I Didn’t Even Know What a Nuclear Panner Plant Was

No, this isn’t a nuclear power plant, but that is a really funny line from the classic The Simpsons episode “Homer’s Enemy” featuring Frank ‘Grimey’ Grimes.  What this photograph actually depicts is a power plant located in the River Market District of downtown Kansas City where I used to live.  I was never exactly sure what this plant was, what kind of fuel it burned (I guess I knew it burned coal, since there’s a huge coal pile attached to the facility), and what exactly it powered.  There was no way I was just going to go around all willy-nilly posting pictures featuring buildings I didn’t fully understand.

I set out on trying to figure out what this power plant was all about with a single name I had gotten from a sign hanging on the building.  It wasn’t easy, but I eventually tracked down the parent company and the official name of this generating station, and found an obscure article that made a reference to this power plant.  It’s called the Grand Boulevard Generating Station, and it turns out it burns both coal and natural gas to create super heated steam, which is piped under the city to various buildings downtown for heating.  I didn’t even know that was a thing until I read that article.

This is a hand held 5 shot HDR, with a some sweet post-processing work done after I did the HDR.

Arbitrary Gate

I’ve gone into the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains a few times now and I’ve found some really pretty areas. A major part of this forest was recently involved in some wild fires, possibly set by arson, and as you can see, this part of the forest and mountains is pretty burned out. All of the plants are charred, and there is a ton of ash on the ground. So this area is maybe not the prettiest around, but does offer some interesting features, such as this gate I found. I couldn’t imagine why this gate was necessary; directly in front of the gate was a large berm that was pretty established. As you can see, directly under the gate is a large hole, with some strange rock formations. I can’t speculate as to what these rocks mean, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of Wiccan thing. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. 

Regardless, this gate is ridiculous. There isn’t a road, or even a trail, in front of it or behind it, and there is no fence on the sides of it. Even if there was a road, any vehicle that first made it over the large berm would then get stopped by this big hole under the fence. Any person wanting to walk into the property could just simply walk around the gate. On top of its general uselessness, the gate is actually locked; just in case someone wanted to prove me wrong and open the gate and drive a dirt bike through there or something.

Technically speaking, this is a single exposure, with (naturally) some post-processing work. This was such a gray and dull scene I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get something that I liked, but I enjoy this photo.

Edit: Wait a minute; this isn't just a single exposure.  I did this one like I did the Mountain Sun photo.  I used one exposure of the sky and one exposure of the rest of the scene.

Steamboat Panorama

This is a picture I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70.  It is actually 5 pictures stitched together to form this panoramic view of the scene.  I took this at the Steamboat ski resort in Colorado in 2006 over spring break.  It’s a pretty cool ski area with lots of trails and lots of lifts that can keep you skiing on new trails all day.  The problem with Steamboat is how far from I-70 it is located (although this may make it less crowded than ski areas that are closer to I-70).  It was a good trip and Steamboat is a good place to go if you’ve got a special reason to go there, or really don’t mind driving the extra hours, but there are plenty of excellent ski areas closer to I-70.

Anyway, enjoy the picture.  I stitched this together shortly after I took it, but I re-did it recently because I wanted to show more detail in the snow in the foreground; in my original it was blown out and just showed up as white.

Mountain Sun

As I alluded to in my previous post, there was a huge change in my life recently.  That change was that I have moved to the Los Angeles area.  I moved for work to help out on a project out here, and although it is a great opportunity career-wise (I’m actually managing others instead of doing all the work myself), I think the biggest bonus to moving out here is the opportunity for photography!

Take this picture for example; this was just a short drive out of town!  Any direction I go I can see opportunity for great pictures; beaches, the ocean, deserts, mountains, and urban environments.

