Midwest Tour - 5/31/09 (END)

Well, this brings us all to the end of our little midwest tour. We spent the last day with son, Chris, in Ft. Collins. While waiting for him, Sheila and I decided to take a short bike ride along one of the many bike trails in the SW part of town. As I passed a small wetland area, I saw this red-winged blackbird (have no idea where it got that name!) and made this photograph with my little Canon SX110 IS, which I'm starting to take everywhere with me. I even managed to capture a little highlight in the eye, which is a compositional plus.

I'd like to thank everyone who traveled with us on our journey! Until next time, au revoir.

Midwest Tour - 5/30/09

The very last stop during our Midwest Tour was Estes Park, CO, where we were attending another ham radio convention. This sunrise was taken from our hotel window with the Canon SX110 IS compact. This time of year is best for sunrises due to the start of the monsoon season. Afternoons are often too overcast or rainy to offer up nice displays of color during sunsets, so it pays to be the "early bird".

Midwest Tour - 5/28/09

This snowy egret decided to pose for us as we drove slowly through the Salt Plains NWR in northern Oklahoma. The gusting wind kept blowing its feathers this way and that. For you bird lovers, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (www.allaboutbirds.org) maintains a wonderful directory of birds. This shot was also taken with my little Canon SX110 IS at about 6X.

Midwest Tour - 5/27/09

Skipping a few days of transit from Ann Arbor to Claremore, OK, I present this succulent plant, which caught my eye at cousin Mike's place. This is part of wife, Wanda's, flower garden. The day was overcast, so perfect for close-up photography. I love the red/green complementary colors. This was taken with my small Canon SX110 IS compact camera, which, by the way, received a "best buy" rating from this year's Consumer Reports.

Midwest Tour - 5/23/09

Today was the wedding of good friends, Bob & Joyce's younger daughter, Rachel. The ceremony was held in the Ann Arbor Christian Reformed Church in Ann Arbor, MI. While I was not the wedding photographer at this ceremony, I did manage to take several neat shots of the happy couple. The reason this one caught my eye was the look of anticipation and joy (plus maybe a little relief?) in their faces. I also managed to catch the cross and colored reflection from the stained glass. The relatively low 1/40th shutter speed added a sense of motion as they exited from the stage. The reception and dinner following the ceremony ended a perfect day. Tomorrow, we head back to Indiana.

Midwest Tour - 5/22/09

Sheila and I spent the day biking along the Huron River Bikeway in Ann Arbor. Canadian geese were clamoring all along the route - some with little chicks. About halfway along, we saw this swan swimming near the shore. Later in the afternoon, we spent some time searching out a couple new lighthouses south of Detroit to add to our list. The second lighthouse required a 3.5-mile bike ride around an isolated island to be able to view it. Tomorrow, we have a wedding!

Midwest Tour - 5/21/09

While I was helping Lee with his EMC seminar and photographing the IEEE EMC Society "EMC Fest" today near Detroit, Sheila was off hunting up a few more lighthouses. Rather than show you a picture of "geeks at work", I'll let Sheila provide the picture of the day. This is a shot of Lorain Light in Lorain, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. The catamaran provides a bit of color to the composition. The date of construction is in question, but most reliable sources indicate the current building was probably constructed in 1917. It is now owned by the Port of Lorain Foundation.

Midwest Tour - 5/20/09

The photo of the day today goes to Bob & Mary's daughter, Lynn. This is a spiral galaxy with an attached worm hole photographed through her dad's 80-inch double-helix telescope.

Ahem, actually, this is a shot of red food coloring dropped into a fish aquarium of water. I let her use my Canon 5D with 100mm macro lens to shoot upward towards the water's surface. A white shelf board was propped up behind to provide a uniform background. Lynn told me this was a "project for school", but I believe it was really her creative side at work. The image was processed with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Pretty cool abstract!

Midwest Tour - 5/19/09

Today, I spent the afternoon photographing Bob & Mary's daughter, Lynn, for her senior pictures. She'll be graduating next week and will be majoring in theater and visual arts. Lynn is also a very talented artist and we had earlier commissioned her to paint typical Colorado wildlife on an old saw blade we found earlier in an antique store. Here's her completed work - nice, eh?

Midwest Tour - 5/18/09

Back to my "Iris Project". I finally located a blue iris that was in good health down the street and around the corner from where I'm staying in Indiana. Knocking on the door and introducing myself, the owner gave me permission to photograph her blue iris - probably shaking here head when I wasn't looking... With the help of my able assistents, Bob and wife, Sheila, who held the white backdrop, I was able to photograph an iris portrait of each in the field (in situ, for you latin enthusiasts). So I now had a collection of red, white, and now blue irises. Well, what else could I do but combine them into a single panel - and just in time to celebrate the Fourth of July! This is still a "work in progress" as I'm not entirely satisfied with the background color or purity of the white backgrounds. But, I'll keep trying different things until it looks right. Here's the result as of today.

Midwest Tour - 5/17/09

As a break from iris photography, I elected to document the lowly maple seed. Here's one propped on some magnolia leaves for a contrasting background. Maple seeds are truly unique in that they form almost a perfect auto-rotating helicopter as they descend from their perch high in the tree. The ground here is littered with them.

As a diversion, here here are some links about maple seeds:

How to Make an Auto-rotating Maple Seed from Paper: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/TRC/Aeronautics/Maple_Seed.html

Exploring Science and Design with a Maple Seed: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jwmills/EDUCATION.NOTEBOOK/maple/maple.html

The Journal of Maple Seed Science: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jwmills/EDUCATION.NOTEBOOK/journal/journal.html

Probably more than you needed to know about maple seeds!

