Portlandia

Whirlwind family trip from California to Portland to Colorado by car.  Ton of photos, here are a few of my favorites (click the photo for the rest)

October Light



All photos taken with Panasonic Lumix automatic setting.

Fall Flowers

A bit of Rain and some flowers bloom.

Just a few fall pix

 Steve took this picture of the girls on their first day of school as 7th graders at Will Rogers Junior High.

Alaina and Velcro take a break from the last swim in the cool pool.

Jake says:  Look Ma, No Hands....

Nick is "Dead-Eye" accurate with the throwing knife.

Ivy and Pico at the Rocking C

 VELCRO

Tiny Daisy

the Deezy Do

Wyoming in July

The girls and I spent a week in Wyoming with our friends Grace and Marcia.  We saw bears (grizzly and black), bison, elk, deer, coyote, fox, marmot, picka-pen, chipmunks, rabbit, swan, geese, and antelope but no moose or wolves.  The weather was beautiful and cool (very compared to OK) and we saw geothermal features in Yellowstone (Old Faithful and Grand - now we are official Gyser Gazers), caught rainbow trout in Windy Lake, hiked to Spooky Cave, counted wildflowers, hunted petroglyphs, rode the Absokora hills, and followed smoke to a forrest fire up Horse Creek Canyon. 

Oh, and we took a few photos.

Wonderful Wyoming.

More Wyoming Pix

Aliens Among Us

It's been awful hot outdoors the past month or so and difficult to spend much time there on purpose, but poking around in the flora you might come across some interesting fauna. Here are a couple of examples.

These critters were captured outdoors and brought into the "studio" for photographing. The caterpillar (Hyalophora cecropia) was slow enough to get proper light and focus with little effort but the mantis required a 15 minute stay in the fridge to slow him down. Both bugs were shot under fluorescent light with a digital Canon EOS xs equipped with Mamya 45mm lens and eos adapter and extension rings at f22 and various slow shutter speeds. Everything was done through eos utility and xp laptop. After processing: Photoshop Elements 6.
 Both bugs were released alive.

Milestone Daze

I can't believe it happened almost a month ago, but Kieara graduated from George Washington Univ. in D.C. and I'm finally getting around to organizing a few snaps.  Here are a few images from our time in D.C. and then the rendevous at our house back in N.C.  The sweet little Canon 50mm f/1.2 lens was awesome.  As you can tell I'm still tinkering with manual focus, but starting to get a feel for it and really enjoying the process.

Click on the image below to see the rest.