photos: Don't Pick Your Nose In Public - 02/05/10 01:02 AM
 
Don't Pick Your Nose In Public -
Someone Is Probably Watching
 
Like some fool with a camera....
 

 

 

This is a Western Lowland Gorilla and her baby that I photographed at the San Diego Zoo in December 2009. She was a bit preoccupied...
The zoo's first two gorillas arrived in 1931. The first gorilla to be born at the zoo, was Alvila, a female, born in 1965.  She is still there, and this is probably one of her daughters.
 
In 1915, San Diego celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal … (47 comments)

photos: 20th Annual International Snow Sculpture Competition - Breckenridge, Colorado - 02/03/10 01:04 AM
 
 
20th Annual International Snow Sculpture Competition - Breckenridge, ColoradoThe 20th Annual Snow Sculpture Competition was judged in Breckenridge, Colorado this weekend. Twelve teams from six countries came to Breckenridge to enter the competition, and the talent was phenomenal! The teams have one week to carve their sculptures from 20 ton blocks of ice, and no power tools or supports are allowed.
Thirty thousand people from all over the world attended the competition, and the town was PACKED with visitors and skiers.
Winning the Gold was Team Lithuania, with 'Milite Est Vita' - an intricately carved gloved hand … (31 comments)

photos: 'Moonset' Behind Breckenridge, Colorado - 02/02/10 03:09 AM
 
 
'Moonset' Behind Breckenridge, Colorado
 
A friend of mine has a townhouse in Breckenridge, Colorado, and on Friday, we went up there for another girl's weekend. It was the 20th Annual Ice Sculpture competition, and the town was packed with people.
We left late afternoon, and headed out Hwy 24 through South Park, then out Hwy 9 through Fairplay and Alma, up over Hoosier Pass, and down into Breckenridge. The scenery along the way is breathtaking!
 
Remember the TV show "South Park"? One of the guys that wrote the show grew up here, in South Park, Colorado. … (33 comments)

photos: The House With Nobody In It - The Inside - 01/29/10 01:38 AM
 
 
The House With Nobody In It - The Inside Written by Joyce Kilmer, Published in 1914 Another excerpt:
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.   So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, … (37 comments)

photos: The House With Nobody In It - 01/27/10 01:20 AM
 
The House With Nobody In It Written by Joyce Kilmer, Published in 1914 An excerpt:
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie trackI go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minuteAnd look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;For it wouldn't … (51 comments)

photos: FontPage - Font Viewer - Cool Tool! - 01/26/10 01:43 AM
 
FontPage - Font Viewer - Cool Tool!
 
Now and then I run across something online that looks and sounds like something that might be useful. I create alot of slideshows, and use different fonts in them. If you're like me, you are probably spending more time than you like trying to figure out which one to use. I just came across this FREE software program from the folks that make the resizing tool I use, PixResizer. It's called FontPage. It lets you view all the fonts installed on your computer on a cool little screen. You can see what … (36 comments)

photos: Our Love Affair With Flowers - 01/24/10 02:30 AM
 
 Our Love Affair With Flowers The subject of poems, paintings, mythology, religion, music, and photography, the beauty of flowers have held humans in thrall for centuries.There are nearly 300,000 documented species of flowers, and flowering plant fossils have been found that date back as far as 146 million years.
Throughout history, flowers have been used to heal, as an expression of feelings, to enhance one's surroundings, and as a part of rituals.
Evidence of flowers used as part of a burial ritual was discovered by archaeologists in a cave in Iraq, where the skeletons dated to the Paleolithic Age, … (53 comments)

photos: Photographing People In a Public Place - What is the Law? - 01/21/10 02:13 AM
Photography In a Public Place - What is the Law?
Comments in a recent post got me curious about this question. So I did what I always do when I want to know something - I went online to research it. Interestingly, there is a ton of information online on the subject. It is hard to wade through what might be law, and what might be someones opinion. But this is what I filtered out. A photographers' right to take photographs, and publish them is protected by the First Amendment as freedom of expression, and as part of freedom of speech. … (125 comments)

photos: The Naked Trees of Winter - 01/20/10 02:05 AM
 
 
The Naked Trees of Winter When we think of beautiful trees, we usually think of them fully dressed, that is, with leaves. But I've come to appreciate the beauty of naked trees in winter :) 
This photo was tonemapped using 3 exposures, (+3, 0, -3), in Photomatix high dynamic range processing software. When tonemapping using this software, you can choose to use it to create a surreal effect to the image, or a realistic one. This one tends to the 'surreal' side.
Fountain Nature Center, Fountain, Colorado
Because this shot was not bracketed when I took it, … (22 comments)

photos: Homeless in America Part 2 - My Musings - 01/19/10 03:27 AM
 
 
Homeless in America Part 2 - My Musings
 
Yesterday I wrote and posted photos of a story about the Homeless In America. As I sit in the comfort of my home, what I saw, and what I felt as I was moving around the city taking these photographs continues to haunt me.
I became aware of the feeling that I didn't want any of the people in these camps to see me photographing them. It felt voyueristic somehow, as if my being there was an invasion of their privacy. I was careful to shoot from a distance, … (27 comments)

photos: Homeless In America - 01/18/10 02:26 PM
 
Homeless In America
"There but for the grace of God, go I" - attributed to John Bradford, 16th Century
In any given night in America, 700,000 to 2 million people have no home to go to. Staggering statistic? Yes. And these numbers were from 1996.