I took this picture in the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains.  This is an interesting picture because of the way I put it together.  Technically, this is two exposures that I manually combined in Photoshop.  I took one photograph to properly expose the foreground and the mountains, and I took one photograph to properly expose the sky, and get the cool rays of light from the setting sun.  This was really the first time I’ve tried this technique.  I had originally planned on trying an HDR of this scene, but I didn’t really like the results, so I opted to try something new.

Sweet Plane, Man

Well life has been pretty hectic lately; hectic but exciting.  Some of you already know about this, but I’ll save the story for the rest of you until I have photographic evidence to back my story.  This excitement in my life may be good in general, but it hasn’t been good for my website since I’ve (obviously) been neglecting my updating duties.  Anyway, I seem to be in a writing mood tonight, so hang on, this could go anywhere (I’ll try to keep it on point).

For the second year in a row, I headed to the Downtown Kansas City Airport Air Show; this time though, I had some friends to go with!  Had I gone alone again, I probably would have just stood outside the show in the same location I stood last year.  I would have gotten some good shots, but I wouldn’t have gotten this shot because the airplanes weren’t sitting out on the freeway.

Now, you don’t need to know this, and it’s not at all important to anything, but as the words rolled off my fingers just then, they decided I was going to post a different picture than I was originally planning on posting.  See, I told you this could get crazy!  Hang on folks.

Like I was saying, my friends wanted to go into the air show and see things up close and personal.  I was happy to do this, because I too wanted to go in, and I’m glad I did.  There were all sorts of airplanes and helicopters sitting around on the tarmac, and you’d better believe I got lots of pictures of all the interesting ones.  
(Editor’s Note:  I went back and read my American Chopper post to see how much I talked about going back to the air show in that one, and I pretty much just wrote the same thing I wrote in that post in this post’s second paragraph and this paragraph.  Sorry about the duplication, but I’m not going to delete it, so I guess I’m not really that sorry.)

This airplane is a T-45 Goshawk; a Navy trainer aircraft.  This also happens to be my dream aircraft; you know, for when I buy a jet and learn how to fly it.  I originally wanted a T-38 Talon, which I first saw at the Kansas Cosmosphere (which is an awesome place; you should go there sometime).  The T-38 however is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, so really, that would probably be overkill; I mean, come on.

I gave this single exposure photo a good helping of some sweet post-processing, and I really enjoy the results.  Hopefully you do too!

Also, today happens to be Veterans Day, so thank you to all of you who have served!  I hadn't necessarily planned to post a military related photograph on Veterans Day, but things turned out quite nicely in those regards.

Green Graffiti

This is another bit of graffiti from the River Market, where I live in Kansas City.  This wall is across the street from my building, and the entire wall, which extends for about half a block, is covered in a huge mural of graffiti.  As opposed to the last piece of graffiti I posted, this graffiti is far more artistic in nature.  I took this photograph the afternoon that my new ultra-wide angle lens arrived.  It was a sunny day, and I felt the conditions were perfect to test my lens on this wall I had been waiting to photograph.

I’ve never been sure whether or not this mural was painted legally or not.  I am inclined to believe it was not painted at the request of the owner of the wall for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I witnessed this piece of art being created.  I was coming home late one Sunday night and the particular route I took home that night brought me past this wall.  I saw a couple of guys out on the sidewalk spray painting the wall, and although it was at night, they were not exactly covered by the darkness.  The street isn’t a main street for the area, but it gets a fair amount of local traffic.  These guys didn’t appear to care if anyone saw them, but then again, I wasn’t a police.  The next day I saw the extent of their work, and was blown away that they had spray painted the entire wall.

The second reason I would believe that the wall’s owner was not particularly amused at this piece of self-expression was that they eventually hung a large sign advertising their business, which is behind the wall.  Who do these jerks think they are?  Covering this possibly illegally painted piece of street art, just so they can advertise their business, which just happens to be located on the other side of that same wall?  Isn’t that what the yellow pages are for?

I’m getting off topic here, so going back to the photo; I really love this lens.  In post-processing I was able to get the colors to pop a little more than they did straight from the camera, and overall I like the results.

