Highway Divider

This is another one from my day at the downtown Kansas City airport air show.  I took this near the end of the day as I was walking home across the bridge from the other side of the Missouri River.  This photo turned out pretty close to what I had envisioned when I took the picture. The only thing I would really like different would be a wider view.  I took this at 18mm, the widest my widest lens will go; I’d like to see this at 10mm and see how it looks.  A super wide angle lens is at the top of my wish list, but lenses aren’t cheap; especially super wide lenses.  In my mind though, I already have so many pictures I want to take with a super wide lens.

Colorado View

This was the view we had from our condo in Georgetown, Colorado last spring when I went skiing with my Dad and Brother.  The lake and mountains were very pretty, and I got a number of pictures I liked in the area.  We have stayed in Georgetown for many years, but we’ve never stayed in these condos or even near the lake before this year.

Although I did get some nice photos from Georgetown, I didn’t get any pictures while skiing.  For one, I’m a little nervous about taking my DSLR up the mountain while I’m skiing, as there is a greater possibility of falling while on skis with a camera than there is while just walking around with a camera.  I also tend to focus more on skiing, and less on taking pictures when I'm on the mountain.  One of these days though, I’ll work up the nerve and spend an afternoon on the mountain with my camera, taking it easy and taking photos.

Highway 169

Sorry for the delay in updating the website; I've had other things going on lately so I've been busy and haven't made much time to get any photos ready to post.  Worry not though, I've got more for you, so keep checking back!

I took this photograph last summer during the air show at the downtown Kansas City airport.  This is a bridge that lets US Highway 169 cross the Missouri River just north of downtown.  Normally it wouldn’t be safe and probably wouldn’t be legal for pedestrians to be on this bridge, but the entire highway was closed to let buses drive on half, and to let spectators walk on the other.

I enjoy the architectural design of this bridge in this picture, as well as the angles created by composing the picture like I did.

Old, But Good

Here's an old one, but a good one. I took this in 2004 while in college with my trusty old Canon Powershot A70. A number of my friends really like this photo and one even demanded that I give it to him so he could make a print. He has had it on display ever since. Every time I see it, it makes me feel pretty good! I even finally got around to getting a print for myself earlier this year.




I just realized that my posts were being formatted with only one space after periods and other sentence ending punctuation. I apologize for this, and hope you all haven't been judging me for the single space after the end of my sentences. Now that I have found the error all subsequent posts should be correct. Two spaces is how I roll. One space just isn't right.

One More Arch

OK, one more of the Arch from last summer's trip to St. Louis. Actually, this probably won't be the last you see of the Arch on here.

I like this picture because I get a sense of how big the Arch is. An architectural wonder!

Average Tree

Here is an average tree. There is nothing particularly special about this tree, but this was the tree I was looking for. And it gave me a little story, which is half of the fun.

As I mentioned in Quick Turnaround, I decided last Saturday to head out to Shawnee Mission Park, which is a large park on the Kansas side of the border. After driving around inside the park for a little seeing what the place had to offer, I found a nice spot that was relatively less crowded than the rest of the park. I grabbed my camera and tripod and hiked off into a grassy area off the beaten path. I took a few pictures here and there and then sat down in the shadow of this tree to get my tripod and camera all set up. After taking the photographs for this picture I looked down to see a tick crawling up my jeans!

In case you don't know; I hate ticks with a passion. Although it's been found that a protein in deer tick saliva interferes with the ability of the AIDS virus to attach to immune cells, and the same protein may help treat immune disorders like asthma and multiple sclerosis, I still hate ticks; they just bug me (Haa! Sorry..).

Anyway, I quickly jumped up and brushed the little guy off, only to see one or two others making their way up my pants in similar fashion. Quickly brushing them off, I began searching my legs for any more of the little buggers. Finding a few more, and what appeared to be a baby tick, or some sort of underdeveloped tick, I brushed them off, grabbed my camera and retreated to the concrete path to regroup. I did my best to search the rest of my clothes for ticks, and luckily my jeans were light colored, and I had a white t-shirt on, so it wasn't too hard. Finding no more I headed back to my car with my next destination in mind.

I'm not afraid of ticks by any means, and I've had many bites, so I can remove and dispatch them with ease. This was an ambush though and I was caught off guard. I would like to go back though; there were some nice hiking trails into the woods that I'd like to explore sometime. I also saw a number of deer while I was out there, just wandering around.

Lesson learned: Use my industrial strength tick spray (the stuff I use for work when I do fieldwork) on my clothes before I go to the park again.

Even though this is just an average tree you could see just about anywhere, I like this photo, and it gives me something to show for my battle with the ticks that day.



In other news, I took 3rd place in my category in the art show at work. Should have placed higher, but I lost to another HDR photo that was physically bigger than mine, and simply overpowered mine. There were numerous technical problems with his, but they didn't matter because it was big (this has been a developing trend with this art show). The thing that was in second place is pretty indescribable. Seems to be something created in Photoshop, but I'm not really sure what it was other than that.

Old Courthouse

Here is another photo from last summer's trip to St. Louis. The whole group of us were walking to the stadium from the Arch and I stopped to take a few photos of this building. I had never really though about what exactly this building was until now. Turns out it is the Old St. Louis County Courthouse. The dome was built during the Civil War, although the actual courthouse building was built before this. The Old Courthouse was actually the tallest building in St. Louis until 1896; hard to believe with all of the buildings towering over it today. It was relieved of its duties as a courthouse in 1930 when the Civil Courts Building was built and was abandoned for a few years until it was slowly renovated and turned into a monument.

Anyway, there was your history lesson for the day, and here is my photograph!