A request for other windmills

After posting the blog the other day on windmills that I like to photograph I received a comment from my sister stating that I ought to add the new windmills to the blog that have recently been constructed in the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah. So after work last night at 6:30 P.M. I decided to travel home that direction and take a few shots of those windmills. The clouds were perfect and the sun almost in the right spot to do a few special shots as well. Compared to the windmills of rural America in the early 1900's these things are massive in size. Following are the image results.

Grand Children are so special and here is just one

Grand Children are just so much fun. We went to Colorado last weekend to see two of ours and well here are four pictures of the youngest one. We went to garage sales friday morning and she found a dress with Minnie mouse on it. She loved it and got it for just pennies. She got her total value out of that dress back by the end of the day since she went home and changed into it before I even was able to get in the front door. She wore it the rest of the day.Then on saturday evening we celebrated her upcoming birthday early since we were there and her Aunt had sent a special present for her with us and asked to get pictures of when she opened it. She had been wanting a wedding dress so she was given slippers, Tiara, purse, earrings, and a special dress with the veil included. Here again it was only minutes after it was opened before she put it on over her other dress. She wore it (minus the tiara, earrings and shoes to church the next day also.)

Now back to another image from Friday. We went to their park behind their house in the warm afternoon and she wanted to swing "duper high", (like as in super duper shortened by a three year old.) I am sure her grandma must have pushed her in that swing for about an hour until she finally fell asleep. I was worried that she would lose her grip and fall out but she didn't and soon came wide awake exclaiming that she "wasn't sleepy". We still lifted her from the swing and carried her home. Notice which dress she was wearing.

Choose a Subject

I love old relics, I am becoming one so I relate to them.
Years ago I met a lady in Stephenville, Teaxs whom I still adore to this day. She was an author, married to a photographer, who at the time of my knowing her was living in Stephenville while her son was attending college there as a freshman. Her husband was overseas at the time filming a movie so I never ever had a chance to meet him. This lady was fun to talk to and she knew so much about the area as well. I asked her one day after reading a segment of her new children's book that she was writing why she knew so much about the area since I had found out she had only lived there for a short time. She explained that in writing books there is also a lot of research that is necessary in order to make a book sound real and believable even though it is totally fiction. She had to study an area and find out all she could so that when she wrote she could include places and things to make the story come alive for children. She had a lot of knowledge that I knew I wanted to tap. When she discovered my love for photography she was all about telling me everything she knew there from her husbands experiences as well as her own since she also was pretty good with a camera. I don't remember a lot of it today but I think a lot of what she told me does show up in my photography even though the direction must come from a subconscious memory of her discussions with me. One thing has always stood out in my mind that I do remember though. She explained how her husband had first become known in the photography industry. He wanted to do a calendar and after a lot of thought decided to do a calendar about electrical transmission line poles. He went across the United States just photographing power poles and then produced a calendar from the images he had taken. Well, my desire to produce a calendar has never been that great but the thought of getting images gathered around a central theme has always stuck with me. So today I am posting a few from one of my relic sets. I have always been fascinated by wind mills and so as often as possible I have taken photographs of them. Here are a few.

Out for a Holiday

This weekend for the Memorial Day Holiday, despite gas prices, I took my wife and daughter to Colorado to my son's home for the weekend. We had planned to go to photograph their perschool graduation program last October so really had no choice even though the gas prices have been going up 5 cents a day it seems for the last several weeks. In fact, we put gas in the car on Thursday as we were traveling to Denver in Fruita, CO @ 3.859 a gallon and at the same station Monday coming home put gas in the car @3.899 per gallon from the same pump. So it isn't quite 5 cents a day but still way to fast for anyone's good except the gas companies. (I wonder what their profits will be this year that they can brag about at our expense.) Well that's off the subject so back to it.
I missed thousands of great photo opportunities this weekend and will just have to live with the memories of what I saw. Isn't it a shame when you are so pressed for time and regulated by laws that you can't stop to enjoy and record such beauty. For instance, as we were going past Vail Summit around 8:30 PM we were obviously getting there not but a few minutes after a snow storm had blown through because the roads were really wet and the trees to the side of the road were freshly flocked with a light coating of snow. They were so beautiful with the new green leaves just coming out covered lightly with the fresh white snow and the sun casting the warm light of sunset upon them. The clouds had moved but were still somewhat lingering around the low hills. I wanted so badly to stop but you didn't really get to do that on a freeway. (You know the signs they post that say "No Stopping or Standing except in emergency".)  I guess I could have called that an emergency but would have had a hard time explaining it to a patrolman. Later there were the Colorado Rockies near Eisenhower tunnel that were lit on the very top by the final light of the sun before it set. Wow they were gorgeous as well and I finally asked my daughter to get out my camera and we took a few through the windows as we drove. Then again as we were descending the other side of that pass there were the clouds floating through the trees that were very light and low. Well needless to say I missed some beautiful images all because I couldn't stop or stand for just a few seconds. Of course if I had we would have really been late getting to our son's place where we had two beautiful granddaughters awaiting our arrival long past their bedtime. One couldn't make it and was asleep anyway but the 6 year old was still up and really excited.

