More Night Images

A follow-up to my last post, here are a few more night images taken after our first snow. The black & white image at right is a shot taken at Raymond Walters College. They put in a relatively new parking lot in the back and this long sidewalk leads from the main building (behind me) to the lot. I liked the light/dark stripe pattern on the sidewalk created by the evenly spaced lights. Clicking on the image will take you to a larger version in Flickr.

The first image below is of the lights in front of a house along Kenwood road, just north of downtown Blue Ash, OH. It's not my style of house, but I think it's pretty. Sitting back from the road with a large yard and a small stream gives it a picturesque setting. The owners have a nice light display that stands out on the fresh snow. I know the lights are a bit hard to see, but this angle is a much better view of the house and yard. There was quite a bit of ground light bouncing off the clouds, so the sky stands out in the HDR image.

The bottom image is a high dynamic range panorama taken at the Blue Ash Town Square. The Millennium clock-bell tower and the holiday lights are nice. Much of the snow on the brick pavers had melted, but I still like the shot. If you want to see the large version, click on it but be warned that it's a very large file.

Night Images

Last night we had a light snowfall -- about an inch or a little more. Much of the snow melted from roads and sidewalks, but there was still a fresh white layer on the grass and trees. I thought I'd try taking some night images hoping the light reflecting off the snow would create some interesting effects. I got a few shots that turned out OK.

Downtown Blue Ash has a veteran's memorial with statues around the perimeter of the bricked area around a monument. This is a shot of a few of the statues that are still covered with a bit of snow. There was a slight breeze moving the flags. I like the effect created by the long exposure.



The City of Blue Ash restored the Hunt Road House. You can read more about the house's history here. The house has lights simulating candles in each window and the large pine tree is covered with lights for the holidays. I took several shots with different exposures and created this high dynamic range (HDR) image of the house. The sky was overcast and the city lights were reflecting off the clouds. The HDR effect really brings out that reflected light. If you're not familiar with HDR images, compare this photo to the single exposure image at the bottom of the post to get an idea of what the HDR processing does.



While I was there, I also tried my first attempt at light painting. With a long exposure (about 30 seconds), I ran in the frame and used a flashlight to write "Merry Xmas." Since I was moving, you don't even see me in the photo. I tried it a couple times and this was the best even the "X" didn't turn out very well. I also forgot to write backwards, so I had to flip the image on the horizontal. Compare it to the shot above -- I didn't move the tripod. Oops. I have a couple more night images I'll post later.

Latest Macro Monday Project

The latest theme for the Macro Mondays group on Flickr is fuzzy. It's kind of a wide open theme. I took it to mean a physical fuzziness. I'm guessing some folks might use a blur to interpret fuzzy, but I thought that kinda defeated the purpose of trying to get a good, sharp macro shot. It's always fun to see how others interpret the theme.

The black & white shot to the right is an extreme close up of the fuzzy fibers in a sheet of lint collected from the dryer lint screen after drying some fleece items.

The other fuzzy items we had handy were some plush stuffed animals. The photo below is a head shot of a monkey eating a banana. I also got a shot of a lion's mane that you can see here.

Mound O' Dirt

Dianne and I were driving through the parking lot at the Kenwood Mall a couple weeks ago and I just started laughing when I saw this mound of dirt. I couldn't believe they just piled the dirt up around the light in the parking lot. It gives the illusion that the light is only a few feet tall. Silly me would have taken the light down before putting the dirt there.

The dirt came from a huge hole on the north side of the property near the Kroger grocery store. Looks like they're putting in footings for a large building. I guess this is part of the Crate and Barrel and the office complex described in this article. You can see Dianne in her new red jacket in each of the photos for scale.

Capture Cincinnati Release

Tonight Dianne and I went to Joseph Beth Books at Rookwood Pavilion for the release of the Capture Cincinnati book. I posted about the project a while ago. It was a local effort to make a coffee table book of the best Cincinnati area photos contributed by mostly local photographers.

The organizers had a release event to announce the winners of the various photo categories. The grand prize winner was Melissa Speelman -- very well deserved! She has a great photoblog where you can see her latest people photos. It was a event and I was able to meet several folks that participate in the "Living in Cincinnati" group in Flickr. That was fun.

The Capture Cincinnati book has a wonderful collection of photos from the area. I don't have any photos in the book, but I have several that made it on the accompanying DVD -- most of them in the "news" category. Everyone who participated was guaranteed one photo on the DVD, so it's cool that I have a few. Thanks to everyone who voted for my shots!

