July Storm 4

Ok, this one isn't quite as good as the others, but there are several bolts so I've included it.

July Storm 3

Another picture from the same storm. Like I said, very active.

July Storm (2)

Some more lightning pictures from the same storm. Before the storm got too close, it was ideal conditions for taking lightning pictures; virtually no wind, little rain and lots of lots of lightning.

Big July Storm

The next several posts will be getting back to my favorite photographic subject. These pictures were all from a very active storm in late July. It was so active, I eventually had to pack things up and head for safety. It was making me a little too nervous.

Flying Bee

Another picture from my visit to the flower patch. This time a flying bee. No flower picture collection is complete without one.

UPDATE: It took me awhile, but I think I finally figured out that this plant is not an invasive, but rather it is called Prairie Blazingstar (Liatris pycnostachya).

Butterflies

Two pictures this time, because I took a ton of this butterfly and couldn't decide on one. Every year this flowering plant blooms in large numbers in late summer. Someone told me it was an invasive species, but the insects sure love it, whatever it is.

Summer Flowers

Continuing on a theme away from lightning pictures, here are some macro shots of some flowers taken on the same day as the dragonfly picture.

Dragonfly

I'm not sure what kind of dragonfly this is, but there are lots of them around here. I used them as an opportunity to try some macro shots with my new camera. This one turned out pretty good, but most did not. I think this is a good excuse to by a macro lens.

The Arch

Something a little different than what I have been posting. This is obviously a picture of the Arch in St. Louis. We were getting some food at the 4th of July festival there and I liked this perspective of the arch.

Fireworks

We went to St. Louis this 4th of July and we set out our spot for fireworks watching early so that I could take pictures of fireworks through the Arch. I think it would have turned out great had the wind not been blowing towards us, pushing smoke in front of our view.

Separate June Storm

This is another June storm that developed just to the east of my house. Better yet, no mosquitoes eating me alive this time..

More Lightning

This is the last picture from this particular storm. I really like the shadows and texture on the top part of this cloud that is illuminated by the lightning.

June Lightning

This is another picture from the same storm. Great stuff.

Lightning Pictures

Yep, more lightning pictures. What can I say, they are my favorite thing to photograph and this has been one hell of a good start to the season. These next few are from a storm that gave off one of the most impressive lightning displays I've ever seen. I think the pictures would have been better too, but I didn't bring my tripod (because I hadn't intended to shoot lightning originally) and I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes while trying to hold the camera steady.

Another Sunset Picture

Yeah, it's another sunset picture, but there's nothing else around here to take a picture of. Plus I really like how this one turned out with the new camera. Not sure if you can see it in this version (I think you can), but I really like the detail in the trees in the distance. They would never have been that sharp with my old camera. I also really like the colors in this picture.

New Camera

Haven't posted in a while, but have many reasons, the most important being that I left my camera at my in-laws in November. However, I recently bought a camera that I've been saving 2 years for. It's the Nikon D90 and so far I in love with it. Here is a picture I took of the sunset the other day. I love the rich colors and crisp images this camera produces and I have yet to figure out how to use it to it's full potential. I can't wait to learn..

Final Storm Picture

Ok, this is the final picture from the latest storm and my personal favorite. Like I said before, this has been a good year for photographing lightning and I have learned a lot. The most important thing I've learned is how critical aperture is when photographing lightning and the need to adjust it as the distance to the storm changes. A small aperture for a storm too far away produces a bolt that can barely be seen. Too large an aperture for a storm that is close produces a bright white spot with no discernible bolt. Interestingly, my favorite shots are from my first attempts when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I guess luck plays a large role as well.

More from the latest storm

This is another picture from the storm last night. I liked that there were multiple bolts in this picture, though I was upset at myself for not framing it correctly.

Last Storm of the Season?

Last night we had some pretty good lightning displays and I managed to catch a few that I'll be posting over the next few days. This may have been the last good storm of the season and I'm glad I decided to go out and get some pictures.

Rising Moon

Nothing too special about this picture, I just like taking pictures of the moon just after the sun goes down and some type of landscape can still be seen. I have a really cool one from when I was camping in Zion National Park, but that's on actual film, so I don't have it to post online.

More Lightning in the Sky

We've had a lot of night-time thunderstorms around here lately, unfortunately I haven't had much luck getting good pictures...until last night. Last night was especially good since the lightning lasted well after the main part of the storm had past.

Soft-Shelled Turtle

Another one of the cool creatures that lives around here and which I've never seen before is this soft-shelled turtle. I often see them sunning themselves on the gates to the ponds where I work and have always wanted to get a picture. However, they are extremely fast and dive into the water before I can get anywhere near them. This one came through the drain when we drained one of the ponds, so I took the opportunity to capture it and release it far enough away from water so that I could take this picture.

Bird-Voiced Treefrog

It's been a while, but I'm back for a few pictures. I have been trying my hand at photographing small reptiles and amphibians that I think are cool. This particular species of frog are neat in that they can be this color, but can also turn a bright lime-green too. They also make an interesting call as the name suggests.

Last Day

What cruise photo collection would be complete without a sunset picture? Certainly not mine. This was the sunset on the last day of the cruise looking out towards the Bahama Islands. I have about 20-30 pictures of it and have been made fun of by my family, but I was not the only one out there. It turned out to be a pretty good one, complete with sun dog (rainbow on left hand side of the sun).

St. Maarten Again

Here's another picture of St. Maarten (I spelled it wrong last time), this time looking the other direction along the beach. A very beautiful place.

St. Maartin

This is a beach in St. Maartin. I like this picture because I think it captures what I think of as a typical tropical tourist destination. For some useless St. Maartin trivia, there are two sides to the island, one Dutch and one French. The French side includes a nude beach. Unfortunately, this is not that beach.

St. Thomas

My only experience with Caribbean islands prior to this trip was the Florida Keys and a small island off the coast of Belize, so I was expecting the same kind of thing (flat little islands). I was surprised when I woke up and saw St. Thomas looking like this.

Night-time St. Thomas

This is a photo of the harbor at St. Thomas at night (obviously). I thought the blue lights were cool. I found out it is difficult to take one of these night pictures without a tripod or some other surface to rest the camera on. In this case I had to try and steady it against the ship rail and try not to move as the shutter was open. It turned out ok, but I still think it would have been better.

Royal Caribbean

We recently went on a cruise (during Christmas break), so naturally I have some pictures to post from that trip. This first one is of our ship, Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Sea. I'm posting this only because when my dad saw this picture he told me that it looked like a photo you would find in a brochure or on a postcard. So if there's anyone from Royal Caribbean out there reading my wildly popular photo blog, just contact me to discuss buying the rights to my photo :-).

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.