I've posted about these in the past but back then it was a very manual process. Now, Jim Heid has posted an Automator action to create these on the fly. Here is one I did for our vacation to Rhode Island and Fire Island last summer.
We went to see the Cherry Blossoms (see my photographs) this afternoon and, being the insane people we are (and because Ann's working retail and her feet are killing her and I sprained my ankle nearly two weeks ago (and it is still killing me) we decided to drive there. But Ann's the parking goddess (and the threat of rain helped) and, like 2002 when we last went, we got parking almost immediately right in the lot across the basin from Jefferson. (Now THAT was a long sentence). It began to sprinkle the second we got out of the car but that didn't stop us from taking 128 pictures and having fun. Right when we finished the roll (CF card) it began to pour so we bopped over to Bertucci's and had dinner.
After dinner we went to Barnes & Noble so I could use the last of the gift card my mother sent me for my birthday. There, Jack played with a 3 year old boy who was there with his two fathers. In the car Jack was incredulous, "He has two fathers? No one can have two fathers!"
"Sure they can," we both said and proceeded to explain about adoption and how couples come in all varieties.
It's at this point in the narrative that I should remind you, dear reader, that Jack goes to a baptist pre-school. You just know that we'll be getting an angry call tomorrow.
AIRTIGHT - Flickr Related Tag Browser is one of the most interesting web applications I have seen in some time. Very elegant and simple. I have been losing a lot of time with this tonight. Which reminds me... I have pictures to upload from our trip to Boston and environs last week.
I just got back from our annual company retreat to the Outer Banks in Corolla, North Carolina. The sunrise the first morning I was there was unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. And while this picture captures the drama, it was so much better in person.
With the return of the school season comes the return of my neighbor, a teacher, driving to work very early in the morning. I'm her extra body to drive in the HOV lane. So, I am not up with the sunrise. Which means I can capture scenes like this morning's amazing sunrise.
Looking over my recent photography, I seem to have either fallen into a rut or a niche...
I attended the IRMCO conference in Cambridge, MD this week. It was held at a gorgeous Hyatt resort right on the Chesapeake and as I drove up in my rented lime green VW Beetle (Zipcar's "Billy Bob") I was pretty impressed. After I checked in and went into my room, I opened the curtains to see this rainbow. I just said "You've got to be kidding me!" and grabbed my camera. While I was cropping the picture to upload it here, I noticed the secondary rainbow above it for the first time.
Earlier this summer, taken right from the front stoop of my house. In the other direction was a very cool evening rainbow. Unfortunately, it's very faint so it didn't come out well in the picture.
This was taken at The Greenery in Scituate, RI, a store owned by our friend Bridgette. It's a spider plant against a backdrop of bottles with different color liquids in them which are themselves in the sunlight.
The cicadas are here! We're actually somewhat lucky in that our cul-de-sac was built in 1990, after the previous emergence of this particular group of cicadas so we don't actually have any here. But all around us, in the parts of town not touched since the last emergence, they're out in force. From here it sounds like flying saucers hovering or something out of a 50's sci-fi B-movie. Jack and I are both thrilled. We think this is all great fun. This picture is Jack with a cicada on his arm. What you can't see is his infectious giggle. I think we'll both be sad when they're gone in just a few weeks. Jack won't see these guys again until his Junior year of college. I don't even want to think about how old I will be...
Ah! Spring is here! Jack and I spent a lovely day on the Mall trying to fly a kite. When we actually got it going (the wind was highly variable) a man in a uniform came up to us and asked us to take it down. Seems a Huey Helicopter was hanging out just a little ways up the Mall near the Washington Monument and was soon to take off and he didn't want our kite getting caught. So, we took it down. But we had a great show as the 'copter went over us twice.
My son, the prodigy. He was just flipping through, looking at the pictures. Now he wants to see all of these movies we haven't let him watch yet (mainly because Disney movies are actually pretty scary for a really little kid and because they have this obsession with killing off mothers. Count the number of movies in which Mom dies. It's scary!)
This is actually from a few days ago. Jack (who had pneumonia last week) is all better. Ann and I are the walking dead. Jack is running in circles and being insane. We're dealing by letting him watch hours upon hours of TV just so we can close our eyes and rest. When we're all better, we're going to have a heck of a time paring back his TV watching...
Sunrise on the beach on Corolla, NC. This is how I discovered that at ISO400, a Canon PowerShot G3 is *very* grainy.
Our third morning there, a rain storm came through and left with a fairly sharp edge.
Ocean waves.
This is actually an accident of camera settings. I was doing a panorama but I started it at the brightest point rather than the middle point of brightness so this view down the beach is too dark. But at the same time, I really like the effect. I call this one "Desolation."
Ok, I know that this is a cliché, but it's *my* cliché!
This is a church that's two blocks from our house. This was the worst bit of damage we saw. Though no actual power lines were brought down, it is sad to see so large and old a tree killed by the storm. We left home not long after the storm passed to head to my sister's in New York. We had no power and the water main was cutting in and out so our water quality was compromised, when we had water. Since we have no way to boil water, it was easier to just get out of dodge a day early. We return tomorrow to throw all of our food away that's in the fridge and hope that we have water and power again.