B.B. King and Balluminaria

On Friday evening Dianne and I went to Music Hall in Cincinnati to hear B. B. King in concert. It was a wonderful evening and we had pretty good seats. I have to say I didn't care too much for the opening act, Joanna Cotten. She has a good voice, but I just wasn't in to her songs. B. B. King had a large group with him including four horn players, a rhythm guitar, a bass guitar, drums, and keyboards. The band was a great group of blues musicians that put out a full sound. And B. B. King has an amazing stage presence. Although he now plays sitting down (at 82 he said his knees are bad), he sings and plays with such emotion that he keeps everyone captivated. B. B. King shared some interesting stories about his life (he claimed he didn't see an electric light until he was 16) between songs. It was fun to see him play live. Oh...and to the annoying woman sitting right behind us talking on her cell phone in the middle of one of B. B. King's songs, get a life and show some respect to him and those around you.

Today Dianne and I went to Eden Park in Cincinnati to see the Balluminaria. What's that? The Cincinnati Parks Commission organizes the event each year where hot air balloonist set up their balloons around one side of the perimeter of Mirror Lake in the park. The balloons don't take off. When it gets dark, they coordinate the lighting of their burners to get the balloons to glow. The colors are beautiful and the reflections off the lake enhances the effect. The photo here doesn't do it justice. It was nice to see...but it was cold!! It was about 40 degrees, but a little breeze really made it seem cold -- especially when you're standing and waiting for an hour and a half. The small photo shows them during the set-up stage while it was still light. The photo below shows the balloon glow. Hopefully it will be a little warmer next year.

Happy Thanksgiving to All

Love That Orb

When I have breakfast at home, I have something simple like cereal, toast, or a bagel. It's pretty rare that I'll have breakfast meats -- especially sausage. Given that, it's unusual that a TV commercial for breakfast sausage would catch my eye. I'm not in their target audience.

I love the ad campaign put out by Jimmy Dean for their breakfast offerings (sandwiches, skillet mixtures, etc.). The series is based on the Sun as the main character. I think it's a funny, cute, and well executed concept. You can watch most of the ads in the series on the Jimmy Dean website. An ad that is missing is the one where the wife cautions her husband the Sun not to burn the breakfast. My favorite is one of the early ads in the series with the title of 'Why'. The little girl is perfect with her persistent questioning.

I also found a series of six short videos (each 1.5 minutes) that are an interview of the Sun, the Moon, and the Cloud from the ad campaign. It's pretty funny. Here is episode one, episode two, episode three, episode four, episode five, and episode six. The title of this post comes from episode five.

Still More Leaves

I've been taking more photos of autumn leaves. Many of the leaves are falling and there are lots of shapes and colors to choose from. I press some and let some dry and curl naturally.

Last year Dianne clued me in to looking at the back of leaves. The shot at the right is the back of a curled leaf taken with two flashes at grazing angles to emphasize the texture. The leaf structure really pops out in this shot.

There are two curled maple leaves below. The last shot is a close up of a leaf that was pressed flat while drying. The flashes were placed behind the leaf so most of the light is transmitted through the leaf. That really brings out the color, the imperfections, and the vein structure.

Click on any image to see a larger version in Flickr. They are all in my 2007 leaf set.

Thanksgiving Week at SIH

Happy Thanksgiving week to all!

We have a Thanksgiving theme going on at Songs in Haiku. Look for some related haiku over there through Thursday.

Pine Cone Macros

I picked up a bunch of pine cones around town from different varieties of pines. I'm the worlds worst at identifying trees, so I can't link a species to each cone. I did find the underside of the pine cones very interesting. The patterns on the bottom of the scales is very different from tree to tree. For those of you using the RSS feed, the slideshow below probably won't come through. You can see the whole set on Flickr here.

This is Hard to Believe

Anyone who knows me will find the results of this on-line quiz hard to believe, but it's true. Maybe I drink so much I just don't remember that I drink so much. Thanks to Erika Jean for pointing me to the quiz.


88%DRUNKARD

San Antonio Dating

Flowers Old and New

I'm behind in posting photos. Here are a couple pictures I took months ago and one I took just a week ago.

The small photos above are a couple of cone flower blossom photos I took back in mid-September. I guess it was near the end of the season for those plants as many flowers had lost petals and were starting to dry out. I was able to find a couple flowers at different stages in the bed. I think the spike-like center makes an interesting subject. Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions in Flickr.

