Craig's Special

Well it's special to me.

Cory's Special

New Mexico was a pretty special state this week: not only was it the coldest state in the lower 48 on Thursday, but it also had a sudden natural gas shortage due to the cold. That lead us to shutting down the clusters at the lab and having Friday off as an "energy conservation" day. It also meant that these special maintenance guys had to drag their canoes across Ashley Pond before sitting them to fix the fountain. When they were done, they got out and dragged them back to the side of the pond.

Ryan's "Special"

I'm not so sure this is a special - I'm pretty sure they have been offering the same "special" for about a year:


/rl

Mike's "Special"

Children just have their own special way of looking at the world.
These kids were dancing at a chili cook off I attended last Sunday night.

Next week: "Silver"

"Special" is due tomorrow.

/rl

Special by John Baker

I went to Schramm Park to shoot some nature stuff and came across this tree filled with fungus.  It looks crazy.  At least now-a-days I opt not to eat the fungus  ;)

David's "Sky"

There hasn't been much of anything going on sky-wise all week, no clouds, no interesting sunrises/sunsets. Clouds moved in today but the boring wispy kind, nothing inspiring. This was a shot I took yesterday to give you at least an idea of how boringly blue it's been all week.

Ryan's "Sky"

Once, before I foolishly decided to finish my degree, I had free time to go spend falling off of rocks. I often wished I could hang a strong anchor point in the sky to protect sketchy climbs. I even wrote a note in a guidebook that suggests something to the effect of "small cams, a #6 or #7 hex, 30 feet of cord, and a skyhook are required to protect this route".

I found my skyhooks:




They look like bomber anchors, but not exactly portable.

/rl

Cory's Sky

This may look like a picture trees, but it is actually a picture of the sky behind the trees. One of the great things I like about living in New Mexico is the great blue skies - I specifically noticed how blue the sky is during my Southwest Adventure trip a few years ago, and I looked forward to making use of it when I decided to move down here. This particular piece of sky comes from a hike up in the mountains that I took this weekend.

Mike's "Sky"

When ever there is a partly cloudy day, I like to take pictures of the sky and save them on my computer to use as textures to maybe use on a photo that is taken on more a dreary day.  We had some neat sun sets this week, but I failed to keep the camera in my car.  Boring sky all weekend, when I usually do my shooting.
Then I got this weird idea.  What if I take one of my replacement skies, and put it on the ceiling of an indoor shot?  Even when you combine two outdoor shots, it looks a little fake because the eye and brain can tell the light sources are not in sync.  If you are lucky, it might just look like and HDR effect. I think I'm going to see if I can get the wife to paint the ceiling this way!

Sky by John Baker

Some other topics could be food, abstract, or close.

Next week: "Special"

"Sky" is due tomorrow.

The Stack-O-Topics is getting pretty short. Feel free to add some or leave them in a comment to this post.

/rl

Craig's Dim

Dim By John Baker

After a long night of drinking !!!

Ryan's "Dim"

Dim? I can fix that.



Yeah, I know it's awful. But I posted something....

/rl

Cory's Dim

I like that if you take a picture of a CFL with a fast shutter speed and a tiny aperture you can see the bits where it is dim and where it isn't. Normally they just look like weird glowing spirals, but like this they have a much more interesting look to them.

As a side note, I suspect it easy to go blind taking pictures of light bulbs.

David's "Dim"

We stayed at La Posada last weekend during a return trip home from Phoenix. It's a beautifully restored Harvey hotel along the Santa Fe Rail in Winslow, AZ.

Mike's "Dim"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks...
I decided to take a picture of this plasma lamp in rather "dim" light.  In honor of Dim that is.  I figured the rest of you would be using candles.

Next week: "Sky"

"Dim" due tomorrow.

Hopefully we will have a better turnout for this week...

/rl

Mike's "Spaceship"

This building has always intrigued me since I was little.  Is it a motel that looks like a spaceship?
Or is it a spaceship disguised as a motel?

Ryan's "Spaceship"

Men in black helicopters arrived and suggested I not post my photo.

Perhaps tomorrow I will have another.

/rl

Cory's Spaceship

Down in Los Alamos's suburb is Piñon Park, which for some reason is also known as Rocketship Park. Whether this rocket gave the park its second name or the second name lead to the creation of this rocket is a mystery for the ages.

In 1927, the first spaceship found in Nebraska

In 1927, the first spaceship was believed to have landed somewhere near Seward, NE.  Strange scribbles and what appears to be some type of language is etched all around the 75 ft metal beast.  Pioneers of that time wanted it to remain in the town so they propped it up with 4 steel metal brackets.  It is said by some of the locals that sometimes at night an erie glow will be cast from the space shuttle.

