This copse stands right along the path where I do my running in Two Rivers Park. It’s always pretty with the late afternoon sun and for three years I’ve been meaning to go out and shoot a photo. I finally got around to it over the weekend.

Weird. It’s been weird this week. It feels like a pocket of calm before everything changes – again. Gina’s been out of town this week leaving Abby and me to forge ahead as a duo. Tuesday was extra dull and I asked Abby what she wanted to do and added that watching Calliou was not an option. She said, “Go to the Big Dam Bridge.” So that’s what we did.

I took my 70-300mm telephoto lens with us because I thought maybe there’d be some gulls flying around, but there weren’t. We walked up the bridge and watched a storm over Pinnacle Mountain. Then we walked down the bridge and out on an unpaved trail that branches off the North Little Rock River Trail. Abby was looking for fire ants. She’s taken a liking to stirring up their mounds and watching the ants go nuts and then running away shrieking. We got our shoes muddy and Abby saw some bugs, but no fire ants.

This looks like smog or something, but it was raining pretty hard just on the other side of the I-430 bridge. The rain never got to us, though.

I like the really long lens because it does great things with perspective and depth of field. Behind Abby in this shot there’s a bridge and big river and a dam but it all goes to some kind of gray amorphousness with the lens at 300mm.

Abby found some sand to play in and then cried when she realized we didn’t have her plastic beach shovel with us. Don’t be fooled by her facial expressions. She was having a good time.

Then I taught her how to levitate:

Abby stood with a stiff, but warm, wind flapping her dress and said “It’s springy out here.” We took her tricycle to Two Rivers Park and toured some of the walking trail. On the way back she noticed a field with scattered jonquils/daffodils and made a beeline for them. Even though I’ve showed her a better way, she has been picking the yellow flowers all over Little Rock by grabbing just below the blooms. She comes up with very short stems that make it impossible to put them in a vase or glass or something.

Then she noticed a small yellow butterfly and took off after it. She didn’t catch it, but she had a good time running through the grass. I was running around too, but she didn’t get a picture of me.

I got a fancy new tripod and ball head a couple weeks ago and I haven’t really gotten to break it in. I’ve been using an el cheapo model from Wal-Mart for a long time, but I got sucked into the thinking that a decent tripod is worth the big bucks. So I went all out (for me anyway) and got a carbon fiber number from Manfrotto. I paid a little extra to get the carbon because it’s lighter and I do a lot of hiking with my camera. I did get to try it out on a hike and though it’s bigger and more stable than my old junky tripod, it’s about the same weight. The shots of the waterfall I got on that hike weren’t even good enough to put on the blog. The tripod was an excellent buy. It does make a difference. I also was never convinced that a ball head would be that much better than the pan head you get with the cheap ‘pods. I was wrong. It makes a world of difference in the ease-of-use department.

On Sunday, I went down to the North Little Rock side of the Arkansas River to shoot the sunset over downtown Little Rock. The sunset sucked, but a great full moon was rising behind a thin veil of clouds. I cheated on the above shot by shooting the skyline and the moon separately and then combining them with my camera’s neat overlay feature. I shot the skyline from the tripod and then put on a long lens and shot the moon hand held. I don’t know if the moon ever appears in that spot if the sky from the vantage I used. But I do know the moon would never appear to be that big in a photo shot at that wide of an angle. So it’s pretty fake on at least two counts. I think it’s a little more impressive if you don’t resort to such fakery, but what the hell.

Tons of photogs have shot the skyline and posted them to Flickr, so I was trying for a little different look. This is what I came up with. The blue rail is on the Junction Bridge, an old railroad bridge that has been refitted for pedestrians.

I wanted to try out the tripod on a panorama so I shot three photos starting at the I-30 bridge continuing across the River Market and ending with the Junction Bridge. I stitched the three together in Photoshop. Normally I’m not a big fan of panos because they are awkward to view on a computer screen. (Click the photo to make it big enough to see. You’ll have to scroll back and forth to see it all. See what I mean about awkward.) I think it turned out well.

For some reason I’m quite taken with this defacement of public property I came across while out driving through the hoity-toity part of Little Rock.

I like that the tagger took the time and forethought to use letter stencils. The stencil allows the unlawful additions to the sign to mesh well with the official stencil used for the word STOP. He or she could have just scrawled the words freehand, but he or she knew that wouldn’t cut it. Not when you’re referencing one of the all-time great arena rock anthems.

This little bit of ephemera has taken my mind off a knotty issue that seems to have no solution. Abby and I generally grow bored and thirsty early in the afternoon and more often than not go to a nearby Sonic to take advantage of their happy hour, during which drinks are half price. I get a large Coke and Abby gets a small Sprite. A bargain at $1.48.

For at least six visits in a row, the straw incisions on my cup lid have been torn, which creates a dangerously sloppy seal around the straw. (These visits have stretched across at least three Sonic outlets.) Abby’s small-cup lid is always pristine. The only thing I can figure is that the large lids are being stored on some sort of rod and are just jammed on there by unfeeling employees. It’s no way to treat an innocent cup lid.

Yes, these are the things that occupy my mind now that I don’t have a job.

Ever since Abby saw the street car in the Little Rock River Market back around Christmas she’s wanted to ride it. The bone chilling cold kept us both inside all day Thursday and we were about ready to do harm to each other. We had to get out.

My original intention was to go to the Children’s Museum of Discovery in the River Market where I knew it would be warm and I hoped it would provide hours of entertainment for Abby. When we got down there and she saw the street car, she started screaming “Ride It! Ride It Now!” I had no choice.

