Hoar Frost

It has been below freezing for a few weeks at least now. That hasn't stopped the fog and the resulting hoar frost. The biggest challenge is finding an angle that doesn't have the white and gray background of the snow and fog. Here is what the frost looked like out where Shelby was horseback riding this morning.

Hoar Frost - Bosnia

Lake Atitlan -2004

I took this photo in December of 2004, when we went and stayed a few nights there for a New Year's break. This is a scanned slide. It is a version of one of over 20 photos I took in Guatemala which Guatemalan quilt artistPriscilla Bianchi used for illustration in her recent book, Caliente Quilts

Lake Atitlan - Guatemala

The Pretty Picture

I promised a couple days ago. I've been to Krka twice. This is from our last visit in September with some friends that were visiting. It is a beautiful park with spectacular cascades, but I have yet to get a photograph that really captures it to my liking. Both of my visits were at mid-day and the lighting was harsh. I think it would be best fairly early in the morning...maybe next time.

Krka National Park - Croatia

Another Snow Photo

From this morning in Veliki Park. I'll try to get back to "pretty" pictures soon, maybe a waterfall or two...

Snow in Veliki Park - Sarajevo

No Dreaming Required

It is a White Christmas in Sarajevo

Twas The Night Before Christmas...

Merry Christmas ! ! !

While on the Topic of Sunsets

and though they are cliché...each is unique, sort of like a fingerprint.

The Day Ends, 18 November 2007- Destin, Florida

Less Than 90 Seconds Earlier

than the previous photo (which makes it #1 vice #2)

Ohio Sunset #1 - 3 December, 2007

The Latest Background

on my computer desktop. From the deck off the back of mom and dad's house. The series of photos from the sunset are also known to me as "dang! where is my tripod when I really need it" as none of the photos are nearly as sharp as they should be. I hand held at low shutter speeds. Worse still, a couple days later. I accidentally left my lighter, more portable tripod (which means more likely to be used) behind in Milford while I'm thousands of miles away in Sarajevo :(

Ohio Sunset - 3 December, 2007

Hammock

I sort of wish the hammock was bigger in the frame and I played with various crops of the original...this is what I've settled on for now.


Hammock - Little Miami River, Milford, Ohio

I Was Re-assured...

when they shoveled the snow off of our plane, before de-icing and before attempting to take off

SJJ (Sarajevo) Airport - 15 Nov 2007

Closed For the Season

Shaved Ice - Destin, Florida

In Memory...

1912 - 2007
"Grampa Big Truck" circa 1998

Fall

I haven't done one of these is a while. This is an HDR merge of three photos I took just an hour or so ago.

Autumn Night in Veliki Park - Sarajevo

Black and ...

...yellow

Veliki Park - Sarajevo

Dubrovnik in the Rain

Church of St. Blaise - Dubrovnik

The Evil Eye...

More from our trip to Croatia in September...eventually I'll do our trip to Chicago for Ryan's graduation, and if I get really ambitious, work back to our summer cruise and vacation :)

Faces of the Townspeople, Cathedral of St. James - Šibenik

The Road Not Taken

This is as far as I went...

At Dusk - Mali Ston, Croatia

What is Real?

First off, my position on the topic...photos always lie and photos always reveal the biases of the photographer...not any different than newspaper headlines...

I sort of hinted at this a while back in my "Portraits" entry and the entry that followed "Some Things I Didn't Consider". My son got me to thinking more about it a week or so ago when he said "hey! you're just making up a sky!" and I went on to explain that no I wasn't. Here is the photograph that I was working on today that made me think of this yet again.

Diocletian's Palace - Split



And the two versions of the same photograph from which I "made" it. One photo was processed for a blue sky, the other for more neutral to warm stone work....


















So now you know my bias ...skies are always blue because I wear polarized sunglasses and I have a sunny disposition :) ...except of course for dramatic stormy skies...then they are really black!

Memories...

Sometimes you can't remember where you took a picture. In this case, I know it was somewhere between Split and Dubrovnik...closer to Split. And if I read a guide book, I could probably figure it out. The Croatian coast has walls and castles in almost every city, town and village. If you have been there, the reason is obvious....they had to do something with all that rock.

Castle and Walls - Dalmatian Coast of Croatia

Grapes

Everything always takes longer than I estimate, I just finished the first DAY of photos from last month's trip to Croatia, so I still have 3 more days to go...all with more photos than the first. I have a feeling this could take me a while.

Grapes - Dalmatian Coast of Croatia

Catching Up

I had some time over the weekend, and an extra day off today in an empty house which allowed me to start "catching up" on some photos. I still have heaps to go, but in the meantime, here's "an artist's interpretation" (all terminology used loosely, especially the artist word!).

St. Lawrence Cathedral - Trogir, Croatia

Chicago

The Cubs didn't do too well in the playoffs...which is an understatement until you realize that at least they made it to the playoffs. They come home to a pretty cool city...

