September 2008 – Post Irony

Wild Weekend

By Don on Sunday, September 28, 2008

A woodchuck or groundhog, if you prefer, has moved in under the shed. He comes out into the yard often, but he’s very shy. The slightest movement or noise sends him dashing back to his hole. He dug under the fence so now he’s roaming the neighbor’s yard, too. I don’t know what to. I’m thinking that if he decides to hibernate under the shed we can hold our own Groundhog Day ceremony in February. We’ll just have to find someone willing to crawl under the shed and force the animal out to check for the shadow.

Abby Family Fun Photography

Smiles

By Don on Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Abby rarely smiles for me when I have the camera out. She likes the picture takin’ and she likes to look at the pics on the bacl of the camera, but she doesn’t like to smile. Tonight we tricked her into smiling while she was in the bathtub.

I wanted to get some shots in the bath because I knew it would test the high ISO limits of the new camera. As ISO goes up, so does the sensors sensitiveness to light. The drawback is that the image gets more noisy with little multicolored blobs everywhere that rob the photo of sharpness and contrast. Camera makers are getting better all the time at combating noise. The top photo was taken at 1200 ISO and the one below at 2500 ISO. The camera picked the ISO for me. Shutter speed was 1/30 so there was some motion blur. The pics are noisy, but they look OK to me. I never wanted my D40 to go above 800, so this is an improvement for me.

Gina takes one on the chin after the bath. I used my SB-26 and 45 inche umbrella at camera right. I fired the flash on slave mode with the pop-up flash on the camera.

Abby Family Fun Photography

New Camera!

By Don on Sunday, September 21, 2008

If you can’t tell already, I got a new camera. And I’m pretty excited about it. The new baby is a Nikon D90, the latest DSLR put out by the company. When I bought my D40 last November, it was a hard decision not to go with the D80. But the D80 cost twice as much as the D40 and it was nearing the end of its life. I decided to get the D40 and see if I was going to take the hobby seriously. If so, I could upgrade when the D80 replacement hit the shelves.

Abby Family Fun medical crisis

Button Nose

By Don on Thursday, September 18, 2008

The picture above is a kinda close-up of Abby’s nose. Those of you who follow Post Irony can see where this is headed. The picture below is a close-up of the button we took out of Abby’s nose tonight. (And a dime for comparison purposes.)

Hiking Landscape Murray Falls Outdoor fun Photography Waterfall

Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season

By Don on Monday, September 15, 2008

Hurricane Ike dumped a bunch of water overnight Saturday so I set out about 9 a.m. to look for some rare September waterfall action. I planned to hit Murray and Senyard Falls off the Pig Trail north of Cass and then maybe check out the cascades below Lake Sequoyah on my way back home.

Abby Birthdays family Family Fun

Happy Birthday To Me

By Don on Thursday, September 11, 2008

Most people think of 9/11 as a day of infamy. Well, it is, but it’s also my birthday. I get a lot more “Happy Birthdays” since those planes flew into those big buildings because it turned out to be a fabulous mnemonic device to remember my big day.

Gina and Abby baked me a cake and gave me a couple of presents. It was great. Abby cried when Gina brought the cake out for me to blow out the candles. She doesn’t like the fire. Gina’s going to take me out to eat tomorrow night.

Abby Family Fun medical crisis

Rock And Roll

By Don on Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The picture above is a kinda close-up of Abby’s nose. The picture below is a close-up of the rock we took out of Abby’s nose tonight. (And a dime for comparison purposes.)

When Gina picked Abby up from the day care, Abby kept talking about something that had her pretty worked up. Gina thought she was saying she wanted to go for a walk, something she talks about regularly. But Abby kept saying no, a walk was not what she interested in. Gina told her she couldn’t understand her and Abby dropped it.

They came home and Abby took a short nap and then got up and Gina fixed her something to eat. Abby continued talking about something that sounded like “walk.” She was saying “rock,” as we now know, but she doesn’t say her R’s very well.

Her breathing was loud and somewhat labored, so Gina thought her nose was stuffy and she tried to use the suction bulb on her. Then she tried to get Abby to blow into a tissue, but every time Gina touched her nose, Abby would cry.

Finally, Gina asked Abby if she was saying “rock” and Abby said yes and Gina instantly knew what the problem was. I had just gotten off the treadmill and was trying to recover from what felt like a stroke when Gina came in and said, “We have a serious problem.” We laid Abby on her back on the bathroom counter, and, despite her protestations, I extracted the rock with a pair of tweezers.

Arkansas Eagles Nest Falls Hiking Landscape Photography Tea Kettle Falls Waterfall

Saturday Ramble

By Don on Monday, September 8, 2008

Hurricane Gustav parked itself over Arkansas most of last week and dumped a whole bunch of rain, so I hoped enough water would be left running on Saturday to have the waterfalls at full glory. Perusing the Arkansas waterfall Bible written by Tim Ernst, I picked out Tea Kettle Falls to visit.

Tea Kettle is in the Madison County Wildlife Management Area south of Eureka Springs about a mile off a gravel road. It’s a pretty good hike, about a mile down Warm Fork Creek with no official trail. You just follow the creek through the woods. The picture above is a waterfall on a side creek visible from the main creek. The Warm Fork probably only runs during wet weather. Despite there being plenty of water in it, I didn’t see a single fish or other water creature. And the water was clear as gin. Creeks and rivers in the Ozarks normally have an emerald green tint from mineralization, but this water was as clear as any I’ve ever seen.

Abby Adventures in Strobistry Family Fun Kansas Photography the farm

The Farm

By Don on Monday, September 1, 2008

My parents live on 40 acres west of Parsons, Kan., that used to be part of a larger working farm. There are several sheds, silos and whatnot still on the property, including this old-time chicken coop. This is the kind of coop that Foghorn Leghorn guarded in the old cartoons. The outside has great peeling paint and deteriorating wood. The kind of stuff we amateur photographers like to take pichurs of. I set up a couple of flashes inside so the ceiling and back wall of the coop would be visible.

Month: September 2008