Flag Man

I thought about holding on to this photograph and posting it on either the Fourth of July or Memorial Day, but those are both too far away, and I don’t want to hold back any content.  Uncle Sam has been sitting on our front porch every summer since I was in High School.  He has seen better days, but is still looking pretty good.  He used to have an American Flag in his hand, but that’s gone, and although you can’t see it in this photograph, he has an accompanying firecracker the size of his head.  I actually took this when I was at home this last Fourth of July, but by the time I got it on my computer and processed, the holiday was well over.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to share it on that Fourth of July, and what’s wrong with a little patriotism in the beginning of October?

I took this picture at this angle to symbolize the proverbial Uncle Sam’s power over all of us, and his imposing size in America today…  No, just kidding; none of that is true.  I took it at this angle, because in my head, this is what I saw.  That and I thought it looked cool.  The outcome is pretty much exactly what I was going for.

Fake Bicycle

I got my new lens in the middle of the week and only really got to play with it for about an hour the day I got it.  The Saturday after I got it was a nice day, so I geared up and went to do some exploring north of the River Market where I live.  There is this nice bicycle and walking trail along the Missouri River that I’ve been on a few times before, but never with my camera.  I spent a few hours down there, mostly in solitude, taking photographs of some interesting things I saw, and trying out a few new techniques with my new lens.

As I was walking around a bend in the trail, I heard a shout of pain, and then witnessed a goofy guy with his kids, playing on this statue of a bicycle.  The man had climbed on the fake bike and sat down with unsurprisingly painful results.  He quickly got off the bike, and though his kids were thoroughly entertained by his antics, he was visibly shaken by the experience.  I chuckled to myself, and made a mental note to come back and investigate this bike more thoroughly.  A few hours and many pictures later, I made my way back to this bicycle.  This time there was nobody playing on it, and I was able to get a couple pictures of it.  I found it interesting that they placed this very inviting plaything right next to some dangerous steps that led down to the river.  As you can see, these steps are so dangerous someone was compelled to install a sign warning of their hazardous nature!  Enough about these crazy steps; I think this is a pretty cool little statue to have on a bike path.

American Chopper

No, not that American Chopper; Paul Sr. and his size 12's have no place in this post.

I’ve been a little preoccupied and without a fully functioning computer the past few weeks, so my artism has taken a backseat to whatever else I’ve been doing with my time.  The following paragraph is my harrowing story of fixing my computer, despite HP’s best efforts to give me no advice, bad advice, and really just try to rip me off.  I offer this as a warning to anyone thinking about purchasing an HP branded computer.  Details on the photo (you know, since this is a photo website) are below.