One tower of the George Washington Bridge (the one above the little red lighthouse) on our way to New York. The late afternoon light was just wonderful though it really comes through in the next picture...
The full span of the George Washington Bridge looking west towards New Jersey.
We went for a drive through Scarsdale in search of my past. This is the first house I lived in, It was build in 1964 and my parents were the first to own it. There is a garden on the left side of the house (just out of the frame, though I did get a nice picture of it for my own memories) which hasn't changed at all since my father built it some 37 (or so) years ago. What strikes me so much is how much smaller the streets look, how much smaller the house looks. I moved out of this house when I was 7 or so and moved into a house right behind it, on the street up the hill...
This is the second house I lived in until I was about 10. The house was gray with a yellow door and there was a deck on back, now gone. There was a large patch of ivy and a tree in front as well. I have to say, my memory of the house is much nicer than this rather plain building. The street in front of the house is the intersection of two streets and the local wiffleball field. Across the street was Carol's house (and her yard was the site of the hedgerow over which shooting the ball meant a homerun). Carol was my fiancee. We got engaged somewhere during the 1st through 3rd grade timeframe. I looked Carol up sometime after college and we exchanged a single letter back and forth. And then we fell out of touch again. Perhaps forever. Ah well... I'm married now. It would never work out.
Finally, back at my sister's house, Jack got cozy with his cousins on the couch to watch Shrek.
Again, I have been too damned busy to do much of anything. So, here you get two pictures. Today I took Jack out to Great Falls. The first image is a panorama from one of the overlooks of seven pictures taken in portrait (vertical) mode using the stitch feature of the Canon PowerShot G3 and Canon's Photostitch software. I've played with both this tool and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0's similar PhotoMerge and the jury is still out. Both have their good and bad points.
Picture number two is of a stream that we walked by on our way from the car to and from the falls. This was about 1/4 second exposure and handheld. I braced myself on the railing of a small bridge to keep the camera steady.
Well, it won't win any prizes nor will you see it on APOD. But here's Mars! This was taken at 14x zoom. My camera goes to 4x and does the rest in digital so this is a zoom of an already zoomed image. In other words, pixelated. 1.0s f/8.0 28.8mm for them's what cares.
I seem to be getting lucky with lightening pictures this summer. Now, don't worry. This did not strike that house. This was at least a mile, mile and a half away. Taken with a 13 second long exposure (18th try).
Currently listening to: High Hopes from the album "The Division Bell" by Pink Floyd
Jack was sleeping with his giraffe. He was so happy with how cute he was that he posted for the shot. All together now: "Awwwww!"
Maybe a cloudburst? Maybe just something funky? I have to admit that I cheated on this one. There were powerlines running through the bottom third of this picture. I love Photoshop.
The ceiling of the Industry and Arts building of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. They have a Seattle's Best Coffee kiosk. We were happy.
This is actually from some days back. We took Jack to the fountain in Reston and it was incredibly windy. This picture shows Jack running around in the spray which soaked him to the bone in very short order.
Our hydrangea was trashed by all the snow we had this winter. It lives in the nook of our front steps and there were at least two times this winter where that entire nook was completely filled with snow (and where I often piled up shoveled driveway snow on top of that as well) and when the snows finally melted, the plant looked all but dead. But it came back and has these huge, glorious flowers now. This shot was taken in evening light in the macro mode. I found that setting the white balance to fluorescent lighting gave me the closest match to true colors. Exposure info: f/2, 1/80.
Because I've been lax, you get two today. And a bonus video (see below).
I took these with our digital camcorder (the ones on the digital camera weren't as interesting, this thing has a better zoom than our camera does so I could get a lot closer in). While I was filming, the mother returned home and fed the babies. Here's a video of the feeding.
Jack playing with Jack and Jack at the bathroom sink. This is a nightly ritual. If we let him, he'll play there for over half an hour and flood the place.
Chris returned from Coatia and Macedonia yesterday. I went a bit early to take some pictures of planes landing for fun. Maybe it's me, but standing at the airport where you can see the runway, taking pictures sure made me paranoid. I kept thinking security was watching me like a hawk wondering what I was doing and why. Anyway, I did not set out to do a photomerge, I just decided to make one after the fact. So, the lighting isn't very consistent. But I tried to clean it up. Each picture has slightly different exposures so I'll omit that info this time around. Click on the mini picture for a bigger version.
The Fountain in Reston Town Center. Handheld in low light, no flash. 1/6 second exposure, f3.0. Taken with a Canon PowerShot G3.
I've been experimenting a lot lately with trying to capture the actual light and colors in low light situations. Unfortunately, I didn't have any kind of tripod with me as I was out and about. I'd actually only brought the camera to take Jack pictures since he and I were having a boys night out (our second in a row).
Even though the light is still not right, I love the way this came out.
The lunar eclipse, currently in progress.
A short film by me.
Wild cirrus clouds over Reston, VA last weekend.
I'm going to try this out... taking a picture as often as possible to post here. I've seen some really inspirational sites (links to follow, I'm in a hurry right now) and thought this would be fun to try.