Before the snow

These photo's I took the weekend before this week snow storm. A few ice formations and a few other thing of interest to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Snow Storm of 2013

I went for a walk during this weekends snow storm. It was difficult to get any good shots. The snow was falling so hard most of the time that it was obscuring the shots. By Saturday afternoon 6-8 inches of snow fell. Here are a few photo's.

 

 

 

 

 

Goodby Izzy

We had to put Izzy down today. He was not going to recover and he was suffering. I will miss him greatly.

Last weekends photo's

Last Sunday I took a hike with my 50mm primary lens. It has been a while since I used this lens. I took a few ok photo's.

 

Assorted Fall Photo's

 

"Fall" photos, get it? :)

 

New lighting for my still life photography

I made some small LED spotlights for Halloween. I made white , warm white, green and blue spotlights. When photographic in the dark the colors look normal. The whites look white and the green and blue look correct too. I did not test the warm white. I will try it next.

My LED spot lights are not powerful enough for anything other than low light photography currently. I will try creating an array of LED's to see how many are need for other lighting needs. But these small spotlights are cheap and easy to make.

 

Walkabout after the storm

After a bad storm this last Sunday I decided to walk around the neiborhood and take some pictures. I started with my camera on manual mode. But it did not feel right to stand there finding the right settings for each shot. I decided to put the camera on automatic and just let things happen.

Most of the pictures were not very good. The best two I will post here. The others I will post on my flickr account here if you are interested.

I talk more about the storm on my other blog here.

The other end of our street. The storm dumped a large amount of rain in just a few minutes.

Another storm coming through. I was a long way from by this time but this storm only brought some high winds.

Damn it, Damn It, Damn it!

For those who just want to see my latest Turkey Run pictures click here to skip past the story. Its probably for the best anyway. I am not very good at expressing myself in the written word. I am thinking about working on that. I am not sure how yet.
Well the Turkey Run trip did not go as well as I wanted it to. I was really looking forward to the trip all week. I have been in need of something to cheer me up. I was off work the last week of October to setup my Halloween display. That was a big a dissapopintment. I have been feeling blue for a long while and the Halloween vacation made it much worse. See my other blog Thomas's Stuff for details of how that went sometime soon.
Anyway as I was driving to Turkey Run Saturday morning I realized about 15 miles into the drive that I had no cash on me! I have no idea if they take credit cards. Should I go back home and see if I can find some cash laying around the house? If I do I will end up adding 30 miles to the trip and waste about half and hour. I have already started later than I wanted too. What happens if I keep going and they don't take credit cards? I will be really bummed if that happens
I decide to keep going.
I arrive at the gate and ask the lady park ranger if they take credit cards. Yes we do she says. Thank you very much I say. I made the right choice.
After paying the admission fee I drive into the parkling lot and park. I get out of the van, do some stretching and then start checking my backpack. Two bottles of water, 50mm primary lens, 75-250mm zoom lens, tripod, camera? Where is my camera. Damn it, Damn it, Damn it where is my camera?!?!? I CAN NOT BELIEVE I DID NOT PACK MY CAMERA! This darkened my mood for at least an hour and a half.
I did have my Samsung Galaxy Player with me. I was using it to listen to music while driving It is an Android device that is everything but a phone. Or as a co-worker calls it my "Android phone that is not a phone". It has an app that I use to I use to track my hiking miles and time. It does have a camera but it only takes OK pictures. Some time half way though the day it crash on me and I later found out I lost all the photo's I had taken before then.

The photo's that did survive that day
The newly repaired Suspension Bridge. As you ca see there is some fall color still. But in most of the park the leave were a week or two past their peak.


Some crazy stairs in Gypsy Gulch


A small section of Turkey Run Hollow.


An interesting curved stone wall near the Punch Bowl

The setting sun reflecting off of Sugar Creek

Small Assortment of Photo's from weeks past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making a run on Turkey Run State Park

Making a drive to Turkey Run State Park today! The weather will be 62 degrees and sunny. I am hoping the fall colors are still nice. The suspension bridge has been fixed. I am looking forward to see that too.

I am taking several lens for my camera and a book. I hope to find a nice spot and just sit and read for a while. I thinking of staying till sunset. Sunset with all the golden leaves should be site to see.

The Feast Of The Hunters Moon

I was at the "Feast" a few weekends ago. My wife and her sister have had a booth at the Feast for the last three years. I just help set up the booth and camp out in the tent Friday night and Saturday night to keep an eye on their merchandise.
This year we had more space so we set up two smaller tents and had a camp fire. So I spent the weekend tending the camp fire and cooking two meals on the fire.

Well since it was the Feast weekend that means it had to rain. Which it did a lot Saturday afternoon, night and Sunday morning. I did not have much time to take pictures Saturday. Saturday night I had my wife take home my camera when she left for the day. I did not want to take any chances with it getting wet or muddy.

Here is a picture of my tent setup up in the back yard to air out.

Friday night I took some pictures of the stars before it clouded up.

Don't Tread On Me

I came across this snake just sitting on the paved part of the trail. I almost stepped on it. It was not moving very much. I was able to walk around it several time while taking pictures of it.

I am not sure what kind of snake it is. Looks somewhat like a gartner snake but lighter in color.

Bird, branches, and beavers, Oh My!

I stalked a bird for at least a half an hour at the "beach" a few weeks back. It was about 5 feet away from the edge of the river. It was catching some small fish.

I started out about 50 feet away. I would put my tripoded camera down take a few photo's, watch the bird for a while then move a couple feet forward on my knees stop then do the same thing again.

The photo's did not come out that good because the sun was in behind the bird. So the bird was darker than I would have liked. But I had fun stalking the bird.

On my way to the "beach" I discovers a beaver lodge under a steep embankment. I had seen it many times but I though it was just a clump of trees fallen in to river. I currently can not get a good photo of the lodge. No good angles to shoot from. I have been thinking of taking a canoe or kayak trip down the river when the leaves start changing colors. If I go by the lodge I will try to take a picture. I have not ridden in a boat for a long time and never by myself. This may be a bad idea. But I hope to do it soon anyway.

Anyway, I was walking along the trail and I see something swimming in the water and it was headed towards the clump of trees. It saw me and dove deep under water and I lost track of it. So I waited a long time near the clump of trees to see if it would come back. It finally did and I saw the big flat tail. Then I knew it was a beaver. Later a larger one showed up as well. I got an OK picture of it. It was difficult to get a good shot between the many tree branch's.

While I was waiting for the beaver to come back I took some pictures of some tree branch's

Honeycomb and Bones

The things I find on the trail still amaze me.
A couple of weekends ago I found several chunks of honeycomb. I have no idea how they ended up on the trail.








This is what I found on the "beach" a few weekends ago I assume its related to the skull I found there a while back. More bones for my Halloween display. I will be posting some pictures from my display on my other blog soon.  http://gamingandhalloween.blogspot.com

Spider Webs

I tool all these spider web photo's on the same weekend. They were early morning photo's. The sun was just in the right spot to get these. After a few minutes the sun was to high and not coming through the trees right to catch the spider webs in its light.