Crab Boy - Day 304

I love that the kids just totally ignore me when I grab the camera and start taking pictures.  The autofocus on this lens sucks.  It is very slow and I don't think that it does a very good job.  But it was a cheap lens that gets me an f-stop of 1.8, which is extremely nice.  This was taken without a flash, at night.  I find that just amazing.

Light Fixture - day 303

A Golden Eagle? - Day 302

Today I thought to myself - I really should take my 70-200 zoom lens.  I should just put it on my camera and confine myself to ONLY taking zoom pictures today.  But then I said, nah, I never need my zoom lens, so I just won't bother.  So, as we were driving today, first thing we saw were two golden eagles sunning them selves.  Both had their wings spread, but one had them very spread apart.  I stopped the car and kicked myself for not bringing the zoom lens.  By the time I got the camera out and walked to the bridge, the eagle that had its wings spread out a lot had closed up shop.  This was the best shot that I could get.  I will put the original and the cropped versions.

Self Portait - Day 301

This was supposed to be a picture of our new wood stove, but the lens focused on me instead, so the stove turned out blurry.  I took a bunch of other pictures with the stove in focus and me blurry, but I am vain (he he).  The pictures with the in focus stove were boring.  This was at least somewhat interesting.

Another Dragonfly - Day 300

I tried something different today.  I did the "watercolor" filter in Photoshop, just to see what it does.  Take a look at a close up of this picture.  I think that it is pretty cool.  Not that I would do this everyday, but it is my first time playing with photoshop....  so you have to pretend that I am a little kid.  Oooo... so cool!  As a side note, I made this picture my background on my desktop computer at work and it looks fantastic extra large.

More Antarctic Stuff - Day 299

Here is more stuff that has to be shipped to the Antarctic.  You can see battery boxes and batteries and crates and stuff.  A lot of stuff is going!  The "Do Not Freeze" boxes are going to be filled with batteries, which are all in the boxes to the lower right.  We don't want them to freeze because they will significantly drain the batteries.  When the people who are deploying the system get down there, the batteries will be warm and fully charged, so they can test the system.  The solar panels will be hooked up to the batteries almost immediately, so they can be charged as they lose capacity due to getting cold.  Fun stuff!

 

Sunset - Day 298

I took a bunch of pictures, but none of them really turned out great.  This is probably the best one of the night.

Queen Anne's Lace - Day 297

Lightning - Day 296

I took 147 pictures from my driveway tonight.  Most of them on 5 second exposure, just hoping to get something.  Here is what I got:

Some things made of play-doh - Day 295

CrabGirl made these.  I don't know what they are, but you can probably figure it out.  Sorry that the pictures are so lame.....

Cap'n Frosty - Day 294

What will $100,000 buy you? - Day 293

Some electronics that will work really well in the Antarctic.

Contrails - Day 292

This is an interesting effect that you don't see very often at all.  There is a low cloud level, with wispy clouds that you can see through, and contrails above.  The contrails cast a shadow on the lower clouds, so it looks like there is double contrail.

The Circle of Life - Day 291

Snake gets Frog.  Very sad.  Frog makes pathetic noises when its leg is in a snake's mouth.  CrabGirl can't stand it.  Dad has to rescue frog, who hops off into the weeds, followed by very hungry snake.  To be continued....  I think that the snakes have found nirvana near our "fish" (i.e., frog) pond.  Who knows, we may have more snakes than frogs soon.

On the Beach -Day 290

We went to a beach party today.  The sun was high in the sky on the other side of the lake, so it made for some nice views, but it was hard to photograph people in the water.  Here are a couple of shots that I took:

This is of CrabBoy, emerging from the water.  I like it because it reminds me of Rambo jumping up out of a river with a huge machine gun blazing away.  CrabBoy = Rambo.

Next is a picture of the sky and lake and such.  I think that this one is pretty nice, but I have to brighten it a bit in order to not have the scene be a little dark.

Old Reliable - Day 289

Yet another flower.  Sorry.  I tried something a bit different this time, though.

What Are You Looking At? - Day 288

On the Way Home - Day 287

This is from the window of the airplane.  I framed it with the window, but it didn't look so good.

Capitol and American Indian - Day 285

Today during a break, I walked back to where I took the pictures last night to see if I could get a better picture during the day.  I am not sure if it is as dramatic, since the night-time pictures are so nice, but it is significantly less blurry and has a LOT of detail.

