High tide, rainy day...

No pictures of the stars or meteorites from over here on the Wet Coast... Weather over the last little while and into the foreseeable future is for clouds and rain. We did however have one of our highest tides of the year a couple of days ago so I went out and took a few pictures. Normally on most tides one wouldn't see the large vessel tied on the far side of the Coast Guard Base except for the the masts and antennae!

On another note, lately I've been experimenting with the various camera options available to me on my D90. More specifically the "Picture Control" options (in the menu system not the selector nob on top) where one can set the camera to "Vivid", "Landscape", "Portrait" etc and make adjustments to the saturation and sharpness. Anyone with a Nikon DSLR will understand.

Anyway what I found is that in an effort to get more striking pictures I had selected settings with far too much contrast and was loosing many of the details in the shadows and darker areas of the picture, particularly with the "Vivid" and "Landscape" settings. By setting the camera to "Standard" or "Neutral" I am able to get a much higher dynamic range and can add more contrast later in post processing if needed.

Just my 40% of a nickel...

Midtown OKC

Kaiser Building Circa 1918

 

Seems as after the Devon Tower visit we all had worked up an appetite. Kaiser's American Bistro was the chosen eatery.

 

Located at 10th and Walker in the original building with the original signage. In 1918 home made ice cream was the principal business. Today they still serve ice cream made on the premises along with a a variety of tasty food dishes as well as a full service bar. Malts, shakes and soda drinks can be ordered at the full service Soda Fountain.

 

Everyone at our table chose a different item from the menu from Catfish, Chicken Fried Steak, Meat Loaf made with buffalo meat and a Buffalo Burger with sweet potato fries. No doggie bags were needed!

 

Sure glad I wasn't driving home! Lulu and I had a hard time keeping our eyes open 

Squirrel !!

Maggie trying to make friends with a curious little squirrel (NOT!) Given the opportunity Maggie would happily have the furry little fellow for dinner! Fortunately the squirrel is wise to this and had fun teasing the poor dog until it was time for us to leave.

Lulu Finds Santa

Laci

 

Least we forget the main purpose of this visit to the Devon Tower Complex, the search for Santa  continues!

 

First search found us at a nest of large red ornaments where Lulu posed for a quick shot amongst the giant globes. (Lulu is a nickname I gave to her at birth and it seems to have stuck. Hope she forgives me when she's older!)

 

 

He's Real, PaPa!

 

An escalator ride to the second floor of the rotunda finally ended her search for Santa Claus. When her turn came, she excitedly went to greet him and they seemed to have been friends for along time. Amazing fellow is this Santa!  Jovial, twinkle in his eye, red cheeks, a magnate for kids, and his moustache, beard and hair were all his!

 

On the ride home Laci-Lu and I had a heart to heart talk about this Santa. There was not a doubt in mind when she quietly told me, He's real PaPa!!

 

 

While writing this story I became aware of the

 tragedy of a school shooting that had happened this morning.

Innocent loving children were lost! Sadness and anger were my feelings!

Should I continue or just submit to my feelings of the moment? I chose to continue!

A Ray of Sunshine and Hope was needed!

 

Lulu and I dedicate this post to the Memory of the Children! 

 

 

 

Somewhere In AZ.

I'm alone on the road again!

Starry, Starry Night

Shooting at night has some challenges all it's own. I had never tried to photograph stars before and I relied on Aaron's new found knowledge to lead the way. I seemed to get the timing right for the lighting but focusing my lens (Nikon 17-35mm f2.8) to the hardstop of infinitely left everything slightly out of focus. Trying to focus manually on something like the windmill was even harder for my old eyes while in the dark. Out of the 33 photos I took I only got one that was actually in focus and it even has a touch of star movement in it even at just a 30 second shutter.

The whole point of last night was to try to get some photos of shooting stars. Although I did get a shot, the second of the night and the only one with a shooting star that I got, it was out of focus. I'm still posting it though just because it has the shooting star in it.

I'm going to have to work on my night vision!

Astrophotography

With the meteor shower at its peak tonight, I thought it was a good time to try something new. With a little research on the internet, I felt confident with my knowledge of how to capture a night sky filled with stars. So I headed to the spot I thought best to give it a try, Ron's House. This windmill has be feature on the blog a time or two and I was able to capture part of the Milky Way in the photo. This is my first attempt at astrophotography. I really enjoyed trying something new and defintly will give it another try.

Going Up! Looking Down!

Corridor View

 

Just past the reflecting pool we entered a corridor that led us to the elevators of the Devon Tower. A nice view of the outside grounds was enjoyed on the short walk. My great grandaughter's Dad works in the building and had clearance to take us to the 42nd floor of the 50 story Tower.

 

 

View to the North

 

Although eight stories from the top, it was easy to see that we towered above the other tall buildings that make up the Oklahoma City skyline!

 

 

Chesapeak Arena

 

Home to the NBA Oklahoma City Thunder.

