From our 25th Wedding Anniversary vacation in 2003.

Taken with my dearly beloved Olympus C2100UZ, taken from me before it’s time by a sticky-fingered airport employee (can you tell I still miss it?).

This is one of the windiest places that we visited while on the garden island of Kauai. I really had to hold onto my hat just walking around!

The lighthouse is known as the northernmost point of the main Hawaiian islands. It is built on a narrow outcrop of the island, accessed by a narrow road.

My imagination took me on a trip, seeing what it might be like in the midst of a tropical storm. It seems to have weathered the elements well.

I re-cropped the original photograph with a 16 by 9 ratio to give it a cinematic feel. I also played around with saturation, contrast, and added a layer of Gaussian blur with about 46% of Multiply effect for that layer (simulating the Oorton Effect).

I like the result.

I loved our trip there.

We’d go again and plan on doing so!

Inspiration comes from all over.

Today’s photo came from an online source.

I subscribe to a Yahoo group for my town, Springfield, Illinois.

In today’s email of new postings was a request from a gentleman named Jim, who’s grandparents used to run a store on East Capitol Avenue, and live around the block on East Monroe Street. I thought, “I can do that easily!” and replied to the posting by email.

I got a quick response, with details and let Jim know that he could expect the photos online sometime tonight.

I did a quick map lookup for the two addresses and headed out – I was going out anyway – it was a gorgeous day today. Temperatures around 60 F. No coat! =)

The neighborhood was quickly found and the two addresses had houses still standing. I made some passes and took about a dozen shots.

This one is looking West on Monroe Street towards the State Capitol building in the distance. The tower holds lights for the Chamberlain Park ball field. It’s a bit unique due to the high mounds that surround the ball field.

I like the bare trees which give detail and shout out Winter, heading to Spring.

Thanks for the assignment, Jim. I hope you like the photos, and as I said in my email to you, that they bring back happy memories.

After work on Friday, later than usual, I grabbed this frame while waiting for the light to change.

In this sepia tone interpretation, I like the way the feeling of a cold Winter’s night speaks to me. The shadows of bare branches of the tree on the sidewalk, the stark glow of the lights, the deserted street all add up.

No matter where I look, I see options for interpretation, telling different stories in each scene.

From the recent past today.

A view of the sunset on the Atlantic Ocean at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

This is another of my High Dynamic Range photos. Three exposures combined with Photomatix Pro software assisting.

The scent of Spring is in the air. Refreshing after last week’s snow storm and blizzard. The temperatures reached near 50 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale yesterday and the sun is beaming all day long.

Seasonal change.

Nice night scene of my house.

I had left my 50mm lens on my camera, in an attempt to learn more about it.

I was so busy during the day, that I didn’t take any time to capture anything with it. On my way home from my evening meeting, I just opened my car windows and started grabbing frames, changing to manual focus and mixing up the settings (when I could safely do so).

This was one of my last outside photos. I upped the light gathering by two f stops, which really pushes the limits of the camera’s ability without introducing a huge amount of noise – graininess.

In color, my first thought was wow, this gathered a ton of light and kept detail. I couldn’t get the color the way I wanted it, so I changed to grayscale, and fiddled with the contrast settings. I’m really happy with the result.

I get an almost spooky feel from the photo. The street light is really illuminating the foreground tree, which adds to the effect.

Fun pushing the limits. =)