Vertical Teeth of a Cat

Jaguar....

Old Ford

With nothing to really do today I took some time to edit a photo. It's an old Ford. Every June there is a car show put on by The Taj Ma Garaj, a local garage that specializes in foreign cars and more specifically Porsches. The owner, John Dixon also has a Porsche Museum hear that can be rented out for whatever type of an event you have http://www.tajmagaraj.com/index.php . In June he has the what is called the Speed Fest. It lasts for about a month, fancy diners, covered bridge drives, a kart race where the cars are small like go-karts but with bodies, an autocross the day of the car show and of course the car show Kruze-In. All this for The Children's Hospital and the Ronald McDonald House as well as benefits for the local Epilipsy Foundation. He takes nothing.

This isn't a Porsche but it was still a neat car. Just an old Ford A series I believe. I've learned that I'm going to have to start taking notes of what I take. Just a little noise and color with a simple dumb boarder.

How would you like to see this coming up in your rearview mirror?

Caught and Jailed on a Foggy Morning

Peak-a-boo, I see you peaking over the deck railing. Looking to see if you've been spotted.

Now that you've been caught I have you behind bars. No more messing in my yard.



Wrinkled

Need I say more? Looks like someone forgot to iron before leaving.

Mosaic Ice Forming

Still practicing with the new camera. I took these shots of the pond next to our house a couple of nights ago. We have had an unusually warm winter for mid-southern Ohio just below I-70 on a map. All of a sudden the temp dropped out and it got down to the single digits. Wind chill made it sub zero by double digits. Only lighting is from the sodium vapor street lights on the round about. Amazingly, the next day the wind had settled during the night and the ice was nearly as smooth as glass, just not think as the sun attacked it.

Again I wanted to just see what the camera would do in a quick fashion, no setup time, at night. I really prefer no flash....I hate flash. I would rather have the noise of high ISO numbers than relying on a flash to give me color etc,

I put the camera settings in the bottom corners and as can be seen the only thing that changes is the focal length. I feel like I should have pulled it back to at least halfway to the widest like 48mm or so. The lens size is 72mm so I can get a lot of light in when it is scarce.

As usual, click on them to see more.

Moon

This is pretty much right out of the camera. In my opinion, considering the lens, angle of the shot through the atmosphere and the fact that I didn't do anything other than set the camera to "P", it is good shot with quite a bit of detail. The lens is just a 18-270mm Tamron. A better lens and a more vertical shot would have cleared it up as well as going to manual and doing some detail adjustments but I do like simplicity when it can be had.

Other than cropping some black out of the sky, adding the text at the bottom and knocking the size down, I didn't make changes.

My Birthday: Another Mile Stone

Well, today was the big one. No, not 50 or the double nickle but the Medicare big one. I am now allowed to carry 5 insurance type of cards. Medicare, supplemental, drug, dental and vision....yea me. Now, were did I put my keys?

I took it upon myself to miss the best buys at Christmas on upgrading my camera so I started looking again. I really wanted to try to buy locally so I checked the online sites and then went to a family owned, but still large in Ohio, chain called Dodd Camera. They matched my best online price and gave me a nice discount on a tripod. I needed a sturdier one than my lightweight aluminum Ambico model.

The camera is the Canon T3i and the tripod is the Vanguard 263AGH. Now I can take my car shots down on the ground, not worry about wind and it had a pistol grip head. The center post slips up and down instead of cranking and if I wish I can pull that all the way up and then put it 90 degrees out to the side of center for a totally different type of shot. Not sure if I will use this feature very much.

I also got the Adobe Elements 10 and Premier 10 bundle for $49 which was a very good buy.

I have played around with the camera and if nothing else the extra 8 mega pixels really make my Tamron 18-270mm DiII VCD lens look more professional. Super clean shots with no effort. Moving up from my old Rebel Xti is remarkable.

Along with this we spent the afternoon having lunch with our daughter. Had a great lunch at a place called Stone Creek in Montgomery. I had chocolate Mousse with raspberry sauce and whip cream for the first time every....yum was that good.

Here's the toys.

Learning All the Time

I learned something the other day and it's reflected in this photo. It's the framing. I don't think I picked a very good picture but I got the gist of it. Now I will tweak the size of the frame and see what else I can do. Stumbled on it while searching something on photography. This came from an online Photoshop magazine by a David Seedam...www.photographybb.com. Simple sign up, first name and email address will get you to the magazines, I think there are 48 in archive, and you can sign up for emails if you wish. I went to the first one, last on the page, and looked at an "Actions" article. Now I know what Actions are under the header Windows in Photoshop. Click the image to increase the size as usual.