I finally got my computer fixed this past weekend; well, I finally fixed it, to be exact.  I learned that HP is not a very friendly or helpful company when your computer is out of warranty, or if you purchase replacement parts from a company other than HP.  One of my hard drives began to fail a couple weeks ago so I called HP to see if my computer was still in warranty.  Unfortunately for me, but suspiciously fortunate for them, my warranty had expired less than a week before the drive began to fail.  I don’t actually believe that this was anything other than an unfortunate coincidence, but how convenient for HP that my computer falls apart right after the warranty ended.  The tech support guy I talked to at that time made sure that the software that detected the failure wasn’t providing a false diagnosis, and told me how much a replacement hard drive from HP would cost.  Amazingly, purchasing the Samsung replacement hard drive directly from HP would have cost me 3-5 times more than buying it somewhere else.  I expressed that concern to the tech guy and he said “exactly, it would be cheaper to buy it somewhere else.”  Now this is the type of honest help I would expect from someone.  I proceeded to buy a new hard drive from another retailer; two times the size and around 1/3 the cost of buying the smaller one from HP (not to mention got better reviews and is supposedly less prone to failure).  Eventually I got around to replacing the hard drive and ran into some errors when I was trying to use the HP recovery disks I had created.  I called up HP support once again, this time to find out why my recovery disk wasn’t working, and upon mentioning that I bought my new hard drive from another retailer, the tech guy (who was an American, as opposed to the friendly Indian people with bad fake American accents I’ve talked to in the past) became very abrasive and refused to help me at all.  I tried to reason with him, explaining it didn’t matter where I got my hard drive, and offering a hypothetical situation wherein I had purchased the drive from HP, but he refused to help.  He said that not only does he not have to help me with a hard drive purchased somewhere else (the hard drive wasn’t the issue here, it could have come from anywhere) because my computer was out of warranty he didn’t have to help me at all; then he tried to sell me another year of telephone support!  This guy is a good example of someone caring when they shouldn’t have.  I gave him a good piece of my mind, hung up, and called back and didn’t mention where I got the hard drive from.  This tech guy offered his help even though my computer was out of warranty; but gave me the worst bit of technical support I’ve heard in a long time.  He said that because the hard drive is not the one that came with the computer, the recovery disk won’t work and I’d need to get a new recovery disk from HP for the price of shipping.  I told him his information was wrong, and that I’d just make it work without any help from HP and bid him good day.  I had been pretty satisfied with HP’s support up until this problem arose; apparently though, I’m dead to them out of warranty.  I got on the internet and learned that HP (and apparently all major computer “manufacturers”) “tattoo” their motherboards to reduce piracy of the operating systems sold with the computer.  This annoyed me because I like the option to upgrade all components of my computer, but proved that my recovery disk should still work because I was using the original motherboard.  Eventually I realized that I was making a simple mistake when trying to install the new hard drive and got it all working, proving that I am smarter than HP.

None of this has really hindered my ability to post new photographs here, because I actually have a decent queue of photos to put up; I just haven’t been motivated to write anything, and I like to have some text to accompany my pictures.  As you can clearly see by the dissertation I wrote above, I have gotten some motivation to write.  I’ll continue by explaining that I took this photograph last month at the annual downtown Kansas City Airport air show (here’s one of my all time favorite photographs, which was taken at last year’s show).  I went with some friends, and actually went inside this year, rather than watching from the highway like I did last year, and I was pretty glad I did.  For one, I could hear some commentary on the show via the loudspeaker (even though most of it was terrible and cheesy), and I could get up close and personal with a bunch of planes and helicopters that were sitting around on display (photographic evidence of said display to come).  This CH-47 Chinook helicopter was pretty cool, and could maneuver surprisingly swiftly for its size.  As I learned from the loudspeaker, this was the first time a Chinook, paired with the American flag below it, has ever done this type of demonstration at an air show.  They also said it was so popular in Kansas City that they’re making it a permanent part of shows nationwide from now on, so that’s pretty cool if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway, technically, this is a pretty simple photograph.  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to compose a picture like this, but I like it.  I like the negative space and the simplicity of it; I also like the perfectly clear blue sky behind it; I’d also like to think that somehow in my minor post-processing I’ve made it unique to me.  OK, enough of that, here’s the picture.

Another Nice Mess

While I was in Georgia we passed through a small town called Harlem.  For some reason that name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't figure out why until I saw the sign that explained that it was the birthplace of Oliver Hardy.  At this point I got very excited and began to explain to the woman I was traveling with that there was a Laurel and Hardy museum somewhere in town, and that if we passed it we would have no choice but to stop.  As we passed downtown and began to enter a primarily residential neighborhood my hope that we would see the museum began to fade.

Just past the main downtown area I finally saw a sign for the museum.  I quickly pulled into the parking lot, grabbed my camera, and ran around to the front of the building for some pictures.  I didn't get to go in because it was already closed for the day, but I'm glad I got to see it.

