I finally captured a duck taking off with no blurring and with the wings out front. My other attempts weren’t bad at all, but there was always that bit of blur out on the wing tips. These guys take off so fast and take you by surprise, so it’s not an easy chore to even get em in focus. I ordered an 8×12 of this one, can’t wait to see it.
This picture was my 365th straight day of photography. Every day for 365 days I took a picture. I highly recommend it to people as it keeps you on your toes with your equipment and shooting styles. It gets you to experiment and makes you more aware of things around you in your everyday life. You don’t have to produce mind blowing pictures with every shot. Do it to learn and try new things with your camera. It’s a tough challenge, but people do it all the time. So now what? I don’t know. I want to continue shooting a picture daily and with all the daily photo themes on google+, it’s easy to come up with something. I think a daily photo works better than a blog. I like how I can kick in the slideshow and go through the past year and read my comments. A picture can add so much to convey a message. Oh wait, last year had 366 days! Why yes it did and I decided to end the 365 project with a picture of the 365 crew and making it the 366 the pic to complete one year.
Luka and I enjoy our little travel adventures to get a new picture even if it meant just exploring the yard at home to get a picture. This was not an easy picture to get either. A self portrait alone is hard enough without trying to get a dog to cooperate with ya. I think it only took like 20 attempts to get it, augh. I want to take some more pics with Luka, but I’m going to find someone to run the camera next time. Luka still has her good days and bad days. I will be surprised if she goes another year. She has finally accepted and uses the ramp into the vehicle now. That took some doing to teach her to use the ramp. She’d been so use to just jumping in and out of blazer that the ramp idea didn’t make sense to her. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit she was getting old. I started going every other day with her pain meds, but I do watch her and see how she goes and if she seems like she needs one, she gets it. I played a bit of fetch with her yesterday and she didn’t seem to have any problems. A couple of weeks ago and she just wasn’t into it and moved slower. So I believe there is some improvement with her getting around. The last time I had been out fishing she was roaming around more and not laying by the vehicle like she was doing earlier. Maybe she is learning to moderate herself also and that is helping her get around more. Time will tell I guess. I’d love to get at least another 4 years out of her, but I won’t let her suffer either.
Tags: 365
Posted in Photos |
Another prom came and went and I really enjoyed taking the afternoon and shooting people. The weather cooperated and made for a terrific day. Things flowed very well for me, I took the time to prepare and it work nicely. I really wasn’t prepared to shoot outside with cars tho. I really wasn’t planning on doing shots like that, but it worked. Midday of a sunny day doesn’t work well for cars or people. I really should learn how to photograph cars, especially lighting them up.
The night before prom was cold and wet, but Devan came out and was a trooper. I had heaters running and they worked well, just an extra pain to set them up. I can’t wait for the weather to get nice outside and get some outdoor shots. Anyway, the photo below is one of my favorites of the shoot.
She has such blue eyes. This was shot with a PCB beauty dish up front and two strobes in the back on each side shooting against white styrofoam. I basically built a big white sytrofoam box where the people stood in and I shot into. I used the same setup with the prom people and it worked really well.
So after posting pics Fri – Sun to my Photos by KJS facebook page, I had over 2000+ people viewing the photos. I only have 225 friends on my facebook account so the pics reached out very well. They were not advertised on other sites, just strictly facebook. The power of reach with the social networks is amazing. The thing to learn is what works with the various social networks. One pic will catch on like fire in one social network where it is ice cold in another. I do find the facebook social to be the most responsive overall. Google+ does fairly well along with flickr, but I could easily combine Google+ and flickr and it still wouldn’t match up with facebook. So you really need to know who your audience is.
Tags: prom, social networks, Strobes
Posted in Photos |
March 19th, 2012 and we have our first thunderstorm of the year. Normally in March we are on constant guard for heavy snow and blizzards, but this March we have no snow and thunderstorms. I woke up and check the radar and saw a small band out by Clyde so I headed out to see if I could catch up to it as it was heading North. I got to Clyde and the clouds came rolling in from the West heading NE and was able to capture the shelf cloud followed by heavy rains that knocked visibility way down.
