Wandering around....

This past weekend, I took my motorcycle for a ride, and I took my new camera with me. I decided that I needed some subjects that I haven't been looking at on a daily basis, and what a better way to find them than to get out and go for a ride! And for a ride I went.

On Saturday I headed south, it seemed like a great direction, and the weather was nice and hot, with loads of humidity, and south is into the hills where there is plenty of shade and trees and cool breezes coming out of the deep green forests. So as I was riding I was looking at various things that I thought might make some great pics, but

I wasn't really struck, until I decided that I wanted to get some pictures of the Genesee River. Not just any pictures though, I wanted to show the high water level from all the rain that we have had this year, and the beautiful vistas of the river gorge as it winds along its northbound path above the dam. The Mt. Morris Dam, is a great place to get some awesome pictures, and I was glad to have the equipment to give it a good shot. The day was pretty humid, so you can see the haze in the distance in the pictures. I walked along the hiking paths along the rim and snapped pics from various points along the way. Of all that I took, I think this is my favorite, but If I put more out there you may have a different favorite. I do have more of them posted in my Stone Indian Gallery. I took pictures all along my way that day, mostly in the dam area, but I did stop a few time along the way to take other pictures too. I won't bore you with all of them!

Then on Sunday, Yes indeed, I went riding again on another hot, steamy day. This time, I decided to go north, to the shores of Lake Ontario. I figured there should be a decent breeze, and the temp should be a little bit lower close to the water.

First stop on this trip was Point Breeze, I wanted to get some shots of the boats or the jetskis playing out on the water, but everyone was being responsible and playing nice. Fortunately I did see some interesting things to photograph. Since it was mid afternoon, the charter fishing boats were coming back into the harbor, and they come in from the lake at a pretty good clip. They turn into the channel and drop the throttle to run up the creek and they look a little bit like the S.S Minnow. Well, since it was a nice day, and I was looking to stretch my legs with the camera, I
headed out from there, and wandered on down the road a ways. As I was riding along with my eyes open for possibilities, I spotted this gem. If I had stopped immediately I may have gotten a better picture , but then again maybe not. I figure he was gonna be skittish no matter what I did. How close can you get to a Bald Eagle?

After that, I went on for a few more miles and hit Golden Hill State Park. I went to the boat launch first hoping again to find some jetski action to get pics of, but alas, the price of gas, or maybe the fact that I passed about 100 weddings and everyone was invited, there wasn't much in the way of jetskiers on the water. So, I headed over to the Lighthouse at the campground. The lighthouse at 30-mile Point is a great little place to visit, and I think that the next time I go, I will pay the dollar admission and take the tour of the lighthouse too!

After I left the lighthouse I went to visit my sister, and had the chance to get a few of my niece while she was painting her brother's bedroom, and also to get a pic of my nephew who is part ham and part camera-shy goofball. Getting a good pic of him isn't easy, but I managed to do it!

That was three days ago as I write this. Since then I have been playing with my camera in an earnest way, trying to find the sweet spot settings to get the pictures that I want the way that I want them. Some of my favorite subjects to shoot are clouds, and one of the problems I have had in the past is the lack of glass to truly capture the detail of the formations. Sometimes it's not about the detail, but simply showing the size in a setting that it can truly be appreciated. The ones in this picture popped up on Tuesday evening after the hot, sticky day built up enough atmospheric turbulence to build some thunderheads, and I was in a position to capture that view.
Today at lunchtime I noticed that the gladiolas in pop's garden were blooming quite nicely, and they have some great colors. I was messing with some personal settings and I wanted to see how they compared to the factory settings, and to do that I have to take a whole bunch of pictures, and I really liked this one, and figured it would be cool to share.

Have a great day!

My new toy!

Yes indeed some days you get what you are looking for, and this week I have gotten me a brand new toy, a new camera!! A new camera for me and this is a great big step up from the little point and shoots that I have been using. If you look at this picture you might guess that it takes some pretty nice pics, and you would be quite right! It is a Canon Rebel T1i, 15.1 Megapixel. Since I didn't have a whole lot of money to throw at this, I searched for a while to find the best price I could, and then I saved my pennies for a few months until I could afford the nut it took to make the purchase. I hope that I will be able to sell a few pictures to help me pay for this thing!