Next week: "Dim"

"Spaceship" is due tomorrow.

Awesome photos last week!

/rl

Q's best of 2010

Alaska! Mt. McKinley! More here.

David's Best of 2010

This is a photo from near Nelson, NV, about 45 minutes south of Las Vegas. It's a fun place that I was lucky enough to visit again a few weeks ago and will probably return to at some point. So much junk lying around.

Baker Best of 2010 Pic

Ryan might remember this storm.  He was actually the photographer at the wedding I was coming back from.  I absolutely love taking pictures of storms and I just started taking pictures of lightning.  Way more to come in 2011.

Craig's "Best of 2010"

I had a really hard time choosing my favorite from last year. After coming back to this one more than once, I decided I liked the contemplative feel of this. The seagull looking a little majestic as he surveys his domain, the sun setting to the west off the coast of Oban, lighting him subtly.

Yeah, I dig this one.

Cory's "Best of 2010"

I may have posted this one here before, but I think it is the top of my list from 2010. I took it on a trip to Bandelier National Monument last summer inside one of the reconstructed sections of the park. Getting to this particular room is fun: you have to climb ladders 140 feet up a cliff to get to the big hollow area that houses it. There's an aerial photo of the climb on the National Park Service's page for Alcove House.

Mike's "Best of 2010"

I used this photo for the topic "Restore" on the contest I play with my family and friends at Dandy Photography.  So not only do I have you all to thank keeping the creative process flowing, but a spin-off that the kids have seemed to enjoy!
This is an abandoned farmstead somewhere between Papillion and Springfield, I think.  Wish I had written down the coordinates for a springtime shot.

Ryan's "Best of 2010"

I raced out of school as a thunderstorm ended to capture this shot in Memorial Park.




I really like the image, but think something's missing. I just don't know what. I bracketed it, so I have lighter and darker images to work with, but none are quite right. Maybe it needed a bit of light on the statue?

EDIT: I put up a few more photos from that storm.

/rl

Ti's "Best of 2010"

I've only had my new camera for about 3 months and I'm still trying to organize all my photos to find the ones I think are good. However, this shot pretty much sums up my 2010.

Next week: "Spaceship"

"Best of 2010" due tomorrow.

/rl

Craig's Pile

(I'm stretching, I know.)

We've got a pile of kitties. Back in October, one of our pile of kitties, Count Chocula (featured in my entry for "Texture") suddenly and quite unexpectedly died. We were worried about his sister (literally, they were littermates) since the young kitties were a duo (Frankenberry and Count Chocula), and the older kitties (Pixel and Sprite) weren't generally interested in interacting with them.

So we got Cletus to add to our pile. We got him right after Halloween, and things were going great until he got sick at the end of November. After spending a pile of money (worth it!) we discovered the shelter wasn't quite successful in ridding him of his worms.

He just got his last treatment this past week, and he seems happy and healthy again!

Cory's Pile

Here's the pile of firewood in my back yard completed with the pile of snow that came last week. That makes this picture especially good: it has double the piles of anybody else's!

Mike's "Pile"

Pile of Junk?
Or festive holiday display by an American Picker?

David's "Pile"

We were in Las Vegas this week. I was hoping for a larger pile but this will have to do.

Piles Photo By John Baker

I would first like to thank everybody for letting me participate in your weekly photography excitement.  It is a pleasure.  Happy New Year!!  I was inspired by a pile of candy wrappers that I had ate.  The resolution clearly isn't to eat better.  But I had the idea to buy a bunch of sunkists and pile them up.  I really like the colors (yes I am straight) and the depth of the picture.  Here's to a start of many wonderful photo's and a great 2011.

Ryan's "Pile"

Piles of Christmas trees appearing in parks are evidence that the holidays have passed:



/rl

Next week: "Best of 2010"

Some may have noticed that I put "Spaceship" up for next week, but I saw that Mike is doing "Best of 2010" on his contest. I think it should be a good topic for us.

Post your best photo of 2010, whether it was for this contest or not.

"Pile" due tomorrow.

/rl

David's "Christmas"

I had to cheat on this one and take it two weeks ago during a trip home to Kansas City.

Ti's "Christmas"

I heard something upstairs only to find Santa had visited, so I figured I better take a shot. Here it is.

Mike's "Christmas"

We have been empty-nesters for a couple years and got lazy about decorating for Christmas.
I took this while over at my mom's and thought it looked a lot like the art on a Christmas card.

Cory's Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we looked out the window and saw this hawk having a nice dinner in the yard across the street. This was kind of unexpected - my parents live smack in the middle of Omaha, nowhere near the wide open country that I normally see these birds in. But wow, this guy sure was enjoying his dinner. I watched somebody else from the neighborhood taking pictures before I did, and he just walked right up next to the hawk to do it. After seeing that I figured I didn't need to worry about scaring it away when I took pictures.