I remember the first time I ever saw a Laurel and Hardy movie.  It was at my Grandparents on my Mom's side's house and I was pretty young.  It was the classic Flying Deuces.  I don't think I knew exactly what it was at the time, but I knew it was funny.  I still remember the scene from my first viewing, where Laurel and Hardy are preparing to jump into a river which, unbeknownst to them, is the new home from an escaped shark.  Being very young, and
not knowing anything about how TV and scheduling worked, I kept wanting to watch it every time I went to their house for quite a while after that.

I watched this movie again a couple weekends ago, along with another classic of theirs, and I can say with the utmost confidence that Laurel and Hardy stand the test of time.  Their movies are as funny today as they were when they were made.  It’s a shame that most people these days have no idea who Laurel and Hardy are.  I’ll spare you all my rant about kids these days and how they don’t know about the classics like Lauren and Hardy, but suffice it to say, my future kids will watch a Laurel and Hardy movie or two, whether they want to or not.

EAT EN

I finally got the ultra wide lens I've been wanting; the Canon 10-22mm.  It came last week, so I ran home over lunch to play with it and got a couple of pictures I really like; this being one of them.  I took this across the street from my apartment in an alley between an old brick building and a new modern building that houses an architectural firm that laid off a bunch of its employees last spring (how rude).

What does this say?  I don't know.  What does it mean?  I don't know that either.  What I do know is that I thought it looked cool; especially from this perspective.

I got to thinking about what it might say and I've got a couple of theories.  My first theory is that it says EAT EN, and that's assuming this is supposed to be English.  Perhaps the person who wrote this wanted to write 'EATEN' but ran out of room so had to extend his word to a second line.

My second theory is that it isn't English at all, but was intended to profess a favorable opinion of one's favorite fraternity and sorority.  Now I don't speak Greek, but it is my understanding that the letters EAT and EN or the symbols E-Triangle-T and E-N translate into Sigma Delta Tau and Sigma Nu.  This reminds me of my encounters with the EAT sorority while I was at the University of Kansas (which were limited to me simply observing them on campus).  This EAT sorority was most unfortunately named, as every girl I saw wearing an EAT shirt was of the overweight variety.  Hilariously unfortunate.

Any other ideas?

Madison Square Fountain

Sure, everyone has heard of Madison Square Garden, but this the Madison Square Fountain.  Pretty clever right; I just made it up.

But seriously, I took this photograph in Madison, Georgia when I was down there for work.  Madison has a nice little historic downtown area with some shops and restaurants where we had dinner.  I did a little exploring just north of the main downtown and found this little square that was partially under construction.  I left the construction part out of the picture because it was boring; they were just pouring some concrete or something and doing some landscaping.  I enjoyed the fountain and the evening sky though.  When the place is finished it will probably look pretty nice, but at this time, the part under construction was uninteresting.  As you can see from the photograph, it was a nice night.  The days down there were extremely hot, but it had cooled down enough to make it a comfortable evening to be outside taking pictures.  The only problem was the mosquitoes; I got back to the hotel with quite a few bites.  I think it was worth it though for the pictures I got that night.

This is another photograph I combined from two HDR photographs to get a wider perspective on the scene.  I first shot the fountain and the lower part of the sky, and then tilted my camera upwards slightly to capture more of the sky.  I really like square shaped photographs for a lot of subjects, so that was what I was going for when I took these.

I just bought another new piece of equipment for my camera, but more on that later...

Doing Some Excavating

Although nice to look at, I didn't want to only share a picture of me today.  This is a photograph I took of an excavator that was sitting at the side of a big hole in the ground across the street from my apartment.  Someone has been working on a seemingly small scale construction project in the public parking lot across the street for, what I would consider, an disproportionate amount of time.

It all started a few months ago when I came home and noticed a small portion of the parking lot partitioned with orange plastic construction fencing.  About a year ago some developer had a sign up saying the parking lot was the future home of some new condos (terrible idea), so I wondered if they were finally breaking ground on these.  I slowly began to wonder if they were breaking ground on anything, as the site sat idle for the next couple of months.  Strangely, although the site was cordoned off by the plastic fence, there was still a place for cars to enter, so it was just an annoying mild inconvenience to anyone who wanted to park in that lot.  During this time we had a pretty strong storm with strong winds which came along and blew almost all of the fence down.  Until some guy came back by and put it back up a few days later, the inconvenience was even smaller, as people could now park directly on the fallen fence.