Chicago Theatre - Chicago, Illinois

Flying with a View

One of Many Window View's From the Past Week

In the Navy!

I flew back to the U.S.last week to see Ryan's graduation from Navy boot camp this past Friday and just returned this afternoon. We got to see a bit of Chicago during his weekend liberty...some photos will come later. In the meantime, WAY TO GO RYAN!

Ryan and Jenise

Impressionism

Trees - Krka National Park, Croatia

Croatia

Been a little busy with work and visitors. But we did get a few days to roam around Croatia. Croatia also has reminders of the war in the early 90's. I'll get to the pretty pictures later...for now

Minefield at Dusk - Near Krka National Park, Croatia

Shadows of War

or the side window we don't have...If we had a window on the east side of our apartment, this is a portion of what you would see. A number of domes, spires, minarets, some pockmarked from the war, two strategic embankments (only one seen here, above the cemetery), a castle-like building and a some cemeteries from the war....which you see in every directon.

Shadow - Sarajveo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Back to the Present...

with photos of things from the past :) Here again is one of my favorite local subjects, the tombstones in Veliki Park. I liked the way the sunlight was coming across the script on this tombstone this morning when I was walking Sophie and Maya. I hurried back up to the apartment and got my camera and tripod. I took about 12 shots before the sun moved enough to change the mood.

Tombstones - Veliki Park, Sarajevo

The Photos from USJA are now Finished....I think :)

If I understand things correctly, you can click on the photo below and it will take you to the photobucket album with all the photos...

Opening Ceremony, USJA Junior Nationals - July 2007, Indianapolis Indiana

Photobucket Album

Yes, The Judo Photos Are Coming!

I finally had some time (or made some) to start working on the photos from the early July USJA Junior Nationals in Indianapolis. Like with most indoor fast-paced sports photography, I'm spending most of my time trying to get the color at least in the realm of reality and doing a little noise reduction. You'd think the white gi would make it easy, but the weird light temperature is compounded by the blue and red mats which reflect the color up. I try to at least get decent skin tones, but there isn't always a lot of skin showing....this isn't beach volley ball! Cropping for sports comes fairly easy to me, I generally know how I'm going to crop the instant I see the photo (and sometimes even as I take it).

I made it about half the way through tonight, and hopefully I'll finish tomorrow evening. I might have finished tonight, but Ryan called from boot camp (he sounded great!) and after talking to him, we had to spread the news to grandparents and such. So all our College Park Judo friends you only have to hang in there a few more days and I should have them done. Here's one of Shelby and Gabby in the stands that first day.

Shelby and Gabby, USJA Junior Nationals - July 2007, Indianapolis Indiana

Slot Canyons

This is a photo I took over at year ago during the Santa Fe Workshop I attended. It was taken at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument I was going though some old photos, sort of wondering what is going to happen to them all and I picked this one out to birth into a cyber-life. I started thinking about the fact that if my computer and all my drives are destroyed, the photos are gone too...except for the ones I've put out on the web or in emails. Also, if I get hit by a bus, who wants to wander through all my photo files? It is not quite the same as digging through a dusty old box of fading family photos great-granddad Jeff took back in the early 2000's when digital cameras were first invented.

With the advent of google, cached internet pages, links and copies etc. pretty much anything published on the internet is likely to stick around a long time. I guess more so if a site is particularly popular (which mine is not). Sudden fame could come along I suppose. Because I Said So recently found this out, and now her prose is probably immortalized at least until Internet v87.02 comes along sometime in the next century. If sudden fame were to fall upon me, it would be great, as long as I didn't say, or photograph something I'll regret 100yrs later :) I may have blogged a few stupid things, and some of my photos I won't like all that much at some point down the road, but in the meantime, at least some of them are out there. And now this one is out there, lost among the "about 42,200" google image results for "slot canyon"

Slot Canyon - Tent Rocks, New Mexico



.

Grand Vistas

I took this a little over a year ago after my week of photography and learning about Photoshop at the Santa Fe Workshops. I stopped at the White Rock Overlook on my way from Santa Fe to Albuquerque via Bandelier National Monument...at least that was the plan. Some of those clouds turned into nasty thunderstorms and on the Albuquerque side of Bandelier a few things happened....the light got really good after the storm (photographically)...but the road got washed out on the outskirts of a town I was heading into for gas...and I was running on fumes. The nearest gas station was 30 or 40 miles away, back toward Santa Fe. My focus switched to a desperate search for gas, I got very few photos, and I ended up buying an emergency 2 gallons or so from a corner store in the middle of nowhere for what I figured later was $10/gallon. The guy felt guilty selling it to me and tried very hard to talk me out of it, but it's not like I was going to walk...