Down below is a close up of a flower on an anemone (the plant, not the sea version). I can see where the name comes from. I took this last weekend.

Thanks to Michele for supplying the subjects and identifying them in the photos.

Prawns with Lemon for Superantioxidants

We all hear news stories and read articles about the benefits of antioxidants -- whether by eating certain foods or taking through dietary supplements. I ran across this article today that describes researchers have come up with a commercially viable means of extracting a powerful antioxidant, astaxanthin, from prawn heads. It claims to be about 10 times stronger than antioxidants in other foods. The article is light on detail, but it sounds like they do a supercritical fluid extraction from the shells of prawn heads.

This is good news for my father-in-law who enjoys the shell on prawns with the heads. He's getting plenty of antioxidants. That's one dish we've had at Pah Ke's Chinese Restaurant and maybe we'll be able to get some in a few weeks. I like it, but can't do the heads. I might have to change my mind.

I also saw this article today that talks about a study that found citrus or vitamin C enhances the absorbtion of antioxidants from green tea or green tea extract by 13 times. Pretty significant. I guess that's why you always get tea with lemon for a sore throat.

So putting these two findings together, I'm guessing that eating prawn heads with the shell on that are covered in lemon juice would give enough antioxidant power to produce a fountain of youth effect. I'm sure someone is already running this research study.

Fungus Among Us

According to Michele, she has polypores growing on an old tree stump in her backyard. To the chemist, it's a neat looking relatively flat mushroom in a partially shaded area. Here is a little article about them. Here are a couple of the shots I added to the garden set.

Fall Flowers

On Saturday morning Dianne and I made a quick stop at Michele's garden before Dianne went to Tresha's baby shower (and I went flying). We've had some pretty cold mornings and a couple light frosts. The garden is winding down, but I was surprised to see some beautiful flowers still blooming. The light wasn't the best as some clouds were moving in and filtering the sun. I used a flash to get these shots. The first one is a toad lily -- a small (about an inch diameter) flower. The second is a knockout rose. I got other shots of these flowers that you can see at the end of the whole set from the garden.

I Heart Target

On Friday, Dianne and I went shopping for a baby shower gift for Tresha and Kyle. The soon to be (again) parents had registered at Target -- which is great for the non-baby knowledgeable couple. I'm not a big Target shopper, so I didn't realize they carried such a large variety of baby stuff. But the neatest thing about the trip was the shopping experience Target has created for gift registeries (and no, this isn't a paid or sponsored post).

Target has touch screen kiosks just inside the door. With a couple entries, Dianne had pulled up and printed the items that Tresha & Kyle had selected. Each item had the number desired and already purchased, as well as the cost. But the best is yet to come. The printout also showed whether or not the individual item was stocked in this particular store. If it was, it gave the aisle location of the product. It took us all of 5 minutes to find what we wanted to get. Pretty cool!

The printout also had a bar code on it. At the checkout, the clerk scanned the bar code and our purchases were automatically updated in the registery. We had picked up a bunch of other stuff and wanted a separate gift receipt. "No problem," said the clerk. "I'll ring up everything and the baby items will be split out from the rest and printed separately." Now that's a well thought out system. A time savings for Target clerk and painless for the shopper. Thank you, Target!

Stinky Passport

Saw this on the swissmiss site. It's an alternative to a money belt for safely hiding your passport or other valuables while traveling...that is as long as you don't mind having a passport that smells like stinky feet. Check out the socks here.

More Leaf Macros

I uploaded a couple more Autumn leaf macros. Check out the whole collection here. On the maple leaf close-up, I used a flash located behind the leaf and pointed right at the camera to bring out the colors and contrast of the leaf. On the underside of the leaf I used two flashes, both grazing the surface, to bring out the ridges in the leaf.

Paper Macros

This week the Macro Mondays group on Flickr has a theme of paper. As usual, I consulted with Dianne to get some ideas for the theme. She thought a burned or charred piece of paper would be interesting. The photo to the right is a couple of charred pages from a pad of paper. A bunsen burner really makes quick work of this job. There are a couple other photos of charred paper in my set of paper macro photos.

Dianne also thought a photo of pages flipping would be interesting. The trick was trying to catch the motion. I used a set of charts printed on telephone book type of paper -- instrument approach charts used when flying into an airport under poor visibility conditions. They are replaced every couple of months, so I had plenty around. I used a slow, rear sync flash to catch both the pages themselves as well as the motion blur of the pages as they fell. I took about 30 shots to get a couple that showed good page movement. I thought it turned out well and, of course, I like the aviation connection.