I left there and headed back to Langdon and got there just in time to get hit by a different system which was very familiar to what hit Clyde. You can see the video I did and hear the little bits of hail. Notice how I can barely see a full length between poles. I’m right beside town and it totally disappeared.
I kinda had to chuckle at myself as I was sitting there in the storms all excited as I realized I had left my windows open at home. I’ll have to pay more attention to that next time, but it was all good. I am curious as to what the long range forecast is for our area. Will we see much for storms? 3/4 of state is in a red flag warning already due to temps and wind drying things up. If temps are like this in March, what will mid summer bring? I guess time will only tell.
Tags: Clyde, rain, storms, thunderstorm
Posted in General, Photos |
The other day was Leap day as April 29th rolled in. I got this picture on the way back from the dentist. It was suppose to storm, but it ended up staying way to the south and we didn’t get anything, which is fine with me. The sun was coming up and the sky was moody, made for a good picture. I still remember shingling that church, lots of roof jacks for that one.
It’s amazing at the things we can learn in life that can take you by surprise. Banking, seems simple enough to me. I put money in the bank, I buy stuff, the bank pays them, transaction successful. I recently learned that banks do not have to honor this process tho, even when they verify it’s legit and you’ve been making payments for 16 months to a legit company. Banks and regulations can determine who gets your money and who doesn’t. They can block an entire country from banking. I think this is just crazy as every business in a country is not a bad or fraud investment. Why can’t banks whitelist companies that are legit instead of blocking the entire country, doesn’t that seem more logical? I found this hard to believe so I called another bank and asked if they could make a payment to the country and they said no and than went on to explain they only basically allow transactions in USA and Canada. I get the feeling we won’t be able to make payments to stores across from your very own street in the near future. I was even questioned about the company B&H Photo over in New York, which is a well known major photography store. There was another well known company they asked me about too, but forget which one it was now.
So all this leaves me scratching my head as to what good is our banking system if transactions are getting harder and harder to do with your very own money? It’s the same with trying to get a loan. You go in needing a certain dollar amount and than they throw back a figure at you that is lower. I don’t expect having to haggle at a bank. If I need $10,000.00 and they say they can only go $6000.00, it’s a bust. If I only needed $6000.00 I would of only asked for $6000.00. I hear others trying to get loans run into the same problem. Car dealerships will even tell you which banks to stay away from cause they are useless to go to. So it’s just not me experiencing this, even businesses are. So what is our banking system doing if they don’t want to make your payments nor give you loans that fit the needs? And here I thought banking was so easy. What a crazy world we live in.
I’m still convinced money/currency was the worst idea that man ever came up with. It’s ruining the world as a whole.
Tags: banking, leap day
Posted in General, Photos |
I made it to Minot the 28th and 29th and was finally able to see some of the flood damage that happened last spring. Almost a year later and there is much work to be done. My lens died on me once I got to Minot, not sure what the odds of that is, but the focusing abilities would not work and you could hear the motor making an abnormal sound. I had a kit lens along with me so I was still able to get some shots in. I’m glad Tamron has a 6 year warranty, so they should be receiving my lens today. They told me it only takes 5 days to repair, so hopefully I get it back shortly. It’s no fun when your equipment is ill and a shoot coming up quickly.
I had fun seeing Darwin and the night life. I want to get over into the Minot area when the weather is actually nice. Windy, cold and snowy this time and last time was cold, windy and rainy. I’ll have to try and get over there in the spring sometime.
Tags: Minot
Posted in General, Photos |
Winter temperatures came in full force this week. It was bound to happen, but I was hoping it wouldn’t. We hit the cold spot in the state with -47 the other morning, hence the sundogs in the picture above. We only have about a month and half left of severe winter so I can’t complain. Normally we have already had a couple months of this weather. We still don’t have a lot of snow and if that holds, spring will be early.