Finally a few weeks ago I woke up to see some construction equipment being moved in, and within a few days part of the parking lot was gone.  These guys actually worked pretty quickly for the first two days of this phase, but left and didn't come back for another week or so.  They finally came back and dug a bit deeper and cleaned up the hole, and left it in the state I found it in for this photograph.  They've done some work since, but the scale of this project doesn't lead me to believe these are the stupid condos that were planned.

Technically, this photograph is a combination of nine photographs I took in succession to get this point of view.  I then combined them using some panorama software, and did some post-processing in Photoshop.  I like this picture because of the point of view and the subsequent distortion in the image.  It makes me think of a super wide fisheye lens, but not quite as extreme.

Regardless of what these bozos are building, the best part was every morning when the driver would start the day out right with a quick 360.

New Equipment!

As I alluded to in Slender-Snouted Crocodile, I recently bought a new piece of equipment; a vertical battery grip.  It's a pretty sweet little accessory for my camera.  It attaches to the bottom of my camera and has a shutter button and all of the other necessary buttons for me to control the exposure of my photographs while holding the camera in the portrait orientation.  It also holds two batteries which were included in my purchase.  When I bought it I figured it would be nice to have while shooting in portrait, but I hadn't expected it to be as much fun as I have found it to be.  Having this should encourage me to shoot vertically more often.  I don't regret this purchase for a second.

You can see the new grip at the bottom of my camera in this self-portrait I took while in Texas last week.

Mountain Rocks

As I mentioned in Lufkin Civic Center, I haven’t felt much like working on my artism recently, any further than taking pictures. Luckily, I have a tendency to process photos to a state that is almost finished, but not quite ready for public consumption. It’s a bad habit, but worked out well on this occasion.

This is another photograph from the spring ski trip to Colorado earlier this year. I've had it almost done for a while, and just needed to put a few finishing touches on it.

I did quite a bit of talking in the last post, so I'll keep this one short and let the photograph do the rest of the talking.

Lufkin Civic Center

I haven't felt much like working on photos recently; I've been taking quite a few, but I haven't been doing much past that.  It's easy for me to get into that habit; it's what I've done with my photos for a lot of the time I've been a photographer.  This website helps a lot though, because now I have an audience who expects to see more. Not to go all artist on you, but I need to be in the right mood to work on my artism, and I haven't been lately.  I did get into the mood for a while last weekend though and finished a few photos, and started a few others, so updates should be coming more frequently for a while, especially if I can get some time at home, which has been rare as of late.

I was in Texas last week, and of course brought my camera.  I’ve never been to Texas, aside from layovers in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport, so I was excited to get down here.  I heard southeast Texas could be home to some interesting people, but unfortunately, I didn’t meet any of these people.  We got done with our work early, because I'm an extremely efficient field worker, so I was a little worried I'd run out of free time for photography before I left.  Luckily, the nature of the work we were doing down there took me all over the area around Lufkin, Texas, which is in southeast Texas.  I was able to scope out a few places I wanted to shoot and then go directly to them when we were finished with the work we had to do on the last day.

This photograph, of the Lufkin Civic Center, was not on my original list.  We journeyed into the heart of Lufkin to find a location to host a future public meeting, and this was our first (and most beneficial) stop.  I went outside as the woman I was with worked out the details of renting some space, and grabbed my camera.  With an audience of an obese woman in her truck yelling at her young daughter who didn't want to go to daycare at the church across the street, I composed this photograph.  Boring building you say?  Maybe it’s boring to some, but there is something about this type of large concrete building that I really enjoy.  I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about this type of building I like.  Maybe it's the overall look of this solid, impregnable, prison like building that was designed and built to be a Civic Center.  Maybe it's the fact that it's built to last a long time, and solidly constructed, unlike so many of the crappy buildings I see built today.  Maybe it’s the sheer size of this one story building.  The inside of this place is awesome; my apartment has 20 foot ceilings, and they’re dwarfed by the height of the ceilings in this place.  Maybe it's all of those things.  Regardless, I like this building, and I think the photograph is pretty nice to look at also.

