Happy Halloween!

Harvest Pumpkins

It's almost Halloween...these will soon be carved and lit.

Hello Fall

We took the kids to the pumpkin patch today. Happy fun times. You've got to enjoy these days while you can. I've heard the teenagers aren't quite as excited to go as my girls were today.

The personal blog will probably get the lion's share of overly cute kid pictures. I'll try to share some of the more fun happy fall pictures here.

Here's one I spotted in this huge sandbox filled with corn. Getting you in the mood for fall.

Fill the Frame: no peoples

My favorite shot of the summer.

When you hear the phrase, "Fill the Frame," I think this is what they mean. Thank Mr. Owl. You made me love photography again :)

Photos with peoples and raptors

The last shot, I did waffle back and forth about the blown out light, I do tend to agree with Astin about it being a little distracting. I like the capture from the perspective I think I got the bird and the girl looking like I hope I can get my people shots to look, just a bit blown out on the light in the background, although I don't think it makes it a horrible shot, just not, um, perfect.

This shot was at the same event, this time, no blown out spot, just a capture of a trainer with her bird. Again, it contains a people, and I liked how I captured them. I think in the future, all of my people shots will need to be with people holding birds of pray.

Using Light As a Background

I've really struggled photographing humans. Probably one of the biggest reasons I've never really pursued doing portraits in the past. Sure, I've succeed and taken some nice shots, but call it an irrational fear, but people suck. They aren't symetrical and they rarely for nice lines...well. I might just be afraid and that it.

This next shot was from our trip out to Oxbow Park I keep talking about. I dang near filled up a 4 GB card.

We took the kids to see the keepers of the zoo do a demo about birds of prey that were on exhibit here. When I saw this one at home, I got a nice smil in my heart. I took a picture of a human and I liked it!

I used the the bright light in the background to take care of the horrible background. I gotta say, the bird turned out pretty well too.

Second Chances

Back in September of 2007, I went to Oxbow Park in Byron, MN on a Photo Safari with Community Ed. If you go back to that set, I took a picture very similar to this one, but this time, the lighting was very much different. I've also changed how look through my lens.

Not sure I nailed it this time, but I do like second chances. Thoughts?

Americana Flag

This is another shot from our friends house taken July 4th.

Not sure what it was about this decoration they had, but I really enjoyed studying it.

I'm sure about a million of these are probably in circulation, but the hand crafted look is kinda cool.

This particular one has a nice weathered look.

Flowers are fun

I really need to figure out what kind of flowers these are, they are just fun to shoot.

I took this shot the weekend of the 4th of July at our friends house. As I've said, the Mrs of the house has quite the green thumb and one of my recurrent tasks for the weekend is to photograph her lovely flowers.

As shot, natural light, nothing fancy.

Back to the Arch of St. Louis

I'm still working my way through the summer of photography. I found this one in the photos I took in St. Louis of the Arch.

You can tell by the haze that it was nearing a billion degrees that weekend and the humidity was, um, a bit high.

Unfortunately, I don't get to St. Louis but once ever 40 years, so, unless that changes, I got what I got.

As usual, this is as shot, right out of the camera.