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.

Above the Clouds

If you've seen all of my pictures, no doubt you can tell I'm a big fan of cloud pictures. It comes from my love of weather. This picture is kind of cool since it was taken from a jet and is in between two cloud layers near sunset. I really like how the cumulus clouds in the lower cloud deck create their own shadow on the smoother clouds beside them.

Sunset Fixer-upper

Here's another one of my favorite sunset pictures. Unfortunately, it was up at my in-laws house where there is a lot of development going on. So right in the middle of the picture was a large street light. I have cloned most of it out, but I didn't want to try and do it where a tree is in the background, so part of it remains. Ignoring that, the sun and clouds are in a perfect position to make this picture come to life.

Hilton Head Beach

This is another picture of one of my kids proving that I have no convictions (but you can't see her so again it's ok). Anyway this was taken on a family vacation to Hilton Head Beach in South Carolina. I like the silhouette of my daughter against the setting sun. It also depicts a typical kid act of picking up shells along the beach.

Setting Sun

Everyone has sunset shots and I'm no different. I like that the sun in this picture is fairly well defined and the phone lines in the distance add a little extra, at least for me.

Fun in the Leaves

I don't like to post pictures of my children on the internet, but in this case I figured it's ok since this picture is 5 years old and she looks nothing like this any more. I love this picture of my second, I like the lighting from the late-day sun. I also think it does a good job of capturing her personality with that big smile and carefree attitude.

Bryce Canyon

Ok, things were hectic and I didn't get a chance to finish my St. Patrick's Day pictures, but it's over and I'm moving on. This is a picture of my favorite national park in Utah. I know Nativeminnow grew up near here and has told me he thinks it's just a touristy place, but I think it is absolutely amazing. In fact, this was the last place we visited before we moved from Utah because I told Yin I had to see it one more time. Of course, it was freezing cold, cloudy and rainy the whole time. However, when the clouds weren't obstructing our view, it gave me some incredible shots like this one where the low clouds were drifting into the valleys shown here.

More Irish Hills

This is close to the site where my wife and I are in another picture I posted on here. This one just has the hills and stream though. Ireland was just a great place to visit and offered so many nice things to look at like this scene here.

Irish Landscapes

Well our computer wasn't working well yesterday so I didn't get to post a picture. So today, I'm posting two. Both are Irish landscape pictures that I really enjoy. The top picture was taken as we were driving between points. At the base of the mountains shown here is Lough Doo. The lower picture is of the Irish countryside in what is known as "The Burrens". It is so named because of the numerous hills in the area where the top is composed of rock with large cracks in them. One of these can be seen in this picture in the distance on the left hand side. I think both pictures do a great job of showing why green is often associated with Ireland.

Stone Circle

As I was looking through the 600+ pictures I took while in Ireland I realized that there are far too many cool ones to post in this short week. Oh well, I've decided today to go with something that is more early Irish. This is the Dromberg Stone Circle located in the Southwestern part of the country. I really liked going to these types of stone work creations. Maybe it's because these ancient people thought it so important to move these large stones great distances and arrange them in circles or tombs or whatever...I would like to know more about why.

Muiredach's Cross

We visited lots of old monasteries and cemeteries on our trip to Ireland, this one called Monasterboice is supposably one of the earliest Christian ones founded sometime around 500 AD. This particular cross is one of the best preserved dating back to around 923 AD. It is amazing that these monuments can stand up to all the wet weather that Ireland is known for. Fittingly, this was the coldest and wettest day of our trip. I think it stayed in the 50's and rained all day long (and it was late June!).

Blarney Castle

As the title implies, this is Blarney Castle site of the famous Blarney Stone. It is located in County Cork in the southern part of the country. This is the county that Yin's ancestry is from. There are many old castles in Ireland, too many to post in this week, but I may get around to it eventually. The funny thing is that some of them though run down can be found out in the middle of some farm field, much like you might see an old worn down silo here in the US. This is one of the better preserved and more impressive ones in Ireland though. And of course this post would not be complete without a picture of Yin kissing the Blarney Stone.

Cliffs of Moher

It is officially 1 week until St. Patrick's Day, so I will be posting pictures from Ireland until then. Unfortunately, this site reduces the pictures size pretty small and a lot of my favorites are panoramics. This is a picture of the Cliffs of Moher in the western part of the country. I once thought I would make a big print of this and hang it on my wall, but when I posted this picture in a photo contest, one of the critics pointed out that there is too much curvature in the distance. Dammit, he was right and it's bugged me ever since. Still it was an incredible place to see and not even this picture of it can make it look bad.

Thunderstorm Season

I've been away at a meeting the last several days but now that I'm back I see that I need to start posting again. This is my other favorite lightning picture and I'm posting it in honor of the start of the severe weather season here in Illinois. We've had our first bought the last two days though most of it was south of here. We have gotten over 4 inches of rain in the past two days. This picture was taken last year and as you can see is vary braided which is one of the reasons I like it. I had to do some photoshop work on this though because there was a large water drop in the lower right hand portion of the picture. Luckily it was in a portion that was dark and mainly uninteresting. Hopefully I did a good enough job that you can't tell where it is (but if you look really hard at the corn line, you might be able to tell). Anyway, here's to a productive severe weather season!

Dusky Salamander

This picture somewhat goes along with the last one. This salamander was sitting on the rocks next to that waterfall. In many ways this was a more thrilling sight for me than the waterfall was. I never get to see salamanders out in the wild and getting to see this one, one that I had never seen before was cool. I guess it just goes to show what a biology geek I am. Anyway, I looked it up when I got back home and I think it is a "Dusky Salamander". It is apparently one of the more common salamanders in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but not a common sight for me.

Smoky Mountain Falls

This is a waterfall in Smoky Mountain National Park that I can't remember the name of. I really like this effect that requires leaving the shutter open on the camera for a longer than normal length of time, in this case .5 seconds. I wish I could do more of this kind of thing, but my camera doesn't have an easy filter attachment and to do these kind of effects easily I would need a neutral density filter. Luckily on the day we visited the falls it was overcast.

Crisp Mornings

One of my favorite things about autumn is in the beginning when you first start to get the brisk mornings and the lakes and rivers are still relatively warm. I always enjoy watching the steam rising off of those warm waters. This was one of the first brisk mornings in North Carolina and I got up extra early before work (those of you who know me will know how incredible a feat this is) and went out to get photos at the reservoir close to our house. I ended up with a lot of cool photos. This is one of my favorites. There is just enough steam and the water is calm enough to produce reflections that make it difficult to tell where the water begins. It just seems so serine.