In Colorado Springs, Fountain Creek runs parallel to Interstate 25. It has become 'home' to many of the city's considerable homeless population. It is estimated that Colorado Spring's chronic homeless number about 350 persons, and about 750 more have joined the homeless population due to job loss. That puts the number of people living on the streets, … (167 comments)

photos: The Miraculous Staircase of The Loretto Chapel, Santa Fe, NM - 01/17/10 01:45 AM
 
The Miraculous Staircase of The Loretto Chapel, Santa Fe, NM

A few days ago I started reading a book by Jeannette Walls called "Half Broke Horses". It's the true story of a girl, (Ms. Wall's grandmother), born in the Hondo Valley of New Mexico, who in 1914, at the age of 13, was sent to boarding school at the Sisters of Loretto Academy of Our Lady of the Light in Santa Fe.
As I was reading, I suddenly realized that I have been there, and better still, I had photos! The story went on to talk about the … (42 comments)

photos: Do You Format Your Camera's Memory Cards? You Should! - 01/15/10 01:54 AM
 
 
Do You Format Your Camera's Memory Cards? You Should! Formatting your memory cards is much the same thing as formatting your computer. To avoid problems with your cards due to 'bad sectors', and improve the card's performance, you should format them regularly. This is not the same thing as 'erasing'. Erasing photos from your camera deletes them from the directories on the card. You can delete, one, many, or all of them. Protected, or saved photos cannot be erased by this process. Formatting your card will remove everything, even your protected files. So be certain to back up your … (27 comments)

photos: Shooting in the RAW - Now why would you do THAT? - 01/14/10 03:01 AM
 
 
Shooting in the RAW - Now why would you do THAT?
 
What I'm talking about is using the RAW format when you shoot photographs with your DSLR camera, as opposed to the JPEG format. If you are shooting "snapshots", say of family or holidays, JPEG is fine. But when your goal is capture a photo worthy of hanging on the wall, or for getting the very best shots of that listing for publishing your marketing materials, shoot in RAW. RAW images contain ALL the data in the photograph. A JPEG is a compression of that data, know … (32 comments)

photos: There Is No Such Thing As Magic - I Beg To Differ! - 01/13/10 01:49 AM
 
There's No Such Thing As Magic - I Beg To Differ!
I looked up the definition of 'Magic', and among other things, these were some of the definitions I found: A mysterious quality of enchantment
any mysterious or extraordinary quality or power
unaccountably enchanting, magical beauty
wonderful, marvellous, exciting
to transform or produce by, or as if by, magic
I find magic all around me, in everyday things and occurences. But what really, really inspires me, every time, is a beautiful sunset. I'm quite certain a sunrise would as well, but I'm rarely up early enough to see one, lol. … (41 comments)

photos: Photomatix - HDR Photography - Just What I Needed, A New Toy! - 01/11/10 02:02 AM
 
 
Photomatix - HDR Photography - Just What I Needed, A New Toy! LOL
Thanks to Mike Hendren's posts on High Dynamic Range Photography, and the wonderful examples he and Andrea Swiedler have posted, I finally climbed on the bandwagon. (Is there no end to the $$ we can spend, guys?) I have always been a fan of vivid color in my photography, and often shoot with, or post process with saturated settings for that reason. But this gives me the ability to take it to a new level. While I have played with psuedo HDR in the past, this … (40 comments)

photos: The Windchill is 15 Below! Let's Go Fishing! - 01/10/10 02:24 AM
 
 
The Wind Chill is 15 Below! Let's Go Fishing!
 
 
Last weekend, I drove out to Tarryall Reservoir. While I have spent much time in the Tarryall Valley, I had never gone as far as the reservoir. So, since the weather folks said the day would be fair, (they lied), I went. On the way, I hit a snow storm, and almost turned back, but luckily it was short lived. The cold, however was NOT. By the time I got to the reservoir, it was a balmy 23 degrees, and the wind was blowing like it was it's … (41 comments)

photos: Think You've Seen It All? Think Again! - 01/08/10 01:48 AM
 
 
Think You've Seen It All? Think Again!
 
Forty years ago, Jim Bishop bought 2 1/2 acres of forest near Wetmore, Colorado, with the intention of building a family cabin out of native rock from the area.
As construction went on, folks told him it looked like a castle. So, a castle it became. Towering 160 feet over the forest sits a medieval style castle, complete with a fire breathing dragon (made from recycled metal trays), towers, and wrought iron walkways and bridges. Every bit of it constructed by Jim Bishop, every stone laid, and every bit of iron … (40 comments)

photos: Moby Dick Was a No Show - 01/05/10 02:55 AM
                            
 

                               Moby Dick Was a No Show While in San Diego over the holidays, my husband and I booked a whale boat excursion to see the whales migrating through the area on their way to Baja. Turns out, the best time for whale viewing begins in mid January, so it makes me wonder why they book these tours so early.... (could it be for the $$?)  We didn't see a single whale, but the trip was not a total loss, we saw dolphins! Lots of dolphins! I love them, so I was thrilled with the experience just the … (83 comments)

photos: The End Of A Perfect Day - 01/03/10 01:27 AM
 
 
                                   The End Of A Perfect DayChristmas 2009 was a wonderful time for me. I spent it with my family at my Mom's in San Diego where I was grateful for a bit of warmer weather.  Here in Colorado, we had the first white Christmas in a long time, but it was bitterly cold, as it has been off and on for sometime. The Christmas holiday was spent eating, playing Pictionary, eating, going on a whale boat excursion (more on that later), eating, going to the San Diego Zoo, eating, and visiting with friends. On Christmas evening, after all … (37 comments)