...Rolls   In

Windjammer Days Each spring (in June) Boothbay Harbor, Maine hosts Windjammer days. On this day, old wooden, masted schooners parade into the harbor under full sail. Heritage at Windjammer Days They are gorgeous old sailing vessels and are a wonderful photo op!  Windjammer Days In this one the boat sails by a cottage on the harbor! The juxtaposition of sails and roof is wonderful, don't you think? Don't see that too often anywhere else!! Windjammer Days in the fog In this one, a lady gets her morning 'constitutional' on the harbor the day after Windjammer Days. The boats harbor overnight and are still around the next morning. I think there's usually a fireworks display over the harbor the night of the event, so there's another photo op as well! Windjammer Days in AM fog. And as you can see here, even fog does not obscure the photogenic!! Yes, we DO get a lot of fog on the Maine coast in the summer. The warmer air condenses into fog when it comes into contact with the cold water...seldom gets out of the 60's (water temp that is) in summer....brrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

Anyway, this event is well-worth the trip up here. The boats sail into harbor around 1:00 PM in the afternoon, then sail back out at different times the next day.

And these boats don't always come through. If the weather is bad, they pass on the event as it is threacherous passing the Pemaquid area in a storm (yes, the area by the lighthouse...see previous posts). They don't wish to endanger their passengers.

So, far of the 4 years I've lived here, they have come all 4 years!!  

Here is my entry for the Best of 2007 contest. I got up before sunrise to check out the sunrise on the marsh at Lake Minnetonka. This image of the cattails with fog in the background was my favorite of the shoot.

Cattails at Sunrise

For a few days, the weather has held at a very low fog that never burns off. I live near Stillwater, MN which has the oldest working lift bridge in the U.S.  stillwater is centered around a bit of a valley.  Turning slightly to the left, you'll see the bridge from the north.  You can glimpse  the Anderson Windows factory in the haze.  Here is one from closer up.
 It is somewhat of an adventure walking on the sidewalk everytime a truck goes by.  The whole bridge vibrates so much you're suprised it didn't shake apart. Here is the view from the middle of the bridge, looking north.  Although it is does not have the grand view granted by the surrounding hills, this angle down the
tunnel may be my favorite.  Finally, we swing around 180 degrees to catch a view from the south hill.  Thank you for reading.

  I won't go into all the reasons I've been gone for so long, mostly health-related, but I stared death in the face and he looked away first so I'm back...now if I could just out stare the cat.  I did manage to take a few pics but they were few and far between and mostly when I had to babysit. Nothing great just easing back...
  We had some major fog the other morning and most of the day.
Hangin' Tree
Power Interrupted
  We did have some snow last week and it is currently snowing like crazy and expecting 3-5 inches.
First Snow
Red Barn  
Wheel
  Just for fun.
Me No Likey  He liked the snow but not cold hands. If you're wondering, yes, I caught hell for taking his gloves off... but it's easier to make snowballs.
Winnie the Post  There's gotta be a story here but I have no idea what it is...no houses nearby.  

Another day another sunset in Central Oregon. A lone juniper tree in the forground and the Cascade Mountains in the background. Today the fog dropped down allowing the tops of the mountails to show better. I remembered my mittens today! Tomorrow it's back to the valley and home.

Central Oregon Sunset 1
Central Oregon Sunset 2
Central Oregon Sunset 3
Central Oregon Sunset 4

Greetings Earthlings,

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Your weather update fron Central Oregon is as follows....

Near the top of Santiam Pass.. Snow on the mountain
We were greeted by fog as we dropped down off the hill..Fog on the East side (That is Mt Jefferson in the background)
With the wind chill it was in the 20's up on Round Butte and I forgot my mittens but it was a  Sunset worth the cold. One more of the Sunset worth the cold..

We will see what the weather brings for shooting tomorrow.

  Yesterday I got a last minute early morning call from the boy wanting me to watch Jaryd.  So we got an extra roadtrip this week.  It was real nice and foggy but with the late start the sun was already up pretty high.  Luckily the fog was pretty thick for awhile.
Glow.
Ghost tree.  B&w but not much color in the color version anyway.
Light in the forest.
Backlight.
Baclight-HDR This is an "over the top", in my opinion, HDR version of the previous shot.
Baclight -Mild This is more like the amount of effect I prefer.
  The first backlight shot is pretty much straight from the camera and the last is closer to what I saw but I've been shooting a lot of shots with the auto bracketing turned on so I could play with them later using the HDR software.  It's very easy to get a gaudy, unnatural look with the adjustments in Photomatix which I think I did in the middle shot. Of course, others may prefer it.  While I prefer the more natural look it is fun to play with.
Comments and criticism, hopefully constructive, are welcome.  Except for those mentioned all other shots are not HDR.

I was so excited that we got fog this morning, we never get fog! I'm trying to get better at shooting in it because I love the effects...

Bridge Park 1 Park 2

The fog burned off for just a few minutes the other morning before it was replaced by clouds.

Carpet of Green and Gold

Canon 40D

Canon 17-40 F4 L @17mm

Manual..  1/100 @ F11

Location, lighting and luck ;-)

Not too far from where I grew up in Cleveland, there is an old abandoned turn of the century building, now located in the Cleveland Metroparks system, called Squire's Castle.  

