Penning Photography Daily

Kalie – I think!

This is Kalie – I think. She has a twin sister Halie who is very close to identical in looks – to me.

We went over to Karen’s Uncle Don’s place on Christmas Eve night. It’s a family tradition on Karen’s side. Goes back to her Grandfather and Grandmother and probably beyond them. We share some time, food and spirits with all of Karen’s uncles, cousins and related folk.

This is Kalie and Halie’s first time over to Uncle Don’s for Christmas Eve. They both fared well. Their mom and dad, Lexi and Erik are great parents. They share the burdens and blessings of twins. Lexi’s mom is a twin with older twin sisters! Jenny – Lexi’s mom – helps a bunch in many ways.

Tradition brings the family close together at this time of year. I’m grateful for tradition and for the family that it binds together.

Owls at Watch

Driving around doing my Saturday errands, I spied these owls on the balcony of the top apartment of a local high rise. If you look closely there are 3 reflectors in between the two owls.

They must have a problem with birds.

Night At The Office With Matt

On my way out of work tonight, I fired up my trusty Panny and captured my self-portrait in the mirror-effect of my office windows. I still marvel at my large wall of windows. I spent most of my 26 years working for the State of Illinois in typical surroundings for computer folk: windowless cubicles, basements, computer rooms, etc. I’m one of the ones grateful to have escaped from those dark confines and now have a whole wall devoted to letting in light, or in this case, to mirroring the insides of my office!

I escaped tonight to start a 3 day Christmas holiday, but not before a scare: I received a call at 4:15PM from a tech coordinator in Baltimore, MD saying that a Sun field engineer would be by shortly to do a disk swap on one of our disk servers. I instantly had a sinking feeling that I was in for another 2 – 3 hour wait for the part and tech to arrive and further waiting to get clearance from Baltimore to let the Sun tech go (It happened just like that recently). Not this time, the tech was 5 minutes away, came in, did the hot-swap of a disk and was out the door 10 minutes after he arrived. He had a 2 hour drive to get back to his home base, but I was grateful that it all worked out during business hours.

Since I’m in charge of the computer systems at my location, I signed up to be there for all the after hours emergencies. I’m grateful that it doesn’t happen too often. Those 24/7 monitoring systems? They usually go off between 1AM and 4AM and guess who gets called? Me. Not to worry, that’s just part of the job description and I’m happy to do it. I might be a bit grumpy the next day, but that’s a small price to pay. There’s lot’s of folks without a job. I’m grateful for mine.

Merry Christmas to you all. And to all a good night!

Dan Fogman

There was some wicked fog here tonight. The temperature is about 57 degrees F and cooling off. Strange December weather for the Midwest.

After choir practice tonight, I was showing Dan my gorilla-pod, which has articulated legs that can wrap around objects so a camera can be used in locations which you might otherwise not be able to use one. See this link. I find it easier to carry around than a regular tripod.

Dan was trying it out taking fog pictures, and I was using my camera backpack as a stable platform for my pictures. I decided to take his picture, then he took mine! Here’s a link to Dan’s photo.

I did some post processing to blur out some of the background and lighten up Dan’s face. Neat!

The picture was taken in the parking lot of St. Agnes Church and School. I’m facing West. The fog and the city lights really catch the light in the atmosphere. It seemed a lot darker than this appears.

Samuel & Ezara

Another from the files…

Samuel is my brother John and his wife Deb’s son. Ezara is his bride. Both are computer aficionados – geeks. Love at first byte. This is from their wedding a few years back, taken with my beloved but since stolen Olympus 2100UZ.

I love the look that Samuel has for his Ezara is superb.

I’m glad I caught it.

Savannah, GA Sculpture – Florence Martus Waves To All Ships

One from the past today.

On our first trip to Hilton Head Island, we spent a day in Savannah, Georgia. One tourist attraction is the city of “The Book” – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (a good read). There’s much more to this colorful and rich in culture city at the Southern tip of the Peach State. This statue and others like it are one such side worth your time.

This is a statue to commemorate Florence Martus, who is said to have greeted every ship to sail into the Savannah River for 44 years. It shows her waving a handkerchief to the sailors with a collie dog at her side. There’s a tale of lost love and the maiden waving at all the sailors who did come home that Miss Martus never denied.

When we travel, we try to get an overview of the locale through a well run tour. So far, we’ve been enriched by each of these trips we’ve taken. We’ve learned things which might not be discovered by a solitary self-guided walk or drive about. I recommend doing this overview tour to any travelers.

This picture and story came about on our overview tour of Savannah.

Explore, it’s fun!.

Dana-Thomas House

I detoured on my way home to see if the Dana-Thomas House might be a good subject for a night shot. I had forgotten my window mount, so this is hand-held at 1 second. Not too shabby. I should have stopped the lens down more – some of the highlights are blown. A learning adventure.

This house was commissioned by Susan Lawrence Dana in 1903 and completed in 1904. Frank Lloyd Wright was the architect. There’s a piece in today’s paper, the State Journal Register – found here www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/103231.asp on how the home is decorated for the holidays.

More information on this house to be found here.