Although I took this photo with my favorite lens, a Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS, it sort of illustrates a problem more common to wide angle lenses and grand vistas....how do you "get it all in there" and keep the photo interesting at the same time? I like the clouds and the different colors across the landscape. The distance is implied with the haze and the rock formations. The only thing I feel this particular photo could use is some interesting subject matter in the foreground (harder to do with a telephoto). The photos I took there with a wide angle, with trees or rocks in the foreground, I don't really like. Anyway, some of you may find it boring (at least click on it and look at the larger version before reaching a verdict), but I kind of like it, especially because I know what happened next :)

Open Space - White Rock, New Mexico

Need to Get Some "DAM" Organization

Digital Asset Management that is. I've read THE book and thought a lot about it, but I still haven't organized my photos very well. I've done some key wording; deleted a relative few total waste of bits; backed up everything at least once...but when it comes to going back and finding things, my filing and naming system is pretty weak. And I have no internal rating system at all.

Tonight I just went wandering through photos taken after the first of the year looking for photos I liked but haven't worked on yet (there's where a rating system could help). I came across this one from our trip to Dubrovnik during Ryan's visit.

Facing the Light - Dubrovnik, Croatia

Indianapolis Redux

(spelled correctly this time, I might add :)

My terabyte ethernet disk is here and I have it on the network...for a mere $300 it seems like a deal so far. So once I get a little break from work, I'll move some files around and start working on photos a bit more.

We were in Indianapolis so Shelby and Carl could compete in the USJA (United States Judo Association) Junior Nationals July 7 & 8. Here is a reflection I caught one evening along the canal walk.

What a Difference a Few Steps Make

I guess this could be an allegory for life in general, how life's journeys look different as you move along and your point of view changes due to time, distance maturity or whatever.... but I'll stick to photography for now.

These photos are of the same tree and same rocks, taken with basically the same camera settings a mere 3 minutes apart. Now I won't claim that either is a great shot (although I sort of like the first, reminds me of a group portrait of a rather diverse group or extended family) but the photos are a good illustration of how different you can make the scene look by moving to look at it from a different angle. This difference in fact, is the only reason I took the second photo.

Most people see something they want to photograph, and the only framing choice they will make is whether to zoom in or zoom out. Occasionally they may "zoom with their feet" getting a little closer or further away (which gives a different perspective between near and far objects than zooming with a lens does). Some things that are relatively easy but rarely tried are:

Turn the camera 90 degrees and take a shot in "portrait" orientation
(I read once that something like 90% of all amateur photographs are shot in "landscape" orientation)

Crouch down and take the shot from a lower perspective
(kids see a whole different world than us big people)

Look for a higher vantage point and take the shot from up high

Move to a better or more unique vantage point altogether
(look for something a little different from the scenic lookout view a million others have photographed)

Along Green Visions Umoljani 7 Watermills Hike near Bjelašnica

Shades of Green, Krohn Conservatory

We missed the butterfly exhibit by a week or so, but a visit to the Krohn Conservatory is always fun, and Jenise having an interest was excuse enough...

I missed putting a photo up yesterday, so here are two, different green, different texture but sharp all the same :)

Cactus - Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park, Cincinnati



Cactus #2 - Krohn Conservatory

Ryan Accessorizes...

If all went according to plan, Ryan should be at Navy boot camp by now.
Which means the earring, the "goatee" and even the python should all be but memories by now.

GOOD LUCK RYAN!


Ryan and Python - Cincinnati Zoo

Turtle

This guy crossed my path in the Patuxent Wildlife Refugee. Looking at the turtle's shell while previewing in Adobe Bridge, I decided I must not have had my polarizer filter on, or maybe it was oriented incorrectly. Anyway, to "correct" my mistake, I ended up processing the RAW image twice, once for the top of the turtle's shell and once for the rest of the turtle and the environment. Then combining the two. Here is the resulting photo. The first is full frame, and the second is just a crop of the first. I can't decide which way I like it best. Feel free to vote :)

Turtle - Patuxent Wildlife Research Center/Refugee



Crop of above

Indianapolis

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art

Bourbon Street

Night Life - Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Orleans



Beads - Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Orleans



Español - Calle de Borbon, French Quarter, New Orleans

Lazy or ???

I don't know what exactly is wrong. Although I have been plenty inspired to take photos, I haven't had much in the way of inspiration when it comes to editing (as in choosing) and finishing (as in photoshop touch-up) any of the photos I've been taking. Not unlike my thousands of slides, which for the most part remain in piles :)

The 1 terrabyte network storage that I have wanted to alleviate my disk space problem is finally in stock. I promptly ordered it. Lack of disk space should not be an excuse when it gets here in a week or so. In the meantime, I'll try to do one photo a day in an effort to work my way through my "slump".

Reflections - Vrelo Bosne, Ilidža

Last One for Tonight

reminder:)
most of these look far better when you click on the photo for the large version....


Chacchoben Mayan Ruins - Outside of Costa Maya, Mexico