was safe.

    The rain slowed enough to continue walking and I meandered taking random shots trying to keep my bearings.  My iPhone wasn’t going to be any help here mapping me back to the ship… I knew that.  So, I got lost anyway.  Being lost didn’t deter me from taking more photos and that’s where I got this one.

    The streets were very void of people and when I ran into a couple walking I tried to get directions.  They didn’t know much english and I think they suggested I get a taxi.  Yes, a taxi would be good and I had not seen any so far.  that itself is strange if you’ve done much traveling because there are always way too many people offering rides here and there everywhere you go it seems.  Now it was like where is a taxi when you need one?

    My girlfriend always tells me I’m really good at manifesting what I need.  This turned out to be a welcome power of mine here because less than five minutes after meeting that couple on the street, along came a taxi who delivered me back to the port.  It was kind of a long ride so I had strayed a lot further from the ship than I thought.

    Fog Over San Francisco Skyline from Treasure Island

    7d5c22a53b688390ac9ea45d2ab4da7c Fog Over San Francisco Skyline from Treasure Island

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    There is really a lot to explore on Treasure Island. I remember my parents telling me how Treasure Island was made for the Pan Pacific Expo back in the 1920′s or thereabouts. I could Google that for you but the date doesn’t really matter. After that Treasure Island became a Navy base until it was de-commissioned… sometime in the 1990′s or was it more recent than that?. I could also google that, but…

    So now, the City of San Francisco owns Treasure Island and cool things are beginning to happen out there in the middle of the bay. Of course one popular spot for photographers is right where this photo was taken. The vantage point is at the bottom of the hill as the road comes off the Bay Bridge and before passing the old guard house for the navy base which is now a coffee shack. Pretty much anytime you are there a few cars are parked and people are out with their camera clicking away. Why not? It’s a pretty view.

    Tails, Wings & Beaks

    be669c7ba7dcf2015d5988dae0a32cbf Tails, Wings & Beaks
    A couple of years ago I was on a yoga retreat in the jungle in Mexico at a place near Sayulita called Haramara.  There was no electricity but we had candles and oil lanterns at night. Not as primitive as it sounds… we were also on a stunningly beautiful beach.   This was a very secluded beach and that’s where we would spend most of our days. Other than yoga first thing in the morning and another evening practice every day, we had lots of time on our hands.

    At the far end of the beach there was always a great deal of bird activity and, having little else to do, I walked down there with my camera. It was awesome to sit quietly in the middle of this mass of birds. When I would begin to stand up they would all take off together and eventually, come back to surround me. This shot is when they are taking off flying away from me and all you can see are tails, wings & beaks.

     

    
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