While I was in High school in the 1970's, it was a popular spot to go drink beer at night (and lots of other illicit activities  took place in the woods out back, but that's a whole 'nother story...).  At that time, the building was pretty dilapidated and the parks sytstem didn't pay too much attention to it...urban legends swirled around the place thicker than the fog in San Francisco Bay...ghosts with red lanterns roamed the ruins at night...

Here's a link to the best of the legends:
http://www.prairieghosts.com/oh-squir.html

I left Ohio in 1995 and I hadn't been back to the castle in quite a long time, but I stopped by recently and was quite surprised to see that the old place has been spruced up and is now a little bit better maintained.  Here's what it looks like today:

a little piece of history

The last time I hung out here, there was no roof, no landscaping except for a trash bin, and a whole lot creepier...I never saw any ghosts, but I sure do have a lot of interesting memories.....

This could be the last of the fog shots.

Weather is changing here.

morning mist for the challenge

three boats

Haven't been shooting much the last few days been doing a lot of chores that fell behind while I was down in the back.  Chores that needed to get done before we leave on vacation.  Did manage to stop by the river this morning after I took Barb to work. The river was very calm with a little morning fog beginning to lift.  All alone and, except for a family of ducks, very quiet.  A very sleepy and peaceful morning.  I could have stayed all day but I had chores to do and am thankful for the minutes I did have.

I just turned over my second year at Photographica, so I thought I'd go back and see if I could pick my four favorite images from the second year of my time here. Trying to pick four favorites from a whole year's worth of shooting is a good exercise. Anyway, here are my picks.

Being in the right place at the right time. This image was taken late in the day last Fall. I was out for one of the last bike rides of the season. The tree colors were at the peak and the sun was going down behind these trees, backlighting the leaves, creating a transparency effect.

Am I glad I brought my camera with me on the way to work on this day. Some days if I know I'm going to be driving to work when the sun is coming up and I think the light might be good, I'll bring my camera with me. As I drove over these railroad tracks I did a double-take and then stopped the car and pulled a U-turn to go back and capture this image.

It pays to watch the weather and get up early. One weekend this summer I saw that the weather conditions at sunrise were going to be perfect for fog over the marsh surrounding Lake Minnetonka, so I got up early to get some images. I was rewarded with this view.

Her eyes still haunt me. I captured this image of a little girl at the Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute, in Yangzhou, China. This is the orphanage where our Anna spent the first 17 months of her life. I still see her eyes, as if they were burning right into my soul. I cannot forget her. I hope and pray she finds a wonderful family.

There was alot of low fog this morning.It looked cool when the sun came up.
PICT00271 PICT00261 PICT003511

Was blessed to be able to get away for a couple of days, so I headed to the coast.  I could sit and watch the ocean for hours, which I did.  These shots are from the Pacifica/Devil's Slide area.  

quiet cove
afternoon sun
wind-carved bluff
coastline
rugged coastline

Yep, there's no better place to sit and unwind than at the ocean....even when the fog hangs around.

It's been so foggy here lately that I'm wondering if the sun will ever shine again.  

Don't ever come to visit San Francisco in July or August.  I feel for all those tourists out there shivering in thier tank tops and shorts.  The fog was so thick today that I needed to use my windshield wipers...But 20 miles down the road, it's summer and the skies are blue.  I will never get used to this weather...

These are from a few months ago, before the sun deserted me...

view from land's end
another view from land's end

I took a drive over to Land's End this afternoon...the fog was so thick I could barely see the ocean from the top of the cliffs.  Thank goodness it's almost time to start traveling to warmer climates for business trips.

Greetings Earthlings,

I have returned from the coast. One of the reasons I went was a find from the last trip. At the time I couldn't find a way to get to it, the tide was in and the sun was out. Well I figured out how to get to it, the tide was out and I had the fog I wanted.

Without comments on the frames because I know those go 50-50, how do you feel about the image?

Long After The Last Voyage

Thanks,
Mike

It's 'fog season' here in lovely San Francisco.  This means it's cold, damp and overcast.  When the fog gets particularly heavy, it's so wet that it almost seems like it's raining.  It usually rolls in overnight, so that when you wake up in the morning, the world looks like one big sodden mess.  Most of the time, it will burn off and the sun will come out, except at the coast.  And even when the beaches are clear and sunny, you can look out over the ocean and see that huge black fog bank, just sitting there waiting....I live  2 blocks from the beach.  I haven't seen the sun in a couple of weeks.  My summer doesn't start until about mid-September when the fog disappears.

So I just use the foggy days to experiment and try to teach myself something new.  Lately I've been fooling around with some of the Develop Presets in Lightroom, just to see what kind of effects I can come up with.  

Yesterdays's experiments started off as a comparison of the different EV compensation values I can get from my speedlight and ended up in Lightroom with some interesting Presets applied to some of the photos I liked.  

These are flowers that came from the grocery store (too wet to go hang out in my garden) and a preset that mimics a bleach bypass printing process from a traditional wet darkroom.

fog season 1
fog season 2
fog season 3

I actually think they turned out kinda nice...

Today's Mission: get in the car and go find some sunshine...there's gotta be some around somewhere....