Recently in Photography Category

The family wanted to get out of the house Sunday so we took a ride up to Sloss Furnaces. To have a look around.  The location was recently featured on the Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures and has long been thought to be extremely haunted.  While we were there we ran into a least one group of "ghost hunters".  Not sure what they were looking for in the middle of the afternoon, but I hope they found it.  The location is also a very popular photography location and Sunday it lived up to its reputation.  There was a fairly large photo shoot going on of "interesting" subject matter.  Apparently a burlesque show/enthusiast group was shooting in and around the park all afternoon.  My wife was quite diligent in keeping me away from the "shoot" under the guise of "good parenting".  Maybe I'll see those pictures at another time.

Anyway, we wandered the grounds for a while and finally entered one of the tunnels where "sightings" have been reported.


The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful and it was a nice day to be outside. Cold, but not uncomfortable with plenty of sunshine. Good day for picture taking. It's a shame I am not better at the process.

This weekend was another trip to Boo-at-the-Zoo.  We have been hesitant to go back because of the ridiculous crowds but decided to try this past Sunday in the hopes that it wouldn't be so bad going early and on a Sunday.  That decision proved to be right and the crowd was manageable.  The zoo has also learned how to lay out this event so that there are not huge bottlenecks of mouth breathing rednecks clamoring for candy.  The first year we went it was insane how crazy people were for some Smarties.  This year things were much better and the zoo crew is really coming along with the decorating skills.  I will say, however, the extra $3.50 per person for the train/carousel is a bit of a rape.  However, it is for the zoo so I didn't let it bother me so much.

One nice addition this year was the increased number of games for the kids.  Emily had lots of fun bowling, playing cornhole (seriously folks, can't we get a better name for that game?), and fishing.  At the conclusion of one of these games, she won a finger puzzle.  The following picture was taken about 15 seconds later:

 

As you can see, things got serious really quick.  Emily could not figure out how the puzzle worked and was on the verge of panic shortly after sticking her fingers into the puzzle.  While trying not to laugh too much, we stopped and removed the puzzle from her fingers.  Needless to say, Emily has banned the puzzle from her presence.

Overall it was a really fun night with great weather and mostly calm and respectful crowds.  I will say that the little turd in the monkey mask that thought it would be funny to scare a 5 year old girl should get tricked instead of treated this Halloween.  Personally I hope someone drops the deuce in his Halloween bag instead of a Snickers bar.  Here's for wishful thinking eh?

One more thing...Who gives out individually packaged medicine droppers for Halloween?  Seriously WTF?

A weekend family outing took us to The Grand Ole Pumpkin Patch located in Clanton, Alabama. The weather was gorgeous and perfect for getting ready for Halloween.

I noticed one very interesting thing while at the farm, the Canon Digital Rebel Digital SLR camera has unbelievable market share. I saw about a dozen of those units (and I include all the upgraded models as well) at the pumpkin patch. I have the original version and still use it as a backup. Without a doubt SLR photography has made its way to the masses. I think this is a great thing as the more popular Digital SLRs become the more likely hardware prices, including lenses, will fall.

Noticing all the high mega-pixel cameras also got me thinking about how much data must be out there. How does everyone backup their photos? Do they even think about that? I am thinking about using Amazon's S3 backup service (thanks to a tip from a friend) as my photo storage at home is still vulnerable to things like fire or theft even though I back-up my data locally. It seems like online backup has gotten to a point where it should seriously be considered for home users. Does anyone out there use an online backup service they are happy with? I would love to hear both the good and the bad.

I hope I can get back to photography now that I am less busy. Seems like the camera has been neglected lately.

I found this spider right on my front porch yesterday. Cool little creature and I hope she gets her fill of flies, mosquitoes, and beetles.