Wilkinson Promotion

I haven't tried the game itself, but I think the trailer associated with the "Fight for Kisses" promotion on this Wilkinson site is too funny. Don't mess with that baby!

Visual DNA

Ran across this personality survey today. It uses an image based approach to discern your personality. An interesting approach. I thought my results were fairly accurate considering there weren't that many questions in the test.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Boo!

Happy Halloween!

Over at Songs in Haiku we've had a Halloween theme going the last few days. Check it out!

Leaf Flight

It was a beautiful Autumn day here in the Cincinnati area. Very few clouds in the sky made for a nice day to check out the fall colors and get some photos from the air.

In the afternoon I went flying North and West of the Cincinnati area. I first went over the Caesar Creek state park area and then flew West to Richmond, IN. With the sun still so high in the sky there was a lot of afternoon heating that created thermals and some turbulence. It was especially noticeable around Caesar Creek which explains why there is a soaring club there. Even at a shutter speed of 1/800th I had some blurry photos. The photo to the right is one I took around the edge of Caesar Creek lake. The leaves are looking good with lots of yellow, some red, and still some green. In another week or so many of the yellow leaves will be gone as will most of the green. Click here for another photo of the park and click here to see the bridge across the lake. The photo below was taken somewhere between Middletown, OH and Richmond.

Aviation Charts & Google Earth

One thing I find a little hard to do when making a cross country flight to a new airport is to spot the airport from a distance. Large airports are pretty easy. The small ones, with just a single runway, can be harder to see. They are easier to spot when you're up high, but you have to plan your descent to be at the right altitude when you get to the entry pattern for the field. That compounds the problem. Winter makes things a little easier as the dark runways pop out from the surrounding snowy landscape.

I've been using the top down satellite views available on Google Maps to get more familiar with the lay of the land. It helps to translate a chart view to the view of the area. An example is shown in the image below. The satellite image on the left has a green arrow showing the Blue Ash airport (KISZ). Compare that to the VFR chart view on the right where the Blue Ash airport is the red rectangle above the 100/50 numbers. (Click on the image to see a larger version) The satellite views help, but you never have that top down view when you're flying in.

Last week I ran across a site called Chart Geek. They provide aviation charts (sectional charts) that can be used in combination with Google Earth and the flying feature. It's a nice addition since you can get a view from the same perspective you'll have when flying in to a new airport. A neat idea. Here is a sample video from Chart Geek.

Some Leaves

The leaves are finally starting to get some color here. Because it was such a dry summer, some of the leaves just died and don't have much color. But there are some nice colors. It's a pretty time of year.

Here are a few leaf macros. The first is a partially curled up maple leaf. The second is the underside of a dried, curled leaf. I used a direct flash from the right and a diffused flash from the left to accentuate the veins. The bottom photo is a leaf I pressed flat and let dry. Not a lot of color, but I like the texture.

My Suspicion Confirmed

Dianne's out of town for a couple days. That means I'm a bachelor and I have complete control of the TV. So what did I watch tonight while relaxing a bit? I decided to check out an episode of Cavemen on ABC. I know, I know -- what was I thinking? I couldn't resist checking it out. I figured it would be bad, but I had no idea how bad it could be. Wow! How long can the pissed off caveman theme hold on? Not very long unless ABC is really desperate for sitcom ideas. Trust me on this one.

Murphy Feather

I'm so far behind posting photos. It's time for a series of photo posts. Our Quaker parakeet, Murphy, went through a molt recently -- surprising since she has picked out a lot of feathers. Here is one of her feathers. A little dusty, but I like the green and blue colors.

Jason's CRG Photos

In case all you roller derby fans didn't notice, Jason Bechtel posted his photos from last Sunday's match between the Cincinnati Rollergirls and the Burning River Roller Girls. Click here to see his Flickr photo set. As I've said before, his photos are excellent -- even more impressive given the lighting conditions in a roller rink.

My favorites from Jason's set include his series below showing The Librarian giving it her all to block the very tall BRRG skater Rogue Cheddar. The Librarian was taking on a mountain of a pivot to make a path for the jammer, EMolition. The Librarian seemed set up well...blocking from inside out and getting a solid hit in. But she just bounced off and went down. I think Jason's photo series was taken just before my photo showing her on the floor. It's that type of heart, taking on someone about twice your size, that makes it fun to watch the CRG team. To see Jason's full size versions of these Librarian photos, click here for 1, here for 2, here for 3, and here for 4. Thanks to Jason for posting another great set of photos. Check 'em out!