The 365 project is flowing right along and only 115 pictures to go. I love the idea of a daily photo blog. It’s gonna be great to be able to scroll through the entire year of photos. It gives you more of a sense of what was happening in the world. I’ll have to see once I hit the 365 mark, but no plans to stop as of now.
Posted in Photos |
2012 is here and our winter here has just been super mild. I have never seen a winter like this. We just got a couple of inches of snow the other day to turn things white, but the temps are suppose to be record temps today with some areas expecting 50 F degrees. The above picture is the Jan 2nd sunset.
Discussion going on google+ about mirrorless cameras the upcoming next generation of cameras. Do we still continue to spend money on our current DSLRs that are not compatible with the new cameras? One will have to start all over if one makes the switch. I’m in no rush, gonna keep snappin with the canon 60D till she can’t snap no more. By than the market will have more availability of mirrorless equipment. The technology is looking good so far, gonna be interesting.
The 365 project is still rolling along and currently 234 shots in. I’m testing out the Magic Lantern on my camera and liking it. It reported that I had taken just over 9000 pictures on the camera. It’s hard to believe one took that many, but I guess when you are constantly bracketing your shots from three to six pictures with the majority of the pictures, it don’t take long. I’ve kicked the idea around of putting up a steel building for a studio, but I hate debt. I shall keep thinking about it for now. The end of February I have set up a shoot with a gal from Texas that will be up to Drayton, ND for a friend’s wedding. I hope that doesn’t fall through as I am excited for that event. I miss shooting glamour stuff, hard to come by around here.
I worked on the gallery site some, adding in some small changes such as the icons for the offsite stuff like google+, facebook, twitter and blog. Smugmug can be such a roller coaster, things roll along super than you hit a bump, but for the most part, it’s great service and options.
Anyway looking forward to being part of the photography world in 2012.
Tags: 2012, mirrorless
Posted in General, Photos |
Christmas is coming in fast and we hardly have any snow. The ground has a light dusting and that is it. Temps haven’t been too bad up to now, but than this weekend they are talking 30s again. I could get use to winters like this. I think I am pretty much done xmas shopping, kept things simple.
I finally bit the bullet and redid my entertainment center. I went with a new tv and bluray player instead of building a computer to run boxee. I had no idea the tvs and devices could do so much with internet so instead of reinventing the wheel, just bought the ready to go equipment. I’m still learning about all this HD stuff. Picking a tv was just insane of how many tvs exist with so many different options. My biggest concerns was finding equipment to play .mkv files since I am in the process of ripping my DVDs down to a smaller size and than have them available on the local network. Everything has arrived and working as I need them to be. The wireless tv and bluray are a perfect match. Now I need to decide to keep my satellite tv package and do the hulu plus and netflix deals. I’m currently trying out the hulu plus free trial and I’m not impressed with the amount of commercials. The movie selection is very poor. The only benefit I can see is the ease of watching tv episodes. I just wish they didn’t have so many commercials for the paying subscribers. I started watching the Terra Nova series and there is like 6-7 commercial breaks from 30 seconds to a full minute and they are the same commercials over and over. They got old really fast. I googled on hulu plus to see what other’s thought and it seems hulu plus has a negative reaction as other’s complain about the commercials too. Yes, we watch commercials with our regular satellite/cable subscription. Yes, it only costs $8 bucks a month compared to a $60 satellite/cable package. I just hate commercials of any kind. With netflix and hulu plus at $16.00 a month compared to $60+ a month, it’s a great enough savings to make the change. Sounds like a good way to start of f2012, cut back on expenses. The economy isn’t going to get any better and money is only going to get harder to come by.
Now with so many things in the house using internet, I sure could use more bandwidth as streaming and buffering is no fun.
Tags: hdtv, hulu plus, netflix
Posted in General |