Fat Cats

I was on the way home after a fairly successful photographic outing north of Watertown. And, once again, lost in thought, I had driven about 50 yards by this scene, which had registered subliminally, before I realized I had passed a photo opportunity.So I backed up and took a few photos. I love backlit thing that nature makes and the sun sets ablaze!

American Gothic

I'm on an HDR in the country kick. I have also gotten caught up in Nik Efex and OnOne filters. So you'll have to forgive me for slightly surreal images lately.This image is of a farm house a few miles north of Watertown. It is a fascinating remnant and I'd love to know more about this farm. I'm particularly interested in the evergreen trees that once graced the house. All but one have surrounded to the forces of time. The others, echoing the house, are skeletons.

Triplicate

One of the good things about this blog is that it forces me to go back to my old photos and find things that I've forgotten about. This photo is one of them. I took this of my son Jon at the Santa Ana airport in California. I used my iPhone 4 and an app called Photosynth, which I had just discovered.Photosynth lets you do panoramic photos. Actually, its strong suit is that it lets you do 360 photos. Go to the Photosynth web site to see some amazing examples.

Moonset Over Hills & Trees

The moon is real. The hills are real. And so are the trees and the freshly worked field. But the photo is Photoshopped. So is the photo real? While I'm at it, I might as well ask if "moonset" is a real word?(PS: Have you adjusted your camera clock time to correspond to the shift away from DST? "Does time really matter?" you ask. My answer: "Metadata matters!")

Shades of Gray

I was back at Lonesome Lake this morning looking for photo opportunities. As I have already admitted, I am amazed with the fascinating texture of the prairie grass here. And so I took more photos.This is an HDR picture, first processed in the HDR Pro software in Photoshop and then converted to black and white using a NIK set of filters. This is mostly a "real" photo, though if you look at the trees along the upper right part of the photo, they look a little ghostly. Don't ask me why.

Same Old Farm, Different Day

Those familiar with the movie "Shawshank Redemption" know that today's title is a bit of a paraphrase of an observation that Red makes in the movie.This is another HDR photo, and one of the secrets of good landscape HDR photos is good clouds. I got lucky on this particular day.

The Promise of Another Day

Field Trip

Here's a candid photo I took as Deb and I strolled around in Bruges, Belgium.

Shattered

Here's another photo from what I am now calling my "Rural Decay" series. It's the little Metro van pictured yesterday. If you missed yesterday's post, check it out here.I've been doing a little research and have learned that the Metro was produced by International Harvester from 1938 to 1975, which is a pretty long run for a vehicle. It is a "step" van, and was designed for delivery of things like milk and bread. The milkman who used to deliver milk to our neighborhood drove a little van and I'm wondering if it wasn't an IH Metro. I have fond memories of doorstep delivery of fresh milk and the man named Bob who delivered it.This blue and white metro has a license plate that dates back to the 70s, though I'm guessing the van was manufactured a decade or so before that. This little van represents an interesting piece of history and I wonder how it ended up on a farm north of Watertown? Was it "put out to pasture," so to speak? Did it have a function on this farm? Or was it simply abandoned here by some city dweller who no longer wanted it?You can invent your own story. . .

11-02-11 Country Metro

A little delivery van with a name like "Metro" seems like a paradox as it sits surrounded by decaying farm buildings 15 miles north of Watertertown. This is one of those photographic subjects that called me over and said, "Photograph me!" And so I did.I told my students yesterday that I am more inclined to take photos of peaceful landscapes, blooming flowers and fall leaves than I am to photograph things with bullet holes in them. Though now that I think of it, as I drive around through our rural landscape, I see many things that have been shot. And, as a photographer, I sometimes "shoot" things that have been shot. Like this Metro.Check tomorrow's post for more about this little van.

Rural Relic

This is another example of an HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. In fact, there are two photos here - one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the dark side of the old hulk of a car. This photo is fairly realistic, though the rays that are visible in the sky aren't something you would normally see in a photo taken at this time of day. The HDR photo accentuates the contrast in the sky and you see the rays.

10-31-11 The Photographer's Ghost

Yes, the man in the chairs is me. (I struggled hard with the grammar of this sentence.)What you are looking at is my rudimentary first attempt at light painting, which uses a long shutter speed and a flashlight of some sort. I didn't paint my head because it was very early in morning and I hadn't fixed my unruly hair yet. Plus, this photo looks better without faces on me.Happy Halloween!Canon 5DII 30s f/6.3 ISO800 24mm