 

 

Myriad Gardens

 

Lofty view of part of the grounds of the downtown gardens. Tube shaped building contains the climate controlled Botanical Gardens that is built over a pond. An outside ice skating arena occupies the white space in the lower left corner of pic. Lots of skaters were out enjoying the mild 56 degree evening!

 

The story and pics not quite over yet....................

 

 

 

Red and Reflected

Reflection of a Red Ornament

 

Between the Rotunda and the Devon Tower a magnificent reflecting pool held a single red ornament. It was seemingly sitting right on the surface of the perfectly still mirror glass water. Nary a ripple! The bottom of the pool was lined with large smooth polished river rock, magnified by the crystal clear finish of the liquid. An exceptional Reflecting Pool!

 

 

Still more to come......................

Hana, HI

This is for Ron and Cheryl.  These pictures are from the end of the road Nahiku after mile marker 25 near Hana, HI. This area is a great place to have your lunch, and you probably will not going to see anyone here but you.  Captured on Nikon D2X with 17-55mm f/2.8.

By the way, are you still counting down Ron?

More boat pictures

I've seen a variety of boats around here lately and decided to start taking pictures of some of them. The first two pictures are from today using the Sigma 120-400 at about 300mm for the top shot and 120mm for the middle shot. The last picture was taken several days ago with my trusty but soon to be replaced 18-135mm Nikon kit lens. Going to bite the bullet and spring for a Nikon 18-300 zoom in the very near future.

Giant Pine Cones

Hung With Care!

 

What a view we had! Charlotte and I were invited by our two year old great grandaughter and her parents to go see Santa Clause Saturday evening. The event was being held in the Rotunda at the new Devon Center.

 

Santa's Line

 

The six story glass rotunda was decorated with the largest pine cones I've ever seen! Live Christmas music was playing to add to the Holiday Spirit!

 

Towering Above The Pine Cones

 

While the kids patiently waited their turn to see Saint Nick, my time was spent walking around trying to find the perfect spot to capture the cones while having the Devon Tower for a background.

 

More Pics and Story Coming Later........................

What is it?

We were supposed to get a bunch of this cold white stuff this weekend but it never showed up. Who would have thought the weather man would be wrong?

This was taken a couple of years ago in Oklahoma. For some reason the wind blown snow caught my eye.

Still on a Borrowed Lens

 

Here are a few more photos from Ron and I's adventure to the refuge. These were all shot with the lens I borrowed from him. They aren't as sharp as they could have been. I think my ISO may have been to high. I was able to smooth them a little in the RAW converter in CS5. These were shot as we were heading home for the day and stopped in the middle of the road to take pictures of the bald eagle and happen to have a hawk of some sorts fly by.

 

 

Dad, and Son or Dad, and a camera!

Since, Ron and Aaron spent some time together taking bird pictures lately, I have decided to do the same with my Jonathan by taking him to the lake behind our house to feed the ducks with our old breads.  While he going crazy with the ducks, and seagulls.  I sat on a bench quietly, and this is what I come up with for you guys this week.

Basket case

Found Mike and his trusty side kick touring around the Port Hardy waterfront this afternoon. An arrangement like this most definitely called for a picture or two.

Alone on the road.

I'm getting bore after didn't see any birds around for an hour.  These shots came from Beavers Bend.

I tried RAW again...

Like I've stated before on this blog, every once in a while I get the urge to try shooting RAW. Today I tried again...

Got the tripod setup, set the camera to RAW + jpeg and took a few pictures. Then when I got home I downloaded the camera card and started doing RAW image processing... Sort of anyway! LOL

I attempted to process my new RAW files into usable images using three different programs.

First a trial version of the Nikon Capture NX2. I wasn't able to get anywhere with this slow, clunky, non intuitive program and have since removed it from my computer.

Next I tried Photoshop cs4. The RAW image that came from my camera was bland, fuzzy and lifeless. Despite my best efforts there was just no way I could get it looking as good as the duplicate jpeg image my camera produced as shown above.

Last I used the free Nikon View NX2 which is a simple RAW conversion utility with some basic adjustments. I was able to understand and use most of this program to process my large RAW files into jpeg images that looked just like the jpeg pictures I'd already gotten from my camera. No advantages here! Though I will be keeping this program on my computer.

So long and short of it, my conclusion today is the same conclusion I always come to... This amateur photographer will be sticking with jpeg's thank you very much!

A photo adventure with Dad

 

Yes that is a nuclear reactor in the background.

 

 

Three or four pelicans got a little uncomfortable with us walking up and took flight.

 

 

After a while they decided to return to the flock and come in for a landing

 



 

These were all shot with Ron's 150-500mm lens at 500mm and cropped around 50%.

Another sunset with the Nikon P7700

I was driving back from town the other day and stopped to take this photo with the Nikon P7700. I used the camera's internal ND filter when I took the shot and then added a graduated ND filter in the NIK software to bring out the foreground.