Dance

That Dam photo, Again!

Quyhn was gracious enough to rework one of my photos in photo shop changing up the colors in one and turning it black and white in the other. Here are his two versions of my photo.

With all of this talk about layering and masking in photoshop I can tell I'm behind the learning curve on this stuff. I guess I need to dig out my book for dummies using photoshop and get busy!

Superhuman

These photos are from last weekend in Dallas convention center. I was there for the Taekwondo tournament, not for this body builder event. I just don't know how a person could have this much muscles on their body. Also, I did not know there is a Hot Moms competition in U.S.A. Sorry guys, I couldn't post those pictures.

Afternoon ride

Yesterday afternoon I put on my camera backpack and went for a ride. This makes it so easy to cover a fair bit of countryside and not be confined to just the road. Suddenly every trail and overgrown track are open to you and no problems getting over or under gates meant to keep cars out either!

The top picture is a place called Thomas Point overlooking Queen Charlotte Strait and the bottom picture is of a marshy area with dwarf trees that almost look like bonsai trees! The bottom picture is actually the best of two pictures put together in photoshop... The dead tree in the left foreground was out of focus in the nicest picture but not in another so I took the best of both. Also I took the trees in the background and blurred them a little to give more depth to the entire picture.

I'd like to come back to this place with the camera one morning when there is a low fog lying near the ground...

Final Approach.

On this one, I have changed the water color to match the bird feathers.

GOOD GRACES

THE RED HAND

After Ron sacrificing sleep, a no cloud sky,(everyone knows his excellent cloudy sky photos) the only thing I could think of to get back in his good graces was to post some Pics of.................................

His other LIFE! HOPE this does the trick!! LOL

That dam photograph

A week or so ago Parker suggested I take my wide angle lens to the dam where he had taken a photo before. Contrary to my "I hate early mornings" lifestyle I decided to get up early one morning as we were supposed to have storms rolling in and I thought a wide shot of the dam with the sunrise and broken clouds in the background would be great.

As usual, the weatherman was completely wrong with the forecast and there wasn't a cloud in the sky! I decided I would wait a while and see what happened so I did some work in my yard. As luck would have it, some nice puffy clouds started to move in about 9:00 a.m. so I grabbed my gear and headed for the lake. Ten minutes later when I got there the clouds were gone! I think I was saying something bad about Parker right about then! LOL

The first photo is cropped down because I was shooting into the sun with no clouds!

This second photo is from the other side of the dam (looking west) and is a better photo in my opinion. There wasn't any water flowing over the spillway since it has been dry and over 100 degrees for the last two weeks. It was hot and humid when I went to take these photos and again, not a cloud in the sky. Did I mention I was saying bad things about Parker? LOL

This was the best of the day as far as I'm concerned. I walked out to the center of the dam and turned around (looking south) and that's when I stopped cussing Parker!  :~)

This was taken just above the spillway looking down the valley.

These were all taken with the Sigma 10-20mm with a CP filter. The first and last ones were turned on the vertical when shot.

Travel Lift

Ever wonder how they get a larger boat out of the water, one that's too big for a boat trailer? Here's one way, the machine holding this 48 foot steel fishing boat is called a "Travel Lift".

Though you can't see it in either of these pictures there are two paralell fingers that extend out over the water for the Travel Lift to drive out on to. The boat to be lifted positions it's self between the two fingers and is lifted by several large straps as you can see.

The real beauty of the Travel Lift is that it can drive around with a boat held in it's straps. Behind the boat in the lower picture is a boat yard and other boats lifted out by this machine.

WHERE'S MOM

We're Hungry!

All those kids want to do is eat!!

Hate & Love!

They call me, Don Quixote

Actually, I've been called a lot of things but Don Quixote isn't one of them. I don't know why but I felt compelled to take a few photos of these wind generators. I guess it is their massive size and the fact it looks like they are just popping out of the ground like a big flower.

I was told recently that the power company pays the land owner $3000 dollars per year for each wind generator they put on their property. There are more than fifty of these just along one ridge and the land is mostly owned by one individual. That's a pretty good living for doing nothing!

I have edited this post and added one more photo just for Paul. This will give some context to the size of the these things. The blue tanks are water towers and if you look just to the right of them between the trees you can see a power line pole. That is a "turkey buzzard" flying to the right of the wind generators, not a spot on my lens! LOL

I could not come up the meaning of these photos, maybe you can!

No rain on this plain!

Currently there are 600ish forest fires burning in the Provence of British Columbia, this happens every summer though this summer is a little worse than normal. For the last several days the smoke from the fires several hundred miles away on the mainland has been blanketing Northern Vancouver Island, this almost never happens but it sure has made for some great sunsets!

