Relieving Stress

I took my car to the shop yesterday morning to check out an oil leak. It turned out there's a leak somewhere in the transmission. They called me up and told me it would be around $800 to get in there and check things out and fix the problem. They said they could look into replacing the transmission with a used one. They found one with 42k miles on it for just under $1,500. I doubt my car is worth that much, even with a good transmission in it. Replacing the transmission is out of the question. My car has 136k miles on it. It's served me well for seven years. I was hoping to get another 60k miles out of it, or until my truck is paid off.

To make a long story less long, I was a little stressed tonight, so I decided I'd stop and take some pictures on my way home. I probably shouldn't have done that as I don't think I got that many decent shots.

One of the SUNY colleges owns a nice parcel of land between Tully and Truxton. There was a dirt road that went straight through it, but apparently the farmers land was getting abused around it, so they cut it off. You can still access parts of the road, but it doesn't go all the way through. I didn't make it that far, I had a desk on the back of my truck I needed to get home in one piece. I did make it to a couple of spots I had checked out before though. Here they are. (feel free to click the images to view them larger)

I thought this shot was kind of neat. I stuck my camera in the opening of the tank above. It was dark in there. I didn't expect to get anything. This was the first picture of two I took inside the tank. My camera did a fine job of metering the light and finding something to focus on. I couldn't see much of anything, except a few shadows, inside the tank.



Last night, I decided to give a try at playing around with some lighting. I'm using a few cheap work lights I picked up at Home Depot that I had clamped to a couple "Stick-in-a-Cans" from the Pro Photo Life blog. I found this flower that I bought for my wife as a Valentine's Day gift. I'm happy with the way it turned out. I'll be spending some rainy days shooting things in my basement.

If you're wondering, the background is a foam play mat we bought for our daughter when all we had was hard wood floors.