We sojourned to Knoxville Tennessee to see my Grandson for his 1st birthday by way of Lexington Kentucky. I would highly recommend Lexington for a place to visit. Lexington will be the host of the World Equestrian games this September, the first time this competition has been held in the United States-they are very excited and well should be. We had a chance to ride around horse farms, visit Keeneland Racetrack and visit the downtown area. Then it was off to Knoxville. I think another trip to Knoxville is in order around the Fall colors, plus I don’t see my son and family enough.
No Frame on the print as I still need to swith my frame actions from Photoshop CS4 to CS5
Infrared Nikon D80/ Nikkor 24-70
Day two of our Southeastern Ohio expedition had us all creating tiny landscapes or in photographic terms (macro photography). Now I don’t do a lot of this type of photography; in fact I do not use macro lenses, but rely on extension tubes. These tubes go between the the lens and the camera which creates distance between the lens and the camera sensor effectively magnifying the subject size you are photographing.
Outside of flower petals, insects and such there is a whole world of macro photography. It even gets to the extreme with microscopic photography using high powered microscopes to photograph the smallest of objects. Wonderful abstracts can be created to the point that you would not even know what is actually being photographed.
If you think you would like to learn more about macro photography you can visit the following link: Tiny Landscapes
I few weeks ago I was I was fortunate enough to spend a week shooting in Southeastern Ohio with Monte Nagler, a fine art photographer from the Detroit area whose work is in galleries all over the country. 6 days and over 1500 clicks later, I think a pulled in quite a good amount of photographs. The best part of the trip may have been the diversity of the photographs and locations we were able to shoot. Our trip started out in Columbus, OH. We spent day 1 at the Columbus Zoo and day 2 was the Franklin Conservatory. Days 3 and 4 were at Hocking Hills State Park and days 5 and 6 were in Holmes County home to about 60,000 Amish.
There was just too much to include in just one post. Day one at the Columbus Zoo was overcast and raining, perfect for photographing animals (no harsh shadows). We were told later, that the Columbus Zoo is one of the top rated zoos in the country. And zoos are great places to take photos of animals. Some the ones below were shot through glass ( with plenty of kid’s fingerprints). I highly recommend a photographic journey through a Zoo.
This tiger face was taken through glass.
This polar bear was also taken through glass.
Just liked the color combo of the pink/orange and the green.
Nikon D300, Nikkor VR 70-200/2.8, Nikkor 1.7x entender
Not really, but a I needed a catchy title for this next picture post. While in Florida this winter, we took an afternoon to drive down to the everglades. There we saw the world’s smallest post office (it was about…never mind) just look at the picture. Ever wonder why the post office loses money? After our little (literally) post office visit it was off to bigger things…we went alligator chasing. We didn’t really chase them, there just lay out on the side of the road (actually just off the road) next to water tributaries which are everywhere, but it was still fun. I have never done a lot of wildlife photography (need rather long and expensive lenses) but I could see how you could get hooked going to exotic places to capture images of exotic animals. I am not sure that you could call these creatures wild (although they certainly were not captive). It’s just that they only lay around-so it seems. Wild or not I didn’t move to fast around them or get too close. This may be why they invented zoom lenses!
The place is about as big (or should I say a small ) as my shed in the pack yard. In order to save money,it’s only open for an hour and a half on Saturday. I hope the commute to the office is not too long.
Anyway say hello to our new friend, but we decided not to get too friendly.
Nikon D700, D300; Nikkor 50/1.8; Nikkor 70-200/f2.8 VR
It’s not everyday you get the chance to go to Florida and have a free place to stay, so on pretty short notice Angie and I grabbed the opportunity. We had to get up at 2AM to make an early flight, but we were in Florida before noon. The first evening was spent at the Naples Pier. The clouds created a great background. But the most amazing of part of the evening was as we shooting, we saw another photographer walking along the beach. It was the same Photographer, Monte Nagler, we had met this summer in Traverse City, MI. Life is always providing these little twists.
The following picture was taken about 15 minutes after sunset. There are several others, plus I am working on a 7 exposure HDR, maybe I will be able to share. Hopefully more on the way.
Naples Pier, Naples, FL
Nikon D700, 24-70/f2.8
Continued…. We also met photographer Monte Nagler from Farmington Michagan during our trip. He studied under Ansel Adams and has had his images shown in galleries throughout the United States.
The last two days of our trip took us to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore and then up US31 to Mackinaw City. The weather was a little gray both days but we managed to find a few slivers of sunshine hear and there. The sunrise on our last day was pretty awesome again. Now that we are back we have about 1600 images to edit. Here is another small sample.
This first image taken a sunrise. We got lucky with a small sliver of open sky between the water and the clouds. (Nikon D300 Nikkor70-200/f2.8G VR)
(Nikon D300 Nikkor 70-200/f2.8G VR)
Mackinac Bridge at Night (Nikon D700 Nikkor 70-200/2.8G VR)
Mackinaw City Lighthouse
(Nikon D700 Nikkor 24-70/2.8G)
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore- It’s a 450 drop to the bottom. Gray day but the people in the picture give you a sense of scale for the dune.
Nikon D700 24-70/2.8G
We are back home but would still love to be on the road.
We are leaving tomorrow to got to Columbus, OH for the weekend. We are hoping to add some skyline photos to our MyFavoritePicture.com website. It’s supposed to rain, how nice. We are still hopeful that we will still find some good photo ops. I will post next week if we have any success.