Both of these shots were taken at Quatse Lake using my Nikon 18-135 lens. I'm afraid that I broke the "Thow shall not aim at the sun" rule, but I've always been a bit of a rebbel besides what are rules for anyway except to be broken! LOL

The rain falls mainly on the plain

For two days in a row we have had these mini thunderstorms come in. There will be just one small area with a dark cloud that has the thunder and rain but the rain only falls in a spot about a half mile wide and long. Both days it has happened in almost exactly the same spot which is about a mile from mile house.

I haven't benefited from any rain but it did cool the place down for about an hour.

On the second day I watched the themometer as the storm moved in and it went from 108 degrees to 89 degrees in just about ten minutes. About a half hour after the storm it was back up to 103 degrees!

I decided to get out and take some photos of the clouds this day. This first shot is of the mini storm dropping its rain.

Pots of Gold!!!! 

I caught this rainbow just after the storm stopped. I couldn't decide which end of the rainbow I should look at for that pot of gold. Taken with the Sigma 10-20mm with CP filter. I had to watch using the filter on this one because I could rotate it just to the right spot and actually make the rainbow disappear from the shot.

Another storm trying to build in the distance. I was really worried about this photo after I got home and started looking at them closer. I had set the exposure to -1EV and it came out way too dark but thanks to Elements I was able to save the shot.

buLb

buLb is the term Nikon uses to say "Leave the shutter open for an indefinate amount of time".

My Wife told me there were going to be metior showers over the next few days. So I refreshed my memory on how to use the "buLb" setting and took a number of pictures. Here are the best two. Both pictures are about a 1 minute exposure, f4.5, ISO 3200, using the Sigma 10-20 at 20mm. Leaving the shutter open for much more than a minute resulted in blurred stars as the rotation of the Earth changes the camera's position relative to the stars.

In order to use the "buLb" setting you set your Nikon camera to "S" or "M" mode and rotate the command dial past the longest shutter speed to the "buLb" setting. Then using your Nikon remote you press the button once to open the shutter and when you are ready press the button again to close the shutter.

Golden Lights.

This is a same lake that I shot the Ao Dai model that you see from previous post.

Found this Goat skull about 100 miles from this location. I thought it would be a nice gift for my wife to put in our garden. Also, I just want to add this skull to this shot to make more dramatic.

A Controlled Burn

The burn lasted three days longer than they planned and they burned just a "few" more acres than expected but after breaking out the heavy equipment and cutting twenty miles of fire-break the smoke has subsided.

Kind of looks like a volcano doesn't it?

 During the biggest part of the fire they had part of the refuge closed off because the smoke and fire was so heavy they didn't want people driving into it. Well, you know me; look, it's a tornado, grab the camera! so off I went into the fire.

It's amazing the places you can go and the things you can do with the right decal on your car! :~)

As a side note this photo was taken on the fly and a little experimental, I had the Tamron 18-250 mounted on the camera with a CP filter and when I came upon the smoke cloud I just stopped the car and jumped out real quick. I had fire in front of me and behind me so there wasn't a lot of time to compose the shot. The experimental part was a second filter. I knew the sky was too bright but I didn't have time to change filters so I grabbed a ND 2 filter for my wide angle and just held it over the front of the lens with one hand and shot the photo with my other hand. It's not exactly the tripod Quyhn Le was talking about but it was a "shot of opportunity". LOL

It didn't take long for the fire to burn it's way across the mountain range and the contrast between the blue sky and the burnt ground and smoke caught my eye.

Had you actually been able to drive into the refuge from the west side as the fire was burning this would have been the scenic view that greeted you.

UV, CP, and GND FILTERS.

UV filter. $2 dollar at pawn shop.



CP filter Rotated 180* you can see the color of the skies appear deeper blue.
$5 dollars at the pawn shop.



GND filter soft edge. $15 at the pawn shop.



As I digging out my old photos from Arizona trip, I remember that I did some test shoots on three diffrent filters at this location. These photos are unedited, and it was on A mode at f/32 Nikon D3 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.

Where curbs come from...

For the last few weeks around Port Hardy crews have been diging up the sides of the roads, hauling away pavement and generally making a mess of trafic. Then several days ago some fellows came around and pounded metal rods in the freshly exposed ground, then carefully atached a wire running the length of these metal rods.

Then this funny looking machine showed up... Before long some fellows had it all lined up with the wire running the length of the metal rods, a cement truck showed up and suddenly it was making curbs! Lots of curbs, all over town there are these brand new curbs... Before long someone will have to make side walks and lay down some fresh ashphault to go with.

What is happening to our rugged little frontier town! The young rebbels who showed up here 40 years ago to work at the brand new mine are old, fat, married and have grandchildren. The great big noisy 4x4 pickup trucks have given way to mini vans and nice cars... Next thing you know they will put in a Wall-Mart! LOL

Hawks

I'm not sure what kind of Hawk this is, may be Parker will help me out.

Also, please let me know if you feel I'm hogging this Blog with my photos