Lighter Collection, Part 1

Praise goes to God that I no longer smoke. I celebrated one year on March 12. I do still enjoy my lighter collection, though. They are special gifts my father-in-law buy for me. Every time he comes to visit, he brings a few. I not only appreciate them because they're pretty neat, but because my father-in-law is a very thoughtful, generous man. I couldn't have asked for better in-laws.

Here's part one of my collection.

And, here's the set-up shot! Jim Talkington doesn't pay me for this. I just happen to be rather enthusiastic about the stick-in-a-can idea he came up with. He has saved me a ton of money and a lot of effort trying to figure out how to light my stuff. Pro Photo Life deserves all the credit for my savings.

I even used a stick-in-a-can this weekend to do some portraits of my mom for her business card. I had three basic, 100watt equivilent CFLs in their clamp-on work lamps all pointed at the ceiling.

Anyways, here's the set up shot for my lighters.

Susquehanna

Trains are pretty neat. I wish I had more access to them for photographing. I'd probably spend some time in a train yard doing just that. Last night, after work (you'll hear that frequently around here) I went back to try and get a better picture of the barn I shot on the 21st of May. It didn't turn out as well as I had planned. I just couldn't frame it as I remembered from the previous picture I took.

During my attempt at taking a better picture of the barn, a train came by. Unfortunately, I had mirror lockup turned on and a 2 second timer delay to minimize camera shake. That's not a good combination for shooting moving objects. Fortunately, I was able to get one decent shot in.

I did a little post processing work on this in RawStudio and The Gimp. Take a look at my Flickr Stream if you're interested in what I did and for a link to the original version.

I shot these guys Memorial Day evening. After it rained for a little bit, the sun came out and so did these guys.

Here's my Flickr Photo Stream.

Happy Memorial Day!

I wish I had some patriotic pictures to post for Memorial Day in honor of all the great men and women that have died serving our country. I'm eternally grateful for the freedom they have preserved and are preserving in this great country. Take a moment today to thank God for their service and to pray for the families and loved ones of soldiers serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world. We owe them so much for what they do for us!

I developed a new affection for these large, lumbering creatures. I couldn't help but fall in love with them.

I think these guys are the barnyard patrol. Look at the goose in front with his cronies following closely behind. It kind of reminds me of the penguins from the movie, Madagascar.

And a few landscape shots.

Yesterday, my wife and I were going to take the kids to the zoo. Lynn remembered her friend from Church who just acquired some kittens, baby chickens and turkeys. So, we went there instead. It turned out to be a great time. I wandered around their 56 acre property taking pictures of every interesting thing I could find. The above pictures are the results of yesterday's adventure. I'd have more, but I ran out of room on my 8gb memory card.

Getting Caught Up Part 2

I think God was thinking about me when He created squirrels. He must have known how much I would love them! Red Squirrels aren't my favorite kind, but they're a wonderful part of God's Creation, so here's a few shots of one stealing seeds from my patio.

I guess they weren't actually stealing seeds. You can't steal what's being given to you!

I don't really like Blue Jays, but they are neat looking birds. They make some very annoying sounds. I don't know why they're classified as song birds... Perhaps the people that classify birds are not very musically inclined. This guy was stealing seeds.

I took these on my way home from work that day. I don't particularly care for dandelions, but a field full of them makes for a pretty picture.

Getting Caught Up

WOW! It's been almost a week since I've made any posts! I had hoped to make a new post at least every couple of days. I guess I got a little behind.

Friday after work I stopped at Labrador Hollow and Tinker Falls to get some pictures. Unfortunately, I didn't get many that I liked. I was in a sour mood for some reason, so I didn't put a whole lot of effort into my pictures. Here's what I came up with.

Waiting for the Sun

Last night I decided I'd stop at a couple of places on my way home to get some pictures. There's a horse drawn wagon on a crossroad between routes 11 and 281 just south of Tully that I wanted to take some pictures of. Unfortunately, none of them turned out well enough to upload. I'll be back there when the sun is shining.

I did get this barn though. I wasn't paying attention to what was going on behind what I was shooting. I was more concentrated on the dirt than the barn, so I had to crop and rotate to get the image to appear straight.

I wandered up the railroad tracks to see if I could find anything of interest. I thought I found some interesting things, unfortunately, they weren't so interesting when I got home and looked at them on my computer.

I left, drove around Song Lake then up Maxon Road and Vern King Road. I saw a few opportunities a little ways up to get some shots, so I pulled over, got out of my truck and the sun disappeared! Ugh! I wasn't going to waste the opportunity, so I took a few pictures of the road, down the valley, the field and just as I began to pack up my stuff, the sun started peeking through the clouds. So I waited a few minutes and ended up with these.

After I shot those, I drove up Vern King Road a little ways and saw a couple of trees I had to shoot.

Despite the sun not being out for most of my trip, it turned out pretty good, I think. I'm going to drive up Vern King Rd. and Maxon Road one morning to catch the sun on the other side of the trees to see what I can get.

I'll leave you with this fun guy...

Getting Behind

I made the decision before I even bought my camera that I would shoot in RAW+JPEG mode. I want the most flexibility in getting the best possible image out of my camera. There is a trade-off in shooting RAW though. It requires a bit of work in processing the image before you can use it.

I knew it would take some time to figure out RAW so I'm capturing the JPEG images as well. I can use those, but I find that they come out a little flat, no matter what I do. Perhaps it's my lack of experience with my camera or just a limitation in the technology.

This weekend, as I was processing images, I came to the conclusion that my workflow wasn't very productive. I was opening each RAW file in UFRaw, setting the white balance, exposure and curves then saving them. I find that the settings for one image in a set can be used with minor tweaks in other images from the same set. UFRaw doesn't allow you to copy & paste settings, so I was finding myself tweaking each photo. That method is not very productive.

Knowing I needed something a little more efficient, I gave RawStudio another try. I was able to get some nice results from a few of my images, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot get good portraits out of RawStudio. I haven't figured out why yet. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out RawStudio and how to get good images from it. The images look better from RawStudio than UFRaw, in my opinion, when I can get them to come out right, but I haven't quite figured that out.

This leaves me to where I'm at right now.... I have a handful of photos that I want to upload and post to this blog, but I'm way behind in my processing. I left my camera at home today so I wouldn't be tempted to take any more pictures until I'm caught up. I've only been at this for a few weeks and I'm already overhauling my workflow.

I'm having fun learning though! As frustrating as things can be, it's still fun. Here are a few shots I took Friday after work.

I don't include all my photos in this blog. I pick out a few from each set I take. There are more images in my Flickr Stream. Take a look around and always feel free to critique my photos.

Thanks for looking!