So we rode the whole line. From the middle of the River Market t the Clinton Library to North Little Rock. It’s actually a good way to see the major sites of the river front area of both cities. I’ve got a whole series of shots of Abby sitting alone in the street car with major landmarks visible through the windows: the Old State House outside, Dickey Stephens Park, the Clinton Library, the Doubletree Hotel, the Peabody, the riverboat, the submarine, various liquor stores, a Subway, etc.

We did make it to the museum, where Abby threw a massive fit over something and we had to leave. She calmed down later and we went back, where she acted like a proper lady. I was worn out by then and didn’t take any decent photos in there.

I’ve been running my new telephoto lens through its paces the last few days. It’s a Nikon 70-300mm VR 4.5/5.6 that got on sale when the Circuit City in Fayetteville went belly up. I got it back at the beginning of December, but hadn’t gotten a chance to really use until last week. It’s really a consumer-type lens so I expected it to be visibly wonky at certain apertures and at the long and short ends of the zoom range. After I bought it, I read Ken Rockwell’s assessment of the lens and started thinking I might have picked up a true bargain. With crop factor on the my camera, this lens is the equivalent of a 105-450mm lens on a 35mm camera frame. That extra reach is nice for those wildlife shots.

The top shot is some sort of gull I shot at the Big Dam Bridge in Little Rock. Those birds gather in great numbers at the Dam and swoop all over and under the bridge so they come in pretty close to you. It was the first time I’d ever tried shooting birds on the wing with a camera. I burned off about 500 frames and only got five shots I felt were usable. They fly pretty fast and when they come in close enough to fill the frame, they are really moving. It’s tough to keep up with them.

Hikers trying to reach the moon by climbing Pinnacle Mountain.

A barge on the Arkansas River preparing to lock through at Murray Lock and Dam.

Someone on Flickr said this is a pine warbler.

The Oyster Bar is one of Little Rock’s signature joints. When we lived here before it had always been on my list of places to eat, but I just never got around to it. Tonight, based on the urging of Jodie and Laney, we got around to it.

The first thing you notice upon entering is the smell of grease. Make that the smell of grease that has had something fried in it. The menu is heavy on fried creatures that live in the water. That’s cool with me. The restaurant building is wonderfully shabby inside and out. The murals on the outside wall look like they were painted by a third-grader. That’s a compliment, not a criticism. They plywood floor is black, probably from countless trips by wait staff tracking grease from the kitchen. You’re not getting dressed up to go to this place. That’s perfect for a rambunctious 2.5-year-old. We had no qualms about letting her dance and hop all around our table.

Gina and I each had the fried shrimp po’ boy sandwich. The shrimp were just right: crispy on the outside but not overdone inside. Unfortunately, the sandwiches come standard with coleslaw, which I didn’t notice on the menu. Coleslaw is hampered by two things: cabbage and mayonnaise. Whoever came up with idea of putting coleslaw on barbeque and shrimp po’ boys was a poor chef in my book. I scraped the slaw off, slathered on some house cocktail sauce and enjoyed the sandwich. I’ve yet to find a house cocktail sauce that comes close to the Uncle Slappy’s Shut Yo Mouth variety. The Oyster Bar kept that streak alive. I could find no evidence in the stuff of black pepper, the magic ingredient to a good cocktail sauce. I have to give the place credit for including on the condiment bar all the makings for Uncle Slappy’s delectable accompaniment, but a recent dressing-down I received from a fellow foodie about making my own caused me to stick with the house brand.

The Oyster Bar is a pretty good taste of the Gulf Coast, complee with Zapp’s potato chips. I imagine I’m going to make up for waiting so long to try this place.

It’s Week 4 of the Stay-At-Home Dad Experiment. Yesterday we hit a library in West Little Rock. Today, with the sun out and temperatures much more reasonable, we made it to a couple of parks.

I was experimenting with the 70-300mm lens that I got a bargain on in Circuit City’s liquidation sale in Little Rock. It seems to work decently for portraits and I got a few bird shots a the parks. I think I’ll post a few of those over on Flickr.

With a contingent of family in town for the Christmas thing, we went to the Flying Fish in the Little Rock River Market district for some lunch. It’s a chain but it has pretty good catfish. I had what the menu calls the catfish poor boy loaf. It was just your regular po’ boy sandwich. I don’t know what the loaf part is all about. I’m a fan of catfish and central Arkansas is loaded with catfish places.

The Flying Fish is a very popular joint and the food is good. The catfish was crispy on the outside but not overcooked on the inside, although the batter was a little bland. I got some of their cocktail sauce to juice up the flavor a bit, but it, too, was bland for my taste. Not to worry, though, I found a tiny plastic crock of horseradish on the table and I was able to whip up a small batch of my Uncle Slappy’s Shut Yo Mouth Cocktail Sauce(TM). I half-filled one of those paper condiment containers with ketchup, added about half as much horseradish, squeezed in some fresh lemon juice, scooped out the lemon seeds, splashed in some worcestershire sauce and then tossed in the secret ingredient: black pepper. Compare the Uncle Slappy’s with the ketchup dominated Flying Fish stuff. You can almost taste it, can’t you?

I gave them small props for the black pepper in theirs.

The walls are covered with fish. Fish in pictures, mounted fish and those singing bass that were all the rage a few years ago. There’s also a bunch of those signs with cutesy fishing-related bons mots. This was my favorite.

This interesting tableau is at the side door of Sticky Fingerz, which is next door to the Flying Fish.