Thunderstorm Drought

This was a bad year for photographing lightning. Most storms occurred during the day. In fact this is the best I was able to get this year. The storm was actually too far to the north to get any actual lightning. It did prompt a tornado warning where it hit though I'm not sure if it actually produced anything.

Lake Fog

This was an attempt to take a cool picture of something barely visible in the fog. Unfortunately it was much more impressive in my mind. I did want to post it to show how foggy it was the same day that I took my previous fall color pictures. In case you're wondering, it's a "Slow Wake" buoy near the boat ramp.

Final Fall Colors for 2007

This will be the last of my 2007 fall foliage pictures. This one was taken on the same day as the last one. All in all it turned out to be a pretty good year for observing fall colors, at least locally. It has been a strange one too though, there are still many places around here where the trees are still changing.

Another Fall Picture

This picture was taken on my last day out in the field this year (Hooray!) which was around the middle of October. The day started off with so much morning lake fog that we couldn't see where we were going, but as you can see it quickly burned off to reveal some brilliant fall colors.

Fall 2007

The next few picture will be from the fall colors around my house, which turned out to be much better than what we saw in Missouri or Arkansas. This picture represents the first time we were out on the lake and started to see some color. It was about the only color I saw this time out, which I thought was surprising given how deeply red it is.

Bryophytes

This will be the last of my Ozark Mountain trip pictures (unless I go on another picture taking drought and start posting old stuff). It's a little different than the other grand scale pictures I took on the trip. This is a macro shot of a one of the particularly robust patches of moss that we saw along the trail. I recognized the stuff from my very first biology course I took my freshman year of college. I am always interested in taking pictures of things that most other people might not be interested in, but I always feel like a fool doing it especially when other people see me doing it. I tried to take this picture quickly as a group of people were coming up the trail behind us, but they saw me anyway and were probably thinking I was crazy. Oh well, if they did I suppose they weren't too far off the mark. I did a quick Google image search to make sure I was right about what this moss was, and I must say that I think my image is better than anything else I saw on the web.

Quarry

Elephant Rock State Park used to be a quarry. This, of course, would be the pit where they did all their mining. I thought it made for a good picture with the red trees on either side of it. I kind of wish it had been sunny though and that the reflections would be more than just shadows.

Elephant Rock

This picture comes from Elephant Rock State Park in Missouri. The park is littered with these large boulders which the kids had a lot of fun climbing on and around. I'm told that the views of the surrounding mountains is great from this location, unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy.

A little Color

One of the goals of our trip was to see some fall colors. For the most part it was too early for that, but we did get to see a little, particularly while we were in Missouri. This picture was taken on a hike that my family has labeled as "the death hike" even though no one was lost, hurt, or damaged in any way.

NOTE: As the picture indicates I have become paranoid and cynical in my growing old age and even though I have little worth stealing I will be adding my copyrights to my images now just in case. Plus I just learned how to do it and it makes me feel important.

Pedestal Rock

As the title suggests, this picture is one of the many rock formations that can be found on the Pedestal Rock trail in Northern Arkansas. My middle daughter loved this trail as she was constantly trying to see how close to the edge of the cliff she could get before getting yelled at.

Ozark Mountains

I finally have some new pictures to publish! We went on a trip to the Ozark Mountains this past weekend, in part to see the fall colors. We were too early for that, but I was impressed with the views offered by this area that I never really thought too much about in terms of areas in the US with mountains. While not extremely tall, the formations reminded me a lot of some of the areas I've been in southern Utah, but with trees. I'll be publishing more from this trip in the next few weeks. If you're ever thinking about visiting this area of the country, I'd recommend that you do.

Lit up like the fourth of JULY!

My lack of posting shows quite clearly that I was only using my camera being broken as an excuse, the truth is that I am a slacker. I just keep forgetting my camera when I go out, and it has lead to a couple of missed opportunities. But tonight, I actually did remember and decided to try my hand at taking pictures of fireworks. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, so much so that I am breaking with tradition and posting two pictures. Happy 4th of July!

Cool Flower

We went to my in-laws this Memorial Day weekend and my youngest daughter picked a flower for my wife. I hadn't really ever seen anything like it and thought it would make a good picture. So here is a flower from that plant. Not sure what it is, but it has some very vibrant colors.

Toad

I got my camera back finally on Monday, but have been too busy to really go out an use it until today. So out I headed today to find something to take a picture of, but there was pretty much nothing. No flowers, no interesting sunsets or scenery. The best I could come up with was this picture of a toad that I almost stepped on while I was looking for something to take a picture of. Anyway, I did like the detail my camera was able to get, and the pixel that had been burned out didn't show up either, so I'm happy.

Thank You Nikon!

I finally sent my camera in for repair last week. I had been dragging my feet mainly because I am lazy, but also because I knew it was going to be more money than I wanted to spend. However, I got a letter back from Nikon today telling me that they fixed it for FREE, some kind of "good will repair" or something like that. It's on it's way back to me now and I am very appreciative of Nikon.

Water

Not a day goes by that I don't think to myself that I have to send my camera in for repair and not a day goes by where I'm too lazy to do it. Oh well, guess I have to keep rummaging through my older pictures to find something to put on here. This one was taken in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, it was one of my first attempts at a longer exposure to create that blurred water effect.

Washington Monument

Camera's still broken, so I'm still reduced to posting old pictures. This is a picture I took on a family outing in Washington D.C. a few years back. I've always liked this picture, though I'm not entirely sure why.

Penguins

Ok, I'm continuing my bird theme, plus it's cold out and penguins symbolize cold pretty good. Of course it was much colder when I took this picture off the coast of Antarctica, during my expedition to catalogue species of the southern hemisphere. Well, maybe that didn't exactly happen and these penguins are actually from the St. Louis zoo, but I'm a little drunk so I don't really care.

Bird Reflection

It's been awhile. Unfortuantely for me, my camera broke and I have yet to get it fixed. I was tired of looking at the ice picture though and decided to put up an older picture. This is a picture from Christmas vacation in 2003. It always seems hard to get good wildlife pictures without a telephoto lens, but I was lucky enough to get close enough to this seagull to snap this one.