15 seconds

My last 3 weeks have been absolutely insane.  So insane that I now know what it's like to completely lose touch with almost every aspect of my life except work.  If someone were to ask me about notable news headlines since August 8th, I might know of 1 or 2.  Worst of all is the time spent away from my wife and kids as I labored to finish the first phase of a very big project at work.  I think I went 3-4 days without seeing my youngest daughter because I was gone before she woke up and came home long after she was in bed.  But, I managed to complete this first phase and am finally decompressing.

Yellow, Blue, and White

Obviously, I had very little time to think about photography, although I do believe it's continuously shuffling in and out of my subconscious even during my busiest moments.  So, during one of my many long, long days, I was rushing from one area of the plant to another and a quick glance to the sky stopped me in my tracks.  For the next 15 seconds I managed to think about nothing else except that one moment.  The sky was amazing and if there were some way I could've taken a picture of the entire expanse of its beauty, I would have.  I didn't have my trusty Nikon, but I did have the next best thing, my iPhone.  I snapped a picture and back to work I went.  Yep, 15 seconds.

1,000 Blog Views

Earlier today I happened to notice that my blog had surpassed 1,000 total pageviews, which is a cool milestone.  Somehow I've managed to hoodwink enough people into thinking I really have something important to say.  :)

In all honesty, I really appreciate anyone that visits this site and takes some time viewing my photography.  I remember writing my first couple posts thinking, "Nobody is ever going to read this stuff," mainly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say.  Those first posts took quite some time to complete and post because I kept starting over from scratch.  In the end I had to remind myself on the reason I wanted to write a blog and why I got passionate about photography in the first place - it's my creative outlet to please myself.


A few years ago I realized that life continues to hand you more responsibilities in the form of marriage, children, work, mortgage and a hundred other things.  While all those things can be tremendously rewarding, I found that I wasn't a very creative person anymore and it bothered me.  I struggled with trying to figure out why I didn't really enjoy drawing, or painting, or making music like I used to when I was younger.  But, along came photography and I suddenly found my creativity again.  Most importantly, I didn't feel like I needed to please anyone with my photographs except me.  Why was this important?  Well, we all know how much time we spend in our daily lives trying to please other people and sometimes it gets overwhelming.

Bottom line is this:  I love taking pictures.  It's one of maybe 3-4 activities that I've found where I completely lose all sense of time - I'm simply off in my own little world.  The idea that other people (you!) might actually enjoy my photography and my thoughts is an added bonus of which I'm deeply grateful!

So, if you're not feeling creative go pick up a pencil or a paintbrush or, better yet, a camera and get busy creating something.  You never know what you might discover.

Feeling a bit Black and White

I love color photography and it's hard not to.  We're surrounded by color and we're used to associating specific colors with different emotions.  In fact, take any art class and I guarantee you'll receive an art instructor sermon at some point that discusses several color-to-emotion relationships.  But, a lot of the emotion that certain colors evoke just seem to come naturally, as if our brains are wired that way.  That's why color photography can be so powerful.

An Adventure Awaits

So, one would think that if all colors, except black and white, are removed from a photograph that we would end up having an emotionless photo, right?  Well, it depends.  Some of the time, that color-less photo IS going have no emotion and look like nothing more than a gray slab.  But, other times the transition to black and white arouses emotions just as powerful as those brought on with colors.  How can this be?

For me, black and white photography is about simplicity.  You take away all the distractions and get right down to the raw data - the nitty-gritty.  If that raw data is captured effectively, then the final output can be pure bliss.  But, instead of colors, black and white photos must rely more heavily on compositional factors - shapes, leading lines, framing, balance - and the use of lighting, contrast, and textures to awaken our emotions.  And, although there is no color, I'm fascinated how the many shades of gray can affect me as if the colors were there.

Bighorn Sheep on the Lookout

With that in mind, I've been in a *mostly* black and white mood when working with several new photos that I captured on our recent vacation to visit some of my family.  We traveled back to my hometown (Green River, Wyoming) and continued to Grand Junction, Colorado and enjoyed every minute of it.  Compared to past vacations, I really didn't take that many photographs.  But, I'm quite happy with those I did capture.  New photos can be found in both the "Nature and Wildlife" and "Landscapes and Scenics" galleries.  However, I've also created a "Black & White" gallery as a quick-click way to showcase my color-less creations.

To wrap things up, there is one more new gallery titled, "iPhone," which, as you may have guessed, features photos captured and edited on my favorite mobile gadget.

Enjoy!

Reorganize

Spent a great amount of time tonight completing some housekeeping on my main photography website.  I never really liked the way I organized my photos to begin with, so I renamed a few galleries, moved pictures here and there, and added a new gallery.  I probably should've spent more time on this task from the start, but I was in a hurry to get enough photos on the site to make it meaningful.  Not sure if I'll end up keeping things exactly as they are now, but I'm happier with what I changed.

I still had some photos from my pre-vacation 50mm outage that I wanted to post, so those are now in my new gallery, "Things," which can be found here.  They didn't really fit in any of my other galleries, so I simply created a new one.  As a preview, here are a couple of my favorites:

I already mentioned that I recently returned from vacation.  Although I didn't take nothing close to the amount of photos that I normally would have, I did get some that I'm very happy with.  Hopefully, I'll get those posted sometime this week.

Enjoy!

Nifty Fifty

As promised, here are some more photos taken with the 50mm f/1.8D lens.  It's a very fantastic lens and extremely fun to shoot with.  I can't imagine a better lens for the price.

An interesting FYI, the sunflowers in two of the pictures were a surprise addition to our flower bed.  Apparently, the birds feeding throughout the winter on black oil sunflower seeds from our feeders aren't very efficient eaters.  We had several sunflowers sprout this spring and two of them are now about 4 1/2 feet tall.