I'll keep the technicalities short on this one, but I did want to mention that in addition to being an HDR photograph, this is a composite of "three" pictures I took of the building in succession.  I say three in quotations because each of those three is an HDR image, so each one of the three is actually five.  I really like the field of view in this picture; it’s around 90 degrees from left to right, mimicking an ultra-wide angle lens.  It’s also a little distorted within that angle of view, which happened during the process of putting the scene together, which I like also.

Slender-Snouted Crocodile

Last night, instead of packing for my trip like I should have been, I was out playing with my camera and new accessory I got in the mail yesterday (more on that later).  I got some photos I really like and was busy processing them all evening.

This photograph, I did not take last night.  No, this photograph I took on my recent excursion to Africa.  No, that's a lie; I took this a few years ago while in Africa.  No, that's also a lie.  In reality I took this in the Africa section of the Kansas City Zoo.  I went there a few weeks ago with some friends.  I had never been to the Kansas City Zoo before that day, and although it was a pretty muggy day, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I've been to many a zoo in my day, but this one was definitely the most recent.  Seriously though, this zoo is pretty big; everything is very spread out, which means the animals have a lot of room to roam freely.  I didn't even see all of the zoo; we walked around Africa mostly, which has an abundance of interesting animals.  I definitely plan to go back though.  I have a number of other pictures from that day that I'll share later, but this one is of a Slender-Snouted Crocodile.

Upon researching what this thing is (I couldn't remember, aside from assuming it was some sort of crocodile), I found out that this guy's name is either Frank or Jesse.  Upon further research I learned that the Slender-Snouted Crocodile may not be a crocodile at all.  Recent DNA tests have indicated that the Crocodylus cataphractus (that is its scientific name) has less in common with the crocidile than was previously though, and it has been suggested its name be changed to Mecistops cataphractus!  I mean come on!  Although the jury is still out on science, one thing is for sure: like the alligator, these Slender-Snouted Crocodiles are so aggressive 'cause they got all them teeth but no toothbrush.

WSU Baseball

Last time I was in Wichita I had a little time to kill one afternoon, so I grabbed my camera and wandered down the block to Eck Stadium at Wichita State University.  I grew up just a block from this stadium and have watched countless games there.  In high school I even went to a few WSU baseball camps and played some games there.  They have a good baseball program historically, but I think their longtime coach has sort of lost it the last few years and the team is suffering as a consequence.

I wanted to try something a little different with this photograph.  Sometimes new perspectives don't work very well, but I like what I got with this one.  I figure the only way I can grow and improve my photography is by trying new things.

Vidalia Onions

I recently had the chance to travel to Georgia on business, and for part of the trip stayed in Vidalia, Georgia, birthplace of the Vidalia Onion. My hotel happened to be right next door to the Vidalia Onion Factory and Gift Shop, your one stop shop for all things onion. Before I go too far, let me explain that this "factory" is what I would call a southern factory, which in terms of the rest of the US, is more of a warehouse. Splitting hairs, I know, but I feel it necessary to be precise.

This was a very enjoyable trip, and having recently acquired an excellent travel bag for my camera, I brought it along. This photograph is (obviously) of the Vidalia Onion Factory. I learned a few things on this trip, the most notable being that people in southeast Georgia are some of the nicest, most sincere people I have ever encountered. I have examples to back these claims, so if you want to hear them, just ask.

