As a treat for sleeping through the night, Gina bought Abby a Little People castle and some princess jewelry to go with it. When Gina opened the jewelry package Abby said “My bling!” Then she pranced around showing off her new stuff.
Month: April 2008
I’ve always loved waterfalls and with all the water that’s fallen from the sky this spring, the water falling from the rocks has been spectacular. I tried taking photos of them in the past with film, but I just didn’t do it enough to become proficient. The lag time between shooting and developing film and seeing mistakes and remembering them and correcting them the next time out was too arduous for me. I’d rather just go play golf with its instant feedback. But with a digital camera I can shoot, check out the LCD, spin some dials, push some buttons and try again until I get something I like.
Now, I’m not disappointed with the exposure, but a lot of times I’m disappointed with the composition. I did like the composition on this shot of the underside of the Glory Hole near Fallsville in the Ozark National Forest.
I’ve gone kind of goofy on photographing the waterfalls. I bought the Tim Ernst waterfall guidebook and I’ve been mapping out what falls I want to see before they dry up this year. Gina, Abby and I went out Saturday looking for King’s River Falls and it was a total bust. It was sunny and we were out too early in the day. Abby got grouchy after 3 hours of riding around, which meant Gina was grouchy and I was grouchy. After all that we didn’t even get to see King’s River Falls because the road was too washed out for Gina’s Honda Accord to navigate.
This is a test post from Flickr. Cross your fingers.
Who’s got the best mane?
Abby, Gina and I drove over to Gentry to visit the Wild Animal Safari. It’s a 180-acre primitive zoo. You drive on gravel roads through several big pastures where African antelope, camels, deer and other ungulates spend their miserable lives. Every now and then you come to a cage – some are big and some are small – holding more dangerous animals like lions, tigers and arctic foxes. The animals mostly look bored, which I’m sure they are. Click on the photos to see them much larger.
The best part were the pens with the animals you could touch – goats, pigs, turtles, kangaroos, etc. The tiny goats were very cute. We stepped in a lot of poop, though.
Abby, Gina and I took one of our many neighborhood walks on Thursday. I snapped these dogwood blossoms blowing in a stiff wind in the late afternoon sunlight. I loves me some dogwoods. Some in this area have been truly spectacular this year. Last year they got zotted in the epic April freeze.
My 30-day trial of Photoshop CS3 ran out and I haven’t wrangled another copy, so I downloaded a free trial of Lightroom. Lightroom doesn’t do all the neat stuff PS does, but it does have camera raw and I can always go back to using The Gimp. Anyway, Lightroom has these presets, one of which makes photos look aged. That’s what I used on this dogwood photo. I like the effect.
Abby is a big fan of picking stuff up and examining it. She amazes me by generally knowing what to pick up and what not to. She’ll always pick up acorns and worms and ladybugs. She won’t pick up spiders and snakes. So far, at least. While we were on our walk she bent over until her face almost touched the ground and yelled, “Caterpillar.” A closer inspection by Gina revealed the caterpillar was actually one of those pollen pods from an oak tree. Abby said, “Oh” and moved on to other things.
This shot of Rattlesnake Falls in the White Mountain Area of Northwest Arkansas is currently my favorite shot. You can see it on my Flickr page here where it looks better for some reason.
I used a neutral density filter and a polarizer to get a slow enough shutter speed to make the water go all blurry. I worked up the pic in photoshop using some skills I picked up from Scott Kelby’s 7-Point System for Photoshop. It’s a great book. I recommend it.
I kinda swore I would never blog, so this is how I’m going to justify it:
1. I’ve got a little kid and the relatives can keep up with her through my pithy writings.
2. I’ve really gotten into photography lately and a blog is a cool way to show off and talk about f stops and shutter speeds and other stupid stuff. I take a lot of photos of the aforementioned kid and posting some of those will support justification #1. (I’ve also got a Flickr account, but it confuses some people.)
3. Everybody’s doing it.
OK, now that that’s out of the way, I embark on one of the lamest things in the world.