I also walked by the American Indian Museum (it may have been called the Native American Museum or something like this), and could not help but to snap a few pictures.  The family that was walking up to the museum with me had a boy and a girl who were arguing about who called the "Black Perdidal" first.  It made me laugh out loud.

So - the Capitol

And the American Indian Museum:

Capitol - Day 285

Today I started using the RAW picture format.  I can no believe what a difference it makes.  When you compare the jpg and the raw picture, they are, at times, completely different!  You can actually tell in a raw picture when you have camera jitter.  I had never been able to tell before!  It is so obvious now!  Everything is so clearly defined!  I can't believe I ever shot in jpg only!

I have a few pictures that were quite nice.  I took some shots out of the airplane window of some clouds and the ground and such that were pretty good.  When I got to my hotel, I took a walk to the Mall and took some pictures of the Capitol Building.  I think that this is probably the best shot (especially in raw format!)  I am a bit disappointed in it, since I would really, really, really have liked to use some sort of tripod, but I didn't have anything.  So, I set it on the bench and held it as still as I could.  I think that there was little jitter, considering that the shutter was open for 0.8 seconds.

Amphibians - Day 284

We did a fair bit of pond work today, and so were treated to many frogs and some salamanders.  Here are two.  You can see my reflection in the frog's eye.  I wish that it was a tad bit more in focus.  I also think that I should start playing around with raw format pictures, instead of jpegs.  Hmmm....

Dragonfly - Day 283

You really have to download the larger image and take a look at the eyes and hair on the legs and such.  It it one of the only focused pictures.

Recovery - Day 282

The balloon landed in a tree the day previous.  So, we had to go get it this day, since we didn't have the equipment to recover it.  A trek through fields and forest.  We needed a chainsaw to get it down.

Preparing for Launch - Day 281

We launched yet another balloon this day.  Here are the students preparing for the launch:

Butterfly - Day 280

I wanted to take a better picture, but while I was coming back outside, after swapping extension lenses, the butterfly flew away.  How sad.  So, here is the, not perfect, picture:

Little Bunny Foo Foo - Day 279

Yellow Dog really wanted to "meet" this bunny:

Fireworks - Day 278

You really can't pass up Forth of July without fireworks, right?  I have never taken pictures of fireworks, so I wasn't really sure how it was going to turn out.  Last night we got home around 9:30 from a weekend of visiting family.  We were all pretty tired and didn't really want to drive anywhere.  Out neighbors do big time fireworks, so we just went over there.  Here are a few pictures from the, I am sure, perfectly legal fireworks from last night:

I am not sure if you really care how I took the pictures or not, but I will tell you anyways.  I ended up using my 18-55mm zoom lens, which I didn't really want to use, since the f-stop is only down to about 5.6.  So, almost all of these are with 18mm, f5.6.  I took 5 second exposures for most of the pictures.  Some I did 1-2 second, but it is amazing how much diversity there is in the brightness of the fireworks.  After an extremely bright set, I would set it down to 1 second, and the next set would be much more dim, so I would go back up, grrrr. I took a few with the repeat on the camera, but couldn't figure out how to remove the 10 second delay before it started taking the 10 pictures.  Hmmmm, maybe I should read the manual, eh?  For about 1/2 the pictures, I put on a 2 second delay and 5 second exposure, so when the firework launched, I hit the button.  For most of the others I had no delay and just kept hitting the button over and over and over again.  This worked pretty well.  I think the only thing that I will change for next year is to get a wider aperture lens with a little better light sensitivity.  Just need more money.

Second Cousins Twice Removed - Day 277

What are the kids of your cousins?  What is the relationship between the kids of your cousins and your kids?  I don't really know.  Here are a couple of my wife's cousin's kids:

Lighthouse - Day 276

Here is a few minutes later:

Sailboat - Day 275

This is actually from the next day.  I took a bunch of pictures this day, but they were all fails.  I tried to get pictures of fireflies.  I am not quite sure how to do this yet...  So, I took a huge number of pictures the next day, and here is one:

A Flowerish Type of Thing - Day 274

I have no idea what this thing is.  I was taking a picture of lots and lots of flowers and stuff in the neighbor's yard when I snapped a shot of this.

Here is a bonus picture for the day, since you can never have too many flowers, eh?

Lily Pads - Day 273

I had to drop CrabBoy here every day this week, so I thought I would grab the camera and take a picture of all of the lily pads.

Blah - Day 272