While this photograph may not be one of my best technically, I wanted to share it on here. My hope is that my collection of photographs can be considered travel photography, so I wanted to share something from my travels. That's not to say I don't have more from this trip, so check back soon to see more from my Georgia trip; I found some pretty interesting places.

Black and White Flowers

I took this photograph quite a while ago in Wichita while I was home from college one summer.  As I was playing around with the post-processing I wondered how it would look in black and white.  As I converted it, the background magically disappeared and I loved the resulting image.  A few more adjustments and tweaks and I was done.  I took this photo outside in the bright mid-day sun, but you'd be hard pressed to know that from this photograph.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Georgetown Lake

I've been pretty busy lately, and traveling, so that's why there hasn't been an update for a little while.  I'm in Georgia right now, and finally have some downtime in the hotel to get a post or two ready to publish.  I've had a good time in southeast Georgia.  I learned that there are some great people down here.  I brought my camera along for the trip and got some good photos, so expect them sometime soon, along with more stories from my trip.

This photograph is another I took last spring in Georgetown, Colorado.  It is another view of the lake we could see when we looked off our balcony of the condo in which we stayed.  The stream seen with the fog also feeds into this lake.  As you can see, the lake is partially frozen, and it looks like a storm is rolling in, but it didn't storm, or even snow in Georgetown while we were there.

Calm Waters

Here is another photograph I took in Florida last summer.  I took this one in the evening near sundown, so the colors are a bit different than the last one I posted from Florida.  The water was extremely calm for pretty much the whole week we were out there.  Absolutely beautiful the whole time!

Don't miss the site announcement after the photo!



By popular demand, I have created a newsletter/subscription service so you can sign up to receive an email notification each time I update this site.  Sign up by following this Subscribe! link, or the one on the right side of the page!

Downtown Kansas City

Two weekends ago my dad and two of my cousins came to Kansas City for a visit.  On Saturday we went to the Liberty Memorial, which is home to The National World War I Museum.  I like going to Liberty Memorial, and have been there many times, but I had never gone through the museum until that day.  It was a very interesting place and I suggest you go there if you ever have the opportunity.  In addition to the museum, you can also go up in the Liberty Memorial tower.  This photo was taken from the top of the tower, looking north into downtown Kansas City, Missouri (where I live; you can see my building if you know which to look for).

This photo is composed of 5 exposures, and was hand held.  I normally like to use a tripod if I'm going to make an HDR photograph, but hand held was the only way I could do it that day.

Fog Rolls In

This photo is another one I took in Georgetown, Colorado last spring when we went skiing.  We had gotten back from a good day of skiing and my dad and I went and walked around the lake area outside of our condo.  It was already a cloudy day, and as a little rain began to fall we started to head back to the condo.  When we noticed some fog rolling in through the mountains, I quickly set up for a few more shots, and this was one of them.

It's hard to see in this photograph, but there is a guy upstream doing a little fishing.  I didn't see any fish in the stream, but maybe that was because he caught them all before they made it to where I was standing.  I would also note the lack of snow in these pictures.  There was no snow in Georgetown this spring, but there was snow at Loveland, where we skied.  A few areas up high on the mountain coming down from the top were bare, but other than that, the snow was pretty much perfect last spring.  It was also pretty warm, which would probably explain the lack of snow in Georgetown.

Crystal Clear Waters

A little over a year ago I took a trip to Florida with my brother and cousin.  We went to a place called Longboat Key, near Sarasota.  My brother and I went there a few times when we were younger with my dad and grandparents, and it was the same place my grandparents took my dad and aunts when they were kids!  My mom even stayed at the same place a few weeks before we went down there.  It's a great place; not crowded, and not overly developed.

This photo shows the typical day while we were there; sunny and hot.  Luckily, the water was great; clear and nearly the perfect temperature.  One really cool thing about this beach is that there is a sand bar about 20 feet into the ocean.  You walk into the water and after a short descent on rough ground, it gets shallow and sandy.  It's really cool being able to walk into the ocean and be a long way from the shore but still standing.