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.

Ice Formations

Yesterday the High never got above 19 degrees and then got down to 4 at night. The water around here was unfrozen prior to that. These interesting little ice formations formed on top of the ice and I thought they looked pretty cool so I took the picture. It's been a while since I've been out taking pictures because things have been so busy at work. It was nice to get out and I wish I could do it more often.

Fall Part 3

Continuing on my autumn theme, here is a fall photo I took back when we lived in Utah. Definitely one of my favorites. I think this was the first time I went up into the mountains to take pictures with my very first digital camera, a Toshiba PDR-60. It was a good first camera but crappy by today's standards. But with scenes like this you don't need to do much but point and click.

Fall Part 2

Here's another picture from the other day at the lake near our house. I really like the way this is "framed" by the shadowed vegetation closer to me. I had to hike through some forest, dodging snakes, spiders and scorpions to get here (ok, not really, but it sounded cool). The relatively clear water with the reflection is a plus too.

Fall is Here

We are getting near peak colors for this fall here in Illinois and so I've been going out the past couple of days. This is probably the best one I've taken (in my opinion), but I will be posting several over the next couple of days. So if you disagree let me know.

More Lightning

This thunderstorm season had pretty much been a bust for me as there was a serious lack of good night-time thunderstorms. This past weekend we had a bunch of severe weather break out, which produced some pretty good storms. This picture was taken during the tail end of the storms and I LOVE it. Lightning is probably my favorite photographing subject, it's easy enough to get (by leaving the shutter open), but it is difficult to capture well. I probably take 50 pictures for every one that turns out good, but when it turns out there is definitely a sense of satisfaction.

Fire

I was out burning our trash the other night and thought it would make a cool picture. So I went in and got my equipment and started taking pictures. Unfortunately most did not turn out too good. There is a fine line between the shutter speed needed to make the flames appear sharp and having enough light (even with the aperture as open as it will go) to show the flames well. A few turned out good and I've posted the best one here.

Cat in the Box

This is our cat Cali after a night of hunting. She and her mother are always sleeping in the flower boxes outside of our front windows, as she is here. I have never been that good at portrait pictures, but I think this one is pretty good.

Cool Sunrise

This was the sunrise on August 21 in front of our house. I have a lot of sunset pictures, but not too many sunrise ones. That's because I hate mornings, but now that school has started again, I am forced to get up to get the kids ready. On this morning I am happy that I was up. I did not use any filters nor did I alter this photo in photoshop. This is what it looked like and I don't think I have ever seen a orangish red fog before.

Mothra Lives!

This was a large moth that my wife found sitting on the side of our house. I don't know what kind it is but I had to take a picture as I don't see giant moths every day. I don't necessarily like the background of the house, but like the way the moth turned out. It was a little bigger than the size of my palm.

Rainbow

This picture was an attempt by me to produce a cool picture. I figured the rainbow would be framed well between the fork in the tree. Only problem is that it is difficult to see the rainbow well (at least for me, though I do have trouble seeing light reds). I tried playing with the picture in photostudio and decided after all my tricks the original was the best one.

Off the Coast of Belize

This picture was taken off the coast of Belize. Nothing spectacular in it, but I think it's a good picture. I have read a lot of photography books/magazines and they all talk about the "1/3" rule. I usually forget about that rule but sometimes remember like I did in this one and in this case I really think it makes this picture work. Just enough ocean and the bigger sky space allows for a good look at some nice cloud formations and gives the picture a lot of depth.

Tropical Sunset

This was the sunset on the last day of our cruise. It was also taken right after Yin and I renewed our wedding vows. It was a beautiful sunset and hopefully a good omen for some great years to come.

Mayan Temple

This is a picture of a Mayan temple taken at the Chacchoben Mayan site near Costa Maya Mexico. Yin and I visited the site during our cruise in April. Pretty neat stuff, this temple is actually the second outermost temple as each ruler would build a new temple on top of the previous rulers temple. I think that our guide said that there were two layers underneath this one. At the top of this temple was a notch that marked the southern and northernmost progress of the sun which they used to calebrate their calender that we were told was much more precise than the one we currently use today since it was based on a 52 year cycle.

Distant Storm

I finally get to post again. Well, anyone who looks at this regularly or periodically will quickly tire of seeing my weather pictures, but it is my passion and they will keep coming. This was a pretty big thunderstorm that I saw building in the east close to sunset. The only thing I didn't like about this storm is that it wasn't directly overhead.

Caught in the Act

Since it's getting close to Easter, I figured I'd include this picture. This is our dog Worf and the picture was taken several Easters ago. I came downstairs one night and found Worf exactly as he is seen here. Apparently he was trying to get away with stealing some of the kids Easter candy and thought he could do it without anyone being the wiser. He forgot to factor in the fact that his head was just long enough to wedge it into the basket, dooming him to the scene you see here.

Goodbye Winter

Since winter is pretty much over, I wanted to post one more wintry picture. This is a picture from an ice storm in North Carolina. As you can see the ice was pretty thick and caused some pretty massive power outages. Our apartment was among one of the last places to have power restored 8 days later.

Red Moon

Ok, nothing spectacular about this one. I just think it's a cool picture of the moon. I was surprised at the detail that my camera was able to get as well.

Crepuscular Rays

I'm continuing my theme of cloud-like pictures today. This picture was taken at our house in Utah. Just a nice picture of sun rays filtering through the clouds.