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



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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