Hi everyone! I’m really enjoying the photo fair! It’s exciting to see so many excellent photos of great subjects posted by all of those who have participated.
You can click on all of my photos to get to a larger version. I highly recommend the click-thru on all of these images, if your bandwidth can handle it. I’m still unhappy with some of the larger online copies of my photos as they definitely lose crispness as compared to a full-size print….
I hope you enjoy mine at least half as much as I’ve enjoyed everyone else’s!
First up, a FROG from my recent trip to Michigan, Dedicated to Booman and Susanhu and all my fellow Trib-beters!:
Next up, my furry little friend Cosmo says “Got milk?”:
Here’s two of my bird photos taken in a local State Park. The first is an Egret in flight, the second is a female Summer Tanager with purple stain on her beak from pokeweed berries:
I went on a trip to southern Japan a couple of years ago and it made a real and lasting impression on me. These are a few of the photos I brought back:
First, from the International Peace Park in Hiroshima, the “atomic dome” – the remnants of one of the few buildings left standing near ground zero of the blast from the “Little Boy” atom bomb:
“The Lawyer” a huge wooden statue in the Todaiji (“Great Eastern Temple”) in Nara:
Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) in Kyoto:
Zen gardener’s tools at Nanzenji in Kyoto:
Next up, a couple of photos from the San Diego Zoo. The first is the female panda and the second is a photo of a Gibbon (I think):
Next up, a photo I made in the Rocky Mountain National Park of rocks and flowing water in a stream just off of one of the main roads through the park:
And, last but not least in my heart, a snapshot of the tuba player in a sidewalk jazz band in Jackson Square in New Orleans in the winter of 2002:
Hope you like them! They are a small and UN-representative sample of my work. These are all digital photos. Some were taken with a small HP PhotoSmart camera and some were taken with a Nikon D-100 with assorted lenses. I mainly use B&W 35mm film in a Nikon EL-2 for my “real” photos, but I’ve been crossing over to digital for my travel photos and snapshots. I love PhotoShop, and do some extensive image manipulation when I have a good idea, but these examples are mainly untouched other than a few minor manipulations like sharpening and contrast adjustment.
Very nice work, Blueneck. My fave is the tuba player – heck with the weather, I’m playing my music! I had been planning a visit to NO this winter, and am keeping this photo as a souvenir of a trip not taken.
This photo fair is a real trip for me.
Thanks Alice. You are welcome to share my memory. I hope you can make that trip to NO sometime in the not too distant future and that our tuba player is alive and well and will be there for you, too.
Wonderful! Thanks, Blueneck. (I’m running out of superlatives. If you had posted earlier I’d have had more to say, lol.)
Yes, I know what you mean! The number of possible superlatives are limited with respect to the huge amount of good work I’ve seen from the others who are participating.
Gosh, you folks here are making it increasingly hard to choose anyone pix that is best…I love your pictures….would love the pogota one..
Glad you like it. It is hard to take credit for a good photo that one takes of such a location, as the scene itself is so incredibly well arranged and maintained. The centuries of deep thought associated with the arrangement of the temples and their surroundings in Japan are simply amazing.
Just wow. That egret – perfect.
And Kinkakuji, and the gibbon (?), and milkmouth Cosmo, and . . . .
Wonderful.
Of course, my sentimental fave is “got milk?” because of my attachment to the now four month old furry little fella!
Wow!! You and I have stood the same ground, blueneck!! I have a picture of the Golden Pavilion that look almost EXACTLY the same as the one you have here — taken from the same vantage! Also, the Nara pic looks very familiar! When you were there, were they still selling tiles to write on to become part of the roof?
I bought and wrote on one in 1991….I love Japan.
I love Japan, too! And, as I said above, it’s hard to take credit for any decent photo of that landscape (Kinkakuji), as it is all so well arranged that every angle and framing is picturesque due to the well thought out and executed beauty of the whole area.
And, no, the temple in Nara was not still doing the roof tile thing. I think they probably do that every few decades or even centuries! You were lucky to be there during a renovation.
I onced watch a passing tuba player stop by and join in jamming with a bagpiper at an Ohio community street festival. It gave a nice punchy bottom end to the soprano and midrange sound of the pipes–very musical indeed.
Great collection here, and the Hiroshima memorial is very sobering no matter where I see it. I read the book _Hiroshima_ as a boy in the early Cold War 60’s before the anti-war movement took off over Vietnam. It reminds me that in the era of weapons testing, aerospace engineer Dad would keep us indoors if there was rain in the days following a test out west.
Awesome. I would have loved to hear that! Tuba and bagpipes, what a sound that must be…
I went to Japan to visit a friend, but I have always known that if I made it to Japan that I must go to Hiroshima. I, too, read Hersey’s “Hiroshima” at a young age and it really impressed me. The place made quite an impression in person and I highly recommend the pilgrimage to everyone.
I loved the Atomic Dome one, until I opened up the Lawyer, then I saw the Pagoda…decisions, decisions…why’d you have to make it so hard???
I choose the Egret photo!
Thanks for your comments, fabooj. With all the good work showing up at the fair it really is hard to find favorites. I just hope you’ve enjoyed a few of mine.
I took that photo of the egret at a State Park that is about fifteen minutes from my house. The park is being threatened by developers and probably won’t survive the next five years. I feel badly for the birds and other creatures that will be displaced and I’ve spent a lot of time there over the past two years photographing the wildlife.
I think I know the spot of the stream photo – I spent a good part of a morning precariously perched on rocks trying to capture the scene – didn’t get much that turned out very well – but enjoyed myself and learned quite a bit about my camera playing around.
We’re planning to go back to RMNP next summer and I’ve already blocked out a day to wander my way up that stream while other’s go shopping or to ranger presentations.
I hope you get the chance to wander. I am one of those types, also. I would rather explore a samll stream on my own than follow the hordes of autos through the park to the more “Picturesque” locations, or follow a ranger and crowd over the regular pathways.
I like this photo because I think the composition works. It’s always difficult to capture the essence of any stream, and I can’t say as though any of the attempts I made to do so at this stream were successful. Instead, I ended up trying to choose the detail in this stream that represents all streams to me. It was essentially an exercise in “still life” type work to try to find the angle and the framing that worked best. Only, unlike the proverbial “basket of fruit” still life, I was unable to manipulate the objects.