Macro Mondays Music

I'm so far behind in posting pictures! It's been a busy week.

This past Monday the theme for the Macro Mondays group on Flickr was "music." This one was relatively easy to get a couple photos. For the last several months I've been trying to learn how to play the guitar. I used that for my main subject. At the right is a tuning peg on our electric guitar. I like the spiral wound string on the peg. Below is a shot taken with a slow shutter speed just after plucking a string. I thought the vibrating string represented the music theme well.

Lately I learned the chords to the Oasis song Wonderwall. That was relatively easy. Now I'm trying to learn some picking techniques for the song White Bird. K. T. Tunstall is good acoustic guitar player! That song is a lot tougher, but I like the sound of that style of playing.

Dianne is very quickly getting sick of hearing both of these songs. She's also sick of hearing Everywhere I Go. A great blues song I learned a couple months ago -- although I have no idea what the lyrics are!

Black-Eyed Buckeyes Bout

On Sunday evening, Dianne and I went to Castle Skateland in Loveland to watch the final home bout of the season for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. Cincinnati hosted the Burning River Roller Girls from the Cleveland area. Cincinnati lost the match -- their only loss so far this year. I'm not sure of the final score (I'm sure Miss Print will have it on her blog), but they lost by about 30+ or so. However, the final score doesn't reflect the whole story of the evening. Cincinnati skated hard and stayed in the hunt most of the evening.

The Burning River Roller Girls have a strong 'all star' team. They have several fast jammers including Professor Booty and Eva Lucien. Although their jammers were fast and strong, the Cincinnati jammers seemed to be a pretty even match for them when in the open. Sk8 Crime, EMolition, Candy KICKass, Miss Print, and Sadistic Sadie were jamming for Cincinnati. I thought the main difference between the teams was with blocking. The BRRG team has several strong pivots/blockers that included Ivanna Destroya, Morbid Cherub, and Rouge Cheddar. Ivanna and Rouge are pretty tall (close to 6 feet) which gave them a bit of an advantage with stride and bracing for blocks. In addition, the BRRG pack seemed very well organized in general. That size and organization made some jams difficult for the Cincinnati jammers. A couple examples are the photos at the right. On the top, Candy KICKass got a hard shoulder block while stuck behind Rouge and Morbid. The second photo shows EMolition getting squeezed between the shoulders of Kill Basa and CoCo Sparx (the BRRG skaters in orange).

It was tough in the pack with both teams dishing out their share of hard blocks. Sk8 Crime went down hard early on and Mean Arlene fell and hit her head/helmet hard on the floor. The CRG blockers were hitting hard too. The photo here shows the after effects of a hit that Sadistic Sadie gave to Morbid Cherub (the skater in orange on the floor) in order to clear a path for Miss Print (wearing the jammer star).


After the first period, Cincinnati was behind by about 20 or so. They adjusted during the break between periods and battled back in the second period to get within 8 or so. The third period started OK until one jam where the Cincinnati jammer was sent to the penalty box and BRRG scored ~14 to Cincinnati's 0. We missed what happened to result in that penalty. That hurt. The next jam Sadie returned the favor with a 10-0 jam in favor of Cincinnati, but that was followed by an 11-0 jam in favor of BRRG. The BRRG team scored quite a bit in the last few minutes to widen the gap. But for the match as a whole, it was a great effort by all the CRG skaters. Check out all my photos from the event in my Flickr set here.

It was a good event logistically too. The experienced Cincinnati Rollergirls and volunteers know how to put on a good derby event. I have to say I prefer the Gardens, but I understand the need to use another venue. I was a bit surprised with the smaller crowd. I thought the place would be packed given the way the Cincinnati Rollergirls have been filling the Gardens. The Bengals finished early -- maybe the Sunday "school night" cut back on the crowd?

After the event I was able to chat with a couple skaters including The Librarian. She was kind enough to pose for another photo with me. You gotta love the shush pose.

Even though the home season is over, the Cincinnati Rollergirls' traveling team has matches coming up in St. Paul and Denver. Maybe my Minnesota readers will catch the St. Paul event next weekend. Good luck to the group on those trips! Check out Miss Print's blog for info about those events and other off season news.

Thanks to all the Cincinnati Rollergirls for a great home season this year!