Holiday season

Mike suggested I pick a theme for November and December.I figured "holiday season" could be good for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

scary photos

Dead tree at night struck by lightning,abandoned one room schoolhouse infrared, abandoned victorian red brick house ghostly figures in upper windows,abandoned wood two story house in infrared, castle Ha Ha Tonka State Park infrared and abandoned workhouse ( turn of century prison) infrared in Kansas City.I would hate to be in any of these places alone at night.

Is our group still active?
Errick

#5: "Leaflet 1"
#6: "Leaflet 2"
#7; "Lined Up and Tied Up" All three taken at Puerta Moralis, MEX.

#2: "Connected" - fence on the dunes
#3: "Moon Chasers" - kites on the beach
#4: "Sun Dreams" - the row of beach houses. Note that one is still boarded up for Irene.

Well here we are in October! And here are my repetition photos. Sorry Mike but I have a few more then 4 but all were taken this month with the exception of number 1: "The Gulls of Cape Lookout". The rest were taken on the Outer Banks when we went down to clean-up from Irene. And then two weeks back when we took a mini trip down to Play de Carma. Hope you enjoy these. Errick

October's Theme

October's theme is scary or spooky images :o)

Repetition

This month total slipped by. Up to yesterday I had yet to do any images on this theme. Then my kids found this little guy crawling around in a friends yard. I noticed that he had the unique Repetitive pattern on him so I started shooting away. Hope you all like it.

I worked up this pan this afternoon. The thing is, I took the shot a year ago and just pulled it out of my archives. Thought you would like to take a look. This is from half way up Mt. Mitchell, NC. Thanks for looking... Errick.

I thought this months theme was challenging and fun. I did learn something entirely new.Two panoramic photos were of the Loess Hills are in Iowa near the Missouri River. This is a picturesque landscape of hills formed 10's of thousand years ago from light porous silt layed down by wind and sculptured by erosion.One photo show ruins of a mansion at Ha Ha State Park in Missouri.Another is a lookout view over Shell Knob Missouri and Table Rock Lake area.The inside panoramic is within an inclosed area of my dental office. As I learn more, I'll work on decreasing distortion within a very close area.

It was a long couple of weeks for us. After watching and waiting for Irene to approach the coast it became apparent that out beach house was going to take a direct hit. The eye went over Cape Lookout with a 20 mile radius. This put it directly over our place. Sure enough, Atlantic beach and Morehead City was the place of first landfall in the US. Cindy left Sunday morning at 4 AM. She stopped first at her sisters home (my wife was born and raised Cateret County, Outer Banks) in Williamston, NC. No power there and flooding. The next morning they opened the bridge up to the island if you had an evacuation pass (which she had) but still a manditory curfew after dark. I booked a flight for after work on Thursday to help with clean-up. Low and behold... we were spared. Just lost shingles and siding. After removing the board-up, we enjoyed the after storm calm of the beach and I got some photography in. We tried to volunteer at the Red Cross but the nearest post was 3 hours away. We couldn't help with clean=up at the worse hit areas of Nags head and North because the roads were literal gone to the ocean and non residents not permitted. We were lucky. We drove back last night.. 18 hours, and arrived at 8 this morning. The only productive thing I have done today is work on these panoramics.
The top photo (in B and W) is taken at Taylor's creek. Famous as the docking point for Black Beard. His prize ship the Queen Anne's Revenge is sunk about 5 miles from here and about 1 mile from our beach house.
The middle photo is taken at Morehead City, NC.
The last is of Oceanana Pier, Atlantic Beach.

Errick

I have been informed that it is up to me to set the monthly theme title. The theme for September will be "Repetition". The use of repetition in your composition. Have Fun!

Errick

Panoramic Collage

Here is a second entry for the Panoramic Theme. I wanted to create a panoramic that didn't actually line up perfectly, and found a way in Picasa to do it, using the "Photo Collage" feature. It replicates an art project I did in elementary school where we had to use printed pictures to create a collage of a larger image. This was taken from my front porch of a thunderstorm earlier this summer.

Platte River Panorama

This panorama was taken from the Platte River Pedestrian Bridge west of Louisville. We took the family down there on a Go! Play Adventure field trip (read more at http://www.morenature.info/). It was a beautiful day and there were air boats in the river, canoes, rafts, and others biking along the bridge. The kids really liked the air boats, and we had a nice little afternoon hike to and from the bridge. I made this panorama with only 12 images. I wish now I had taken more, because I guess I didn't get the overlap enough, and there are some errors in the bridge hand rail, but I think the overall effect is still quite nice.

Panoramics ?

This month I started out working on traditional panoramic images. These first few images are from those endeavors.



The next few images are a technique that I perfected last night. Though the finished product are not panoramics per say, I included them in this series because they are formed by manipulating panoramic images to form a 360 degree image.

A busy summer for me. Just got two of to college this last week and another back into high school. I have been checking in with the work here at the coop but failing add my blog. Sorry all! Here are four for the long exposure. The first (Under the Boardwalk) I took down at Atlantic beach while vacationing three weeks back. tried to get Larry to join us! The next two were shot earlier this summer in our front garden. The last, I actually shot last fall (Forest with a Twist).... sorry Mike but I like it.

Silver Dollar City

I was going through my picture files looking for some images for work when I stumbled onto this picture I took a few years back in Silver Dollar City. I thought it fit the theme for this month so I decided to share :o)

Long Exposure

For my first two photos, I had to go with fireworks. I figured Stacey posted the theme early enough for me to get some good ones on the 4th of July, so I tried several settings, exposure lengths, and methods of capturing them. The hardest part was aiming the camera where the fireworks were going to explode, so I got several that were cut off at the top or bottom. These two were from a display at Beaver Lake. I was sitting about 20 feet away from where they were being lit and they were going off right over our heads.

F/16 ISO 100 25s

F/22 ISO 100 30s

The next four photos are from a trip downtown with Mike and Micah. The first two are duplicates of pictures Mike submitted. I am doing this only to get feedback and comparison comments on what I could have done to make mine look better. Mike was giving me pointers and tips on how to frame the shot and what camera settings to use, so I am curious if I was able to come close to his shots. 

F/8 ISO 200 2.5s

F/22 ISO 100 20s

These last two are original shots that I really liked. I was trying to frame things in a unique way, focusing on perspective and lighting. The first one I really like because of the perspective of the Union Pacific sign, and the lighting in the alcove of the building. The second one I really like because of the lighting/colors of the sculpture, and the angle which I took the shot from (on a tripod near the ground). I also like the tip I received from Mike and Micah about using my 10 second delay timer to reduce the shake on the camera when pressing the shutter button. The shutter was only open for a few seconds, and other attempts at the same shot had resulted in just enough shake to blur the focus. Thanks guys!

F/8 ISO 200 2.5s

F/5.6 ISO 100 2s

August theme!

I want to continue to challenge people to use their camera and photo editing software in different ways so for August the theme will be Panoramic images.

Slower Exposure

I really didn't want to use any fireworks pictures.  I pushed myself to do other creative things, however nothing really turned out well.  I learned a few lessons and walked away mad a few times.  Here are the few I felt were "share worthy".

time lapse photography

For this subject, I decided to experiment. I had read an article called "Flower Whirl" in August issue of Popular Photography.I used my 100 macro lens. I photographed flowers at night for 5 to 10 seconds. There was some light from street signs and passing car lights. No tripod was used.I wanted distortion [ no focus]. Sometimes I would hold it steady with the anticipation of a little movement. Other times I would rotate camera or move up and down. Some of distortions could be considered impressionistic flower paintings. It was fun seeing what patterns I could achieve. One looks like a red fireball.