Midwest Tour - 5/16/09

The irises are in bloom here in Indiana and are one of my favorite flowers to photograph. Bob and I took some time during this afternoon to try out our macro lenses on some of the subjects around his yard. A morning rain had eased and you can still see raindrops in the flower. This shot was taken handheld - a risky maneuver, as it takes a steady hand to keep everything sharp. I used an aperture of f11 at shutter speed of 1/125th and ISO of 400, which -just- captured the center of this red iris with good sharpness (I was very lucky!). The best technique is to turn AF off, compose and focus manually, then using breath control, rock back and forth slowly until all is focussed properly. Holding the depth of field preview button during the process will aid in determining the right time to trigger the shutter.

Midwest Tour - 5/15/09

Today was spent at a major ham radio convention, so I'll send you a picture from yesterday's trip to Hocking Hills State Park in SE Ohio. While most of Ohio is relatively flat, as one approaches the Appalachian region, it becomes more hilly. This state park - actually comprised of a chain of parks - stretched along a winding series of canyons, includes multiple waterfalls, caves, alcoves and small streams. It reminds me a great deal of some of the temperate rain forests along the Pacific coast. Being overcast, the day today was perfect for photographing waterfalls and forest landscapes. In fact, driving east from Indiana, we were following the trailing edge of a system of thunderstorms, which filled the streams and waterfalls nicely. Shown is the Lower Old Man Cave Waterfall.

Midwest Tour - 5/14/09

Friend Bob, took Sheila and me to Hocking Hills State Park today. On the way, we passed through Circleville, Ohio, to see the famous (at least in the surrounding region) "Circleville Mural". This is a depiction of the 100th anniversary of the Circleville Pumpkin Show, which originated in 1903. It was completed by Eric Henn (www.erichennmurals.com) in May 2007 and is an amazing 3D view of the street fair and parade. Mind you, this is actually a painting on the side of a building! Notice the extension of the real cornices into the painting. The two flags are also painted on. I created a larger than normal image, so the detail may be seen better. Pictures of the state park taken later today will come to you soon.

Midwest Tour - 5/12/09

The day after my engineering seminar on the Monday, the 11th, Sheila and I flew back to Dayton to stay a few more days with friends Bob & Mary in Indiana. On the way home, we stopped through Detroit. Now Detroit has one of the longest terminal buildings I've ever seen. It is so long that there are two trams that take people from either end to the middle. It seemed we always had to go from the long terminal to the shorter one and this necessitated taking the tram to the middle and crossing under the taxiways through this lit up tunnel. It very much reminds me of the tunnel in Chicago's O'Hare Airport. This is the third lit up airport tunnel - if you recall, I posted the last one of the new Indianapolis Airport tunnel on my blog back in November last year. Here is an abstract view inside.

Midwest Tour - 5/10/09

Elementary school friend, Mike, with son Thomas and wife Karen, enjoy photos from Mike's early years. There are several of us from that grade level that have been reuniting via the Internet after nearly 50 years! Mike is the first one I've visited face-to-face and he graciously invited us to stay overnight. We had a lot of early memories to share and it was such a privilege to visit so many years later. Mike spent his career in the Army as a Special Forces-qualified "Green Beret" and Paratrooper Medical Service Corps officer and combat medic. He currently holds a Ph.D in human biology (public health). He met Karen in Germany and Thomas is studying journalism at Syracuse University. Karen cooked us a traditional German dinner which tasted , ohhh so good!

Midwest Tour - 5/9/09

In a past life, I was a Scoutmaster of a troop of Boy Scouts in our home town of Woodland Park. Over the weekend, we had an opportunity to visit with one of my Eagle Scouts, Karl, who's just wrapping up his Ph.D. work at the University of New Hampshire in Dover. He is researching the chemical makeup of the atmosphere and has developed a real-time sampling system which can analyze pollutants in the atmosphere very quickly from moving aircraft. Here we are posing in his favorite burrito restaurant in downtown Dover following our lunch there.

From there, we're off to visit elementary school buddy Mike, wife Karen and son Thomas - also near Dover.

Midwest Tour - 5/8/09

A double-header today from Sheila to make up for the skipped day yesterday. The top picture is of Whaleback Ledge Light (with artist) and the bottom picture is of the Cape Neddick Light - both in Maine. The first light at Whaleback Ledge was so "fraudulently built" that sea water would wash through gaps in the stones, almost drowning the keeper. The present version was rebuilt in 1872 of solid granite blocks. The Cape Neddick Light was completed in 1879. Interestingly, the Voyager spacecraft, which carries photographs of Earth's most prominent man-made structures and natural features includes this light as well as photos of the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal.

Midwest Tour - 5/6/09

While I was busy helping Lee with his engineering seminars this week, Sheila explored the coast tracking down lighthouses - one of her passions. Pictured is the Newburyport Harbor Light on the Massachusetts coast. This one was built in 1788, rebuilt in 1898 and has been moved several times due to "shifting sands".

Midwest Tour - 5/5/09

Once we arrived in New Hampshire, we noticed many of the apple trees were in bloom. This crab apple in front of Lee & Ellen's home was bursting wildly in a colorful display. I applied a bit of pastel strokes in Photoshop to make it a little more "artsy".

Midwest Tour - 5/3/09

Starting out on our Midwest Tour, Sheila and I arrived at Bob and Mary's place and there was just enough daylight to photograph some iris blooms in their yard. There will be more of these in a few days. This was taken with my little Canon compact camera in "tulip" (macro) mode.