"There's nothing to photograph"

Have you ever said to yourself "I just don't live in one of those neat places where I can just go out anytime and find great pictures to take."

 Well I have thought a lot about this and for those of you who follow this blog you will have seen where I have photographed my own yard a hundred times and today is no different. I decided the other day that when Saturday rolled around and I had some time (or better yet when Saturday rolls around and I make the time) I will get up and go out and just take a picture and say to myself what is there in this area that would make a great photo?

 Today Saturday rolled around and I made some time to just go out and photograph the yard. It was kind of fun in the fact that it snowed four more inches last night and that always changes the dynamics of things. So tonight my blog is the start of several that will include pictures that I have taken today within 75 yards of my front door. Here is the first set and more will come later as I process the rest. I do this so as to hopefully inspire you to "Just go look around and see what you can take. (I took over 400 images today so you obviously won't see even a small portion of them but that is just more for you to ponder next time you think to yourself, "There's nothing to photograph"!)

Ice on my new shed.

Snow on our fence.

A drop of water from ice on the corner of my house.
(By the way about 9 of the images today were taken of the same piece of ice as I was trying to catch one drop of water as it was falling off. It wasn't real easy.)

Ice on the needles of one of my pine trees.

More ice and taken with a # 4 close-up filter on my 300 mm lens.

(My fingers were starting to get a bit cold changing these lenses and filters, just part of the process.)

A winter bird singing from the top of our apple tree.

What looks like a dove flying from the top of one of our trees. 

And finally, a bear in one of the pine trees.

(Come on use your imagination a little bit and you will see it.)

Actually looks more like a bear rug left in the tree with snow on it.

Lights and Ice

Here is a new one. No wonder those lights have the word "ice" in their name.

Practice Helps so does Experimenting

I discovered something today that I had never tried before and I think I never tried it because of some of the remnants of my past film shooting days. I have always used single shooting mode when trying to do pan shots. Today I went into continuous mode and as I took the nine exposures it was much more natural to follow the action as I was panning. These first three images were some of the results and I think I will shoot this way from now on. Of course in the film days eating up that many frames just wasn't a good idea but with digital the only reason not do it that way was if you were stuck on processing everyone of them. I am slowly learning how to be picky in the Raw files that I convert and that has been a major time saver.




Of course I had to get mom and dad in a couple of the shots that I was doing while they were here on vacation. I have taken a lot of the girls.



And this one is just fun because I happened on to a new place to frame a picture. The swing set worked pretty good, however I'll you be the judge since I am a bit biased.

A date with Grandparents

So far Christmas we gave mom and dad a night out and we went on a date with their girls that started out by building a large snowman and swinging in the swings and sliding on the slide. We had a lot of fun and then went out for a round of sliding at Jumping Jacks and then stopping by for a 5 buck pizza and finally watching Hoodwinked. It has been a fun night.

And of course with action like this I had to try a little panning while taking pictures. I might conquer this thing yet.



The girls thought Snowman was a giant and he did turn out even bigger than I thought he might but it is nothing compared to the one built that was 122 feet high, made in Bethel , Maine this year, but then again they cleared a runway for enough snow and used a crane to boot. (If you want to try and find it check here "World's Tallest Snowman Made In Maine
By David Sharp, Associated Press
BETHEL, Maine (AP) - The world's tallest snowman is no man."

Holiday Family Fun

So we were blessed to have all of our children and their families home for Christmas.  Families are such a blessing and Grandchildren top the list for making it a lot of fun again opening presents.