Another fountain shot

I liked the arches of water and the museum in the background.

Philly Fever!!

I was in Philadelphia this week for a meeting. The Phillies won the chance to go to the play offs this week and started the playoffs. They are so ate up with the Phillies that they put red dye in the water fountain catty corner from city hall. You know I had to get that shot!
The rest are from a night time stroll. I went back over to the Masonic lodge and got the second shot, the third shot is a detail of the city hall and the final is a frog in the fountain on Logan Circle. It's all about the details!

edit: It seems the red is some kind of promotion for the Showtime series "Dexter", who is a serial killer. It did look like blood...

Final Self Portrait

I shaved and everything!

Self Portraits, or, this guy needs a shave

Just messing around with the flash. It's a challenge to sit right, look into the camera and fire away. Shaving wouldn't have hurt either. I rarely show teeth in smiles for photos. Black and white makes it artsy!

Winterthur Garden Fair

Winterthur had a 3 day garden fair this weekend. Lots of cool stuff in a beautiful setting. I carried my camera and a single lens to avoid a backpack lugging exercise. These are some of the photos I took. I like sunflowers and the details in the pink flowers. The downside to going to a garden fair is the amount of work created when purchasing bulbs on the final day BOGO special! There should be lots of daffodils in the back yard along the fence next spring!

Strobist Tim

Caught Tim thinking about stuff...

Strobist Hibiscus Shots

I"ve been following along at the Strobist.com website, learning about some lighting techniques using off camera flash. I tried some ideas on the hibiscus that decided to bloom again.






I like this one best, followed by the one that follows!




Comments?

2 more of Cole

These were done before the ones on the black background.

Cole

We've been dogwatching my mom's dog, Cole, this week. He has such an expressive face, and he's pretty darn smart. I decided to try to get some photos of him. They came out pretty nice.

Kian 2

Kian and dad sharing a moment.


Poor kid! Forced to wear a pumpkin outfit!


Grand ma loves Kian!

Kian's photos

Some good friend's brought their daughter and her husband, and more importantly, their grandson over the other day to do some dinner and photography. The daughter baby sat for Tim a decade ago, and now she's a mom. I'm getting old! Here are the results. Some of the posed shots didn't come out as good as I had hoped, but the more relaxed photos sure did. Kian is a cutie. He's about 2 months old and has no space alien looking tendencies! Except maybe the toes. I'm just sayin'


I like soft impressionist stuff. This reminds me of that feel.


Dad is from Baltimore. Can you tell???


Grandma was playing with him a split second before this photo.

Rumor has it he might have some Vulcan blood!

B-17 flight!

I read about the Collings Foundation display of WWII bombers in the News Journal and Mary and I decided to take Tim for a ride on the B-17. It was against our somewhat frugal nature to do it, but it was worth every cent, and tax deductible to boot! (Nice rationalization!) . Anyways, we got up there about 2:30 and hung around going through the displays of a B-24, B-25 and the Mac Daddy, B-17 until the flight at 5:30. It was interesting going through them and thinking about what it took to be an Airman or pilot going to war in the planes. Tim and I talked to two WWII veteran airmen while we were milling about. One was a p-47 pilot that did duty near the end of the war shooting up trains and transportation targets in Italy and France. The other was a B-17 Master Sgt. who talked about getting frostbite twice while on missions during his 3 year tour. Interesting folks!
We also talked to a gentleman whose father flew B-26s for 61 missions, volunteering for the second tour.


The planes clearly weren't designed for 40 something guys (or pregnant women either. A lady about 6-7 months preggers went through immediately after me. God knows how she got over the bomb bay catwalk!) to get around, but I managed to get through it. Walking on the catwalk through the bomb bays was cool, especially after seeing war movies of guys doing stuff up there with open doors.





Tim was in the waist gunner position on the B- 24. It was a tight fit getting into the back of the aircraft to get to this position.



The B-17 with engines warming up.



No, Tim wasn't going for the Eddie Munster look, we were boarding the B-17 before take off, in the prop wash from two 1200 horsepower engines. Yeah, it was awesome!



Inside the aircraft. I don't know if the seats were original equipment or not, but we were seated every other person, no windows to look out in the back where we were. We could look sort of up and out through the plexiglass windows where the waist guns were mounted. The gunners must have done a sort of dance to get around each other in the heat of action.



As soon as we were airborne, we were allowed to move about the aircraft. We made our way forward, over the bomb bay to the pilots compartment, then under that to get to the bombardiers position. That was the best seat in the house! It was amazing looking through the dome down. There was room for 4 of us to hang out and wait a chance to sit in the seat and take it all in. Awesome! It was pretty cool looking through the upper turrent over the top of the airplane. I'm betting it wasn't as much fun when your life depended on it!


Tim exiting the plane at the end of the ride.

My advice: Go for a ride on one or more of these guys if you get the chance!

Morning Glories!

Its all about color! We saw these the other morning, taking Tim to school. I got up at the crack of dawn (well, 7:45= COD for me!) and went back for these shots.
Tim and I are psyched for later today. Three WWII vintage bombers are going to be at New Castle Air Port and we're going to be flying in a B-17 this evening! Yeah, the camera is coming along!