I know, I know; the image seems out of place. Well, the image is really out of place. I was looking at my archives and this picture stood out to me... it says so much. It's beautiful! For a person who likes the summer, I want some winter storms - NOW!

I love strobe photography!

I love this picture - it's as abstract as I can get. I'm not sure, but does this remind you of the Saulk Institute?

One of those linear shots that an inexperienced photographer cannot resist. Needless to say, I capitalized on the situation. I love the sun - gotta control it somehow.

Ever seen shadows cast by clouds like this? I was just surprised - two straight lines. The thunderhead was larger than any I've seen before in my short life!

I lean heavily towards natural scenes on this blog, but I occasionally like to do something artificial. Here's some lightpainting. I got these sticks called "PhulJhari" for only three dollars. It's a good buy for something so inexpensive. I shot this at f/9 and for ten seconds. Anything like f/7.1 which most shoot at overexposes. Come to think of it, I should have shot it at f/11, then the shadows would have been minimized.

The clouds I saw on this day have got to be the scariest I've seen in a long time. Although they look scary, they did little. At most, we got a light sprinkle - not one instance of a lightning bolt! AHH!

I tried to capture the essense of the pond by taking an image of the wild plant life. I think I included a little too much sky - which takes away from the image. I will have to improve on this as well. This day was not a good day at all in the world of photography for me. :-(

This picture has made me realize what I've been missing out on - reflecting ponds! My next great mission, going to a lake and sunset or sunrise and taking pictures of the sun in the water. From myself googling such a scene - I think I might like to go for the morning shot. We'll see.

Consider this contemporary art - what do you think? I took this image because there was a lack of good subject and the light was too irresistable to let loose. Sorry about the hairy foot - I promise the otherone isn't as hairy!

I don't know, I took this picture - trashed it. Cleaning up the trashbin and realized that it was a treasure. It says a lot for something so simple. Is it just me?

This image makes me think of peace. This bird pestered me for hours wanting food from me. But I refused to give the bird food. Why should I make the bird want food from humans when this creature has the innate talent to find food. The jerks right by me gave this some gummy bears - I'm not sure if that was any good for it.

This is one of my favorite flowers of all time. I shot this at f/13 (for sharpness) and to limit the light from the background. See, the ironic thing is that htis was not apart of some amazing flower display. I found this flower amount other flowers which were dieing off because of the constant shock of car fumes at a rest stop in Canada.

Photoshop is an amazing piece of software! Of course, this shot is impossible on multiple levels - but still, it does seem spectacular. The only problem now is with the entire image hosting software - it uses a high level of compression which ruins the quality of the images. I'll have to fix this too.

This is an amazing picture. I was trying to shoot a picture of the moon at 450mm. Then all of a sudden - almost like the bird wanted me to take its picture; this bird comes up right in front of me. I had a nice telephoto lens - so I capitalized on the situation. I shot in raw mode and the picture turned out beautifully!

Copyright vs. Wrecking an Artwork?

When I started to post images on this blog - I always put a small logo onto the image to insure that no one would steal anyone of my images. With digital technologies getting better, the liklihood of someone stealing my work - has increased. Recently, in a turn of irony, I've started to ignore the entire idea of labeling my photography with some weird logo saying "It's mine." I don't know - I hate ruining the pictures I take with words - and the effect that the picture has on the individual is lessoned by some weird logo.

So, the solution; I'm no longer providing larger versions of the image. So the largest version available from my blog will be about 640X480; which isn't too large and you can do the least amount of damage with them. I imagine an individual can get a truly beautiful 2x2 from that small resolution.

I'm working on a new method that will not interfere with the artwork - it's something that is a built in feature of GIMP. In another two weeks I'll start experimenting.

Another picture of birds - once again, at the beginning of the year. This bird is quite possibly the smallest visitor of my backyard. Albeit the smallest, it's song is the loudest! I mistook it for a Canary - but now I realize it isn't a very bright yellow. Any idea on what genus species this bird might be?

I took this a long time ago - well, at the beginning of the summer months. Anyway - it was the first time I got to test out my Sigma APO SUPER II 70-300mm lens. The image turned out to be spectacular! The only problem, I shot in JPEG - so much was lost by shooting in jpeg. Now I by default shoot raw + BasicJpeg. Anyway - isn't the bird beautiful?

Here's the product of myself trying firework photography. I used f/9 with a handheld congtrol - no specific shutter speed. July fourth was a horrible time - there lights in the foreground which provided me ghosts aplenty. This was taken at a local fireworks display - this particular firework was shown at least ten times - it's amazing and beautiful. Well, I learned something.

This image seems like a 'normal' image, but this image captures so much of the moment that I cannot help but put it on here. I wanted to print htis image out as an 8-10, but I didn't think this image would turn out so I took it in low quality mode; darn! Now I can only do with a good 5x7. Regardless, it's a nice image.

Light Painting

Can you say "Light Paint?" I think this is in prep for August 14th.

Sometimes the best images come by accident. I was walking into a public building switching settings to prepare for indoor flash photography. All of a sudden, my finger slipped and I took a shot. I neglected to delete the image. I downloaded all the images and realized that my mistake was actually a nice picture. There's so many amazing things about this. Most of which - the shadow should be dark, but then again it is almost as light as the sidewalk! Amazing!!!

Settings - for July 4th

I've been pondering on this for a while even to the point of posting messages on the net to find the opinions of my comrades. I'm trying to figure out what will be the best settings for taking pictures of fireworks. I have a book from the Seattle Film Works on how to take pictures of fireworks - but that's film. Film and digital are thought to be the same, but they're not.

I'm thinking I'll go with a f/9 with a shutter speed of 9 seconds. Probably use a shutter control. I'm still debating what lens. Should I use my kit lens 18-70mm, or the telephoto 70-300mm. I think I'll be close enough so it will be an 18-70; but just in case I'll keep the telephoto in my car.

We'll see. I'll post the results here.

As promised, this is the antithesis of the heavenly picture - a hellish portrait. Well, someone already has commented that it is less hellish than heavenly. Regardless, let's hear what you think. It wasn't postprocessed except for the 75% Sepia - via Photoshop.