Enjoy!

Happy Father's Day

Ok, two months since my last post is completely unacceptable.  But, it's been a busy couple of months (aren't they all?) and the summer is in full stride here in Northeast Kansas.  I've been doing a ton of shooting, but the majority has been around the house chasing kids.  In fact, I'm fairly close to eclipsing 10,000 pictures on my new camera, which is a cool little milestone.  I can only imagine how many images pro photographers take because I take a lot!

As much as I love shooting my children (they change so quickly!), I look forward to every opportunity to get outdoors to shoot the world around me.  It's even more exciting to see the world through a new lens, which is just what I've been doing the last couple days.  All praise be to Father's Day!

Nikon recently introduced it's newest 50mm lens, the AF-S Nikkor f/1.8G, but that's not the lens I got.  I am the happy new owner of the 50mm AF Nikkor f/1.8D, which is about $100 less than the new lens.  I jumped on the f/1.8D due to it's excellent price and outstanding optical performance.  My assumption is that the f/1.8D will be phased out with the introduction of the new AF-S version, so I wanted to get one while they were still available.

So, over the last couple days I've put the new lens through it's paces.  Again, mostly pictures of my kids, but I managed to turn the lens to one of my cats and got the capture you see here.  Everything about this picture I absolutely love: the sharpness, the color, the contrast, the depth-of-field, the composition.  It just works.  And, here's the kicker, this was shot through our living room window while my cat, Paris, napped on the bench that sits on our front porch.  Pretty impressive lens!

I will be adding some more photos captured with this lens in the next couple of days.  I went out this evening for about an hour and got several more photos that I'm very happy with and eager to share.  This lens will definitely be getting a lot of playing time in the future!

To finish, here are some photos I've captured with other lenses that I recently posted to my photo website.  Click on any picture and it will redirect you to the image on my photo website.  I hope you enjoy them.

Who cooks for you? Who cooks for yooouuuu?

I left work today thinking to myself, "It's been a while since I captured a good outdoor picture."  But, considering the day's weather was absolutely terrible (overcast, windy, cold, miserable) I didn't figure on having any photo opportunities arise on my drive home.  But luck has a funny way of popping up every now and then.

Rewind a bit to the weekend where we had to make a trip into Lawrence on both Saturday and Sunday.  On each trip, I saw a beautiful Barred Owl perched on the same exact fencepost just off the side of the rode.  Unfortunately, I was without my camera and, even if I had it with me, the likelihood of actually stopping for a possible picture was pretty slim for a couple reasons.  First, anyone who has traveled with young children knows that the experience can be extremely entertaining and pleasant or like being dragged by your fingernails through the depths of hell.  Our youngest (13 months old) absolutely hates car rides.  So, any additional time spent in the car could be just the ticket to push your blood pressure through the stratosphere.  Second, each time I saw the owl it was out of the corner of my eye at 65 mph, so any chances at photos would have required a U-turn and parking close enough to get a good view.  However, my track record of rolling up on birds carefully enough to keep them from flying is pretty bad.  So, the most I could do was file the experience away in my mind and hope that I might get a similar experience again in the future.

So fast-forward to today, there I was, cruising along, listening to conservative talk radio and wondering what the evening would provide once I arrived home.  Should I go to the gym?  What are we going to eat for dinner?  Yada yada.  But, any time I'm driving there's a part of my subconscious that is scanning the surrounding scenery for...anything...birds, deer, a grand landscape.  This drive was no different and my senses proved to be working great and my luck suddenly changed.  As I passed by the same fencepost from the weekend, my eyes caught the site of the owl sitting atop it and this time I got a really good look at it.  Gorgeous.  But, I had a car following me closely, so any attempt to pull of the road immediately probably would have ended in a wreck.  I had to try my luck at finding a place to U-turn and then slowly rolling up on the bird to put myself in position to get a decent picture.  Turns out, I U-turned twice because I didn't like the idea of trying to pull onto the shoulder on the same side of the road as the owl for fear it would fly off.  Turned out to be a wise decision.


I managed to pull off the road and began getting shots out of my truck window.  The owl was beautiful and didn't seem to care too much about my presence.  But, I also noticed something odd about this owl.  It's right eye appeared to be either missing or extremely clouded over, so it's fair to assume this owl only benefitted from one good eye.  To think, an animal that relies so heavily on having good eyesight, especially at night, in order to hunt to survive and here I find one with only one good eye.  Pretty tough bird.

I also couldn't help but notice that I seemed to be the only person on the road paying enough attention to even see this amazing bird sitting there.  Seriously, I was ecstatic to see it during the weekend and I was even more stoked that it allowed me another opportunity and this time I had my camera.  Even as I sat with my camera lens sticking far out of my window not a single car slowed down to see what I was taking pictures of.  Now, I know they're not rare or endangered, but you definitely don't see them every  day.  In fact, I know we have at least two flying around in the creek bottom behind my house because I hear them all the time when I let the dogs out at night.  But, I've never seen one when I take walks to the creek.  Here I find one in broad daylight and nobody else seemed to care that it was there to be admired.

Anyway, I captured several images and actually got within about 15 feet of it after getting out of my truck and walking to the opposite shoulder.  The owl made two final poses before finally deciding it had had enough of my company.  The picture you see here is my favorite and I think it shows just how beautiful these birds are.  The size, the eyes, the talons.  Amazing.

For those of you reading who are unfamiliar with Barred Owls, they are also commonly referred to as Hoot Owls.  Additional info, including a few sound bytes of their familiar calls can be found here.

Enjoy!