I was so tight on the money that I didn't even have the spare to buy the kit with a lens, I had to buy the body only version. Fortunately, and with some planning I happened to buy a camera of the same make that my Father already owns, and he has given me 2 of his old lenses that he no longer uses. ( He spent the money on some high-end lenses, so I can have the hand-me-downs!) One is the original that he got with his own Rebel XSi, an 18-55mm zoom, and the other a 55-250mm zoom. They are both great optics, but they have a drawback that pops wanted to overcome, they didn't have enough apeture to shoot clear indoor, sports, action shots. While I may want to do that occasionally, I am much more about outdoor nature shots. Yes, I do lots of parties and performances, but they are either well lit, or I have no problem lighting them with a flash, so it's plenty cool to use the higher apeture settings for me. Plus I have learned how to incorporate the blurred movement of certain things into my style.

It has been many years since I have had the luxury of a true SLR camera at my utter disposal, and I am feeling my oats with it. I have already taken over 175 pictures and I haven't even had it for 48 hours yet! Of course, they are not all good by any means, but I am improving quickly as I get used to the feel and the features of the camera. I really dig the auto focus, but it takes a little tweaking for a picky pixel hound like me to get it seeing what I want it to see. Fortunately that's one of the big advantages of this particular brand, I can set the focal points where I want them and the camera will heel to my becon call. One of the things that I have missed so much in recent years with the myriad subjects surrounding me, is the ability to get such a great adjustment in the depth of field in my pictures. Since the glass on point and shoot cameras is set up to be pretty much idiot-proof ( nothing ever is, because there are always better idiots waiting in the wings!) it is designed with a very limited depth of field capability, even with an adjustable aperature, it only closes down to f8, and that is still a gaping maw compared to the the f22, 25, 0r 28 that I can get with the SLR glass. Now I can have some fun with depth!

Not only that, but because I enjoy the nature shots so much, sometime it will allow me to get in close and personal with certain skittish critters. Like this little guy! He was hiding in the watergarden and I nearly stepped on him before I realized that he had himself stashed in such a tight spot. But I was able to get a bead on him for a few frames before he decided to dash away. I sure hope he got his dinner first! While I am not a fanatic conservationist or anything like that, there are tons of subjects that I love to get pics of, from the frogs and dragonflies, to the deer and game birds that spend so much time within my visual range. If I am lucky I may be able to get some pictures of some crazy birds this year. Maybe a turkey or a pheasant, and if I'm real lucky maybe I get me a partridge ( pear tree optional!)

So far I am pretty happy with what I can do, and I am looking forward to really pushing the limits of what this camera can accomplish, and as I learn all of it's little quirks and intricacies, I will be able to refine my own style of picture taking. I am not the most creative person in the world, but I do know what I like and what draws my attention. I really want to get back into getting people like I have in the past. I have been compared to paparazzi on more than one occasion, because I manage to get pictures of people and things that people don't even notice. Partly because I so often have a camera that it becomes an expectation and people lose their natural inhibitions to being caught on film, and partly because I have this habit of shooting so much around me that it is inevitable that eventually I get a few good pictures!

I wish I had a real crystal ball to look in and see what it is that I need to do to find that moment when I meet my dream, but since I don't, I will continue to play with the things that draw me in. Oh yeah, one more thing, this particular camera also does video, in FULL HD!! so cool! I have only just tried this feature for a few seconds to make sure that it worked, but as soon as I have my high capacity SD cards, I will give it a try for real! Looking forward to having some fun with that also!

life on Mars...

When I was a kid, I asked my dad one time what was the difference between a weed and a garden plant, and his succinct answer was this, " A weed is any plant growing where I don't want it." So by his definition, a beautiful rose bush growing uninvited in a field of cucumbers, is a weed.