Ryan's "Christmas"

In past years we have had bitter fights over who puts Angie the Christmas Tree Angel on top of the tree.

This year Maddy won:




/rl

Next week: "Pile"

"Christmas" is due tomorrow.

/rl

Craig's Crapulence

Crap-u-lence: noun. 2. Excessive indulgence

Mike's "Crapulence"

I'm going to refer "crapulence" to my broth-in-laws comic books.  I was going to call it a collection, but un-bagged and un-backed, it's just more of an obsession that my wife and I are now feeling the hang-over from.
I have put the about a third of the more popular titles up on Picasa so you might understand the thousands of dusty moldy books we are trying to save or discard here.  He collected these books from about 1960-1970 joined the military, and never came back to Omaha to reclaim them.  We have been paying storage on them for about ten years.

Oh, it may sound sweet to inherit a bunch of 12 cent comics that are now worth $20-$200 bucks, but near three weeks of breathing these toxic comics spores, grading, bagging, scanning and photographing have left us rather tired and crabby.

Ryan's Crapulance...

Fresh hot crapulence! Come and get it!




/rl

Cory's Crapulence

I'm not sure which definition of "crapulence" this fits better - Craig's or Webster's - so I'll just toss it out there with no further comment.

Next week: "Christmas"

"Crapulence" is due tomorrow.

/rl

David's "Closed"

I was wonderfully surprised to learn of my grandfather's (mom's dad) old neighborhood recently, thanks to some research by my brother. St. Francis Seraph was the parish of my grandfather from his birth until sometime after he married and moved over to 34th/Central area of KC. The church was closed in 1991 as the parish was merged with others in the area. The rectory (burned to the ground a few years ago, photos to come) and the church buildings were sold to Phoenix Office Supply soon after.

Though most of the lower windows and the doors are secured someone has kicked in the rear door leaving the building wide open.

Ryan's "Closed"

Given his lack of thumbs, Fugs hates it when his 'nip is closed.




/rl

Mike's "Closed"

Last Sunday morning I decided to do all my picture taking for both contest at one time.  Four topics.  As I worked my way North of Down Town, I found this road "closed" near the old Jones Street Brewery.
Wondering if its easier or harder to work with a brick street?  I am also uber grateful that I did not have to go out and shoot today!

Cory's Closed

The bus around here stops running at around 7:30pm, so I guess after that the bus stops are closed. But nobody goes around to lock them up at night. Maybe it's just an opportunity for people to come up with a good use for bus stop shelters at night? This one has a nice reading light, but it is built on a hill and kind of slanty, so it might not be pleasant to sit in all night.

"Closed" due tomorrow

"Crapulence" is next week's topic.

/rl

Ryan's "Film"

Back in the bad old days cameras ate a substance called "film." You would feed it a roll, take 12, 24, or 36 photos, extract the roll from the camera's tummy, and send it off to be processed. Some time later you could look at your pictures.

This view shows the winder and frame counter on my old F3. I love that camera, but haven't shot anything with it in a long time.



It looks like this is image number 35,359 on my D300. A 36 shot roll of Fuji Velvia costs $7.00. Processing would add another $10.00, so figure about $0.47 per frame. As mentioned by Cory, electrons are free. It would have cost me over $16,000 to do this on slide film. Wow...

I think I can justify buying myself a D3s now!

Or not.

/rl

Mike's "Film"

I think this is the third time I have taken a picture of this marquee.  Yet I have never been here to see a "film".
Film Streams is a non profit theater that shows classic films as well as independent films that would not usually be seen in Omaha because, well, Omaha is not used to such things.  The Dundee Theater would make attempts at this in years gone by, but not on this scale.

Cory's Film

My picture isn't on film or of film or anything, it's about film. This weekend was Los Alamos's Winterfest, where they do a bunch of wintery things. Part of it is a nighttime parade with floats from all of the local organizations and lots of county vehicles (garbage trucks, trolley buses, etc.) decked out in lights. It also included the local Shriners in their little cars (what parade doesn't?), and that's where the film part of this post comes in. I took my digital camera along and took oodles upon oodles of pictures of the dark parade knowing that at least one or two of them would come out alright. There's no way I could have done that with film - it would have cost a bunch in film, and the processing the pictures would have cost even more. But electrons are free and plentiful (and 100% recyclable!), so I got the above picture of a little car as it whipped past the bystanders in the background.

Tomorrow: "Film"

Tomorrow + 7: "Closed"

/rl

Craig's Crapulent Thanksgiving

I warned you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.