As every gardener knows, weeds are the bane of our existence, there is no plant more resilient than the humble garden weed. Be it a dandelion, or a sunflower, if it is growing where you don't want it, it's gonna be persistent and nearly impossible to get rid of. Yet try to get the things that you want to grow to take hold in the same fashion and you will have better luck trying to stuff a wet noodle in a stray cats ass. I have seen sunflowers growing wild, and I can say that some of the wild ones are better by far than half of the cultivated ones I have seen. Yet, try as I might, when I want sunflowers to grow wild I can barely get three or four to make an effort.

If you have ever owned a bird feeder, you know just how easy sunflowers will grow, all they need is moisture and some sunny days and they are sprouting away left and right. You can mow them down all summer long, yet they keep trying. The birds and squirrels will drag those damn seeds everywhere, and they will try to grow. Yet if you plant 20 in a row, you get 6. What the hell? !

Sunflowers are just an example, but it is the weeds that I am concerned with today. I have weeds that are so hardy that they stand up to everything I throw at them. I have hit them with high-end weed killer, I have burned them, tilled them, hoed them and weed preventer-ed them yet they come back again and again. I get more than my daily exercise pulling weeds, and hoeing and cultivating the garden, trying to keep it looking fairly presentable. I get one area cleaned up, move on to the next and 2 days later the original has the pale green haze of weeds showing again! They grow in the dry season, they grow in the wet season, and they grow past the frost and before the thaw! If NASA wants to see if Mars can support life, I will give them a couple shovels of dirt from my garden and they can plop it onto Mars and watch it go! I bet them weeds will even grow on Mars!

You want to find out if there is life on Mars, give them some good old New York weeds to deal with and we may actually end up with our first interplanetary war. The Martians will be pissed, beause they will never be rid of them weeds once they get a foot hold. But the kicker of the whole damn thing is this, some of the blooms on the weeds, are prettier than the flowers I have planted. So I may use some reverse psychology on the weeds and try to grow a few rows of them for the blooms! You think they will actually grow?

Warm blooms...

As summer approaches, there are more and more flowers blooming all over the place, and every now and then some are so cool that I just feel like taking a few pics of them. Sometimes I get carried away and get 20 pics of the same blossom, and other times I get one and I can never find that particular bloom again, and I want more!!

So this is a peony that I have in one of my yards. It was left by the people who once lived on this property, and it grew wild for about 20 years and nobody paid it any attention, then I unknowingly mowed it down the first 3 years that I owned the property, then I realized what I was seeing there and I let it grow. Boy, I'm glad that I di, it has proven to be an amazing little bush. It blooms every year and the blooms are huge and SO sweet smelling that you can't believe it. The sad part is that the blooms are so big that the slightest wind or a good rain will knock them down, because they are too big for their own stems!



I have no idea what this bloom is called, but I have a bunch of them in various colors and I really like them. They are low to the ground and really bright.
They come in so many colors that I have to get pictures of all of my favorites. The more neon-y colors are my favorite. They are like little electric sparks in the garden. They have come from a wildflower mix that I bought a few years ago, and it takes 2 years for them to show up, but when they do... Man is it worth the wait!






I love this little one because the blooms are still opening and they are uncurling in such and neat way that I wonder how nature puts things together sometimes! They kind of remind me of a bouquet or roses and rose buds mixed together.
No matter how you slice it they look pretty darn cool.

Not all blooms are flowers, at least not our "normal" definition of a flower. But Mushrooms are also a flower of a sort, because it is the head that grows the spores which eventually become the seeds of the next generation. And they look so cool!






Never take for granted the lowly little Mushroom, after all, he really is a "Fungi"!! LOL old, stupid joke but still funny!
When you live in a place where most panoramic views are blocked by trees, hills or buildings, you tend to appreciate them more when you actually see them. I am lucky in that I have a place where I can see this basic view every day, and some people might think that this would get boring. Truthfully it is far from boring, because it is nature that changes the view, stars, wind-blown dust, blooming fields, harvested fields, waving grass, painted trees, fluffy clouds, flat clouds, gray clouds, white clouds and snow! Look out in the rain sometimes and later you are treated to a rainbow. These things are all out there to see, but you have to look now and then to catch them.

There is nothing more ephemeral than a view in nature. If you forget to look you may never get the chance again.