So now that I have set you up for what I missed here is something that I was able to get while there. This little fellow was in the neighborhood and I saw him once on friday as I was walking with my oldest granddaughter to school. I went outside again Saturday and walked down a couple of houses to see if I could find him again but with no luck. Then Sunday as I was waiting for five families to come for pictures, (they were having a family reunion) I went back from the park behind my son's home to see if they were at his home yet and of course had my camera ready with my 75-300 mm telephoto lens mounted because I has seen the little fellow on y way to the park. I walked around the corner and found my friend munching in the grass and so quickly held a little photo session for him. The following were the results. 

This first shot was taken on my way to the park.
However when I came back he was on the ground and the next few quick shots in the sequence were what I was able to get as he wasn't really to scared of me and was a little bit more interested in food as he closely kept track on my actions.




Actually even though it wasn't a prearranged photo session he was just as curious about seeing what I was doing as I was having fun seeing what he was doing. This was the final good look that he took at me before running up into the branches again.

Lightning Fun

Here is a photo that I put together in photoshop a couple of years ago. I had taken a number of pictures of a lightning storm out of my back door and decided that I wanted to add a little flavor to one of them. So I searched through my vast supply of American Flag images and came up with one I had taken at a youth conference in the middle of the day. ( I love taking images of the flag in all kinds of situations and maybe one of these days I will put a few of my favorites on the blog.
I wish I had known then more about masks in photoshop and this image would have been a lot easier to creat but as it was I figure it turned out OK. I had to adjust the lighting on the flag to make it appear that there was a light shining on it through the night and I am sure there are a lot of other things that I could have done but, hey, you gotta learn sometime. The moral of this story is: don't give up before you begin. Maybe things don't look so good when you are first learning but do it anyway and your ability to make things happen that do look good will steadily increase. Most of all just have fun doing it and let your creative mind do a bit of wandering through unfamiliar territories.

Make some friends

Through the years I have always enjoyed photographing birds and animals. They are not always easy to catch but when you can it is well worth it.

This bird pictured above I happened to catch one day when I just decided to go on a walk around the farm. I had watched this one and it's companion flying around the field but was not able to get very close until nearly the end of the walk when this one finally decided to fly up into the top of one of my little pine trees. I quickly fired off a shot and it flew away. Birds don't take a fancy to long photo shoot sessions.

I was hiking in southern Utah to a place called Lower Calf Creek Falls when this lizard was running around on the rocks near the trail. I used to catch these little guys in my youth but have since found it more fun just to photograph them. I have decided we are the animals in the large zoo called outdoors and the animals love to get a look at us just as much as we like to look at them. They won't linger longer than needed but never the less they will give you time to take their picture as they size you up before moving on to the next thing on their agenda called "survival". That's if you are ready and don't take your time shooting the picture.

I spent 20 minutes in the early morning hours with my camera ISO set to 1600 trying to photograph a bunch of little birds fleeting from branch to branch. It was just before sunrise so there wasn't a lot of light but they were active and I wanted to get a shot or two of them and out of the 30 or more I took , well, let's just say I got one good one as this little guy stopped long enough for a snapshot. As you can tell from it's fluffed out feathers it was a little cold at that time of the morning.

Another hike around the farm and I caught this magpie getting a look at the nearby grassy area where it was out looking for a little food. I have a number of trees planted in my yard so it isn't always easy to get a clear shot and for some reason they like to perch where they can see you but you can't clearly see them. However here again a little patience will pay off.

Finally I just had to add a picture of the little more easily photographed animals called "your pet". This was my families dog "Pee Wee" on a camping trip with me near my home in Duchesne, Utah when I was 14 years old. Pee Wee liked the tent but she also liked to watch the traffic that we could see from our farm on Blue bench. The highway was across the valley from where we lived but she was always spell bound by the cars and trucks. At least that seemed to me to be what she was always watching.

Wow That's gotta hurt

All I can say this morning is; Always, Always ,Always be alert to your surroundings and opportunities will present themselves for some amazing images. That is at least in the struggle for life and against death. Things happen so quickly and you never know when you will be a witness to it. This image today was taken in the morning on a day when I was camping and had gone out to photograph while waiting for the events of the day to begin. I had noticed all of the wild flowers on the hill behind where we were staying and decided early in the week that I would photograph some of them later in the week. Well I went up onto the hill and was looking carefully at which blossoms I felt might make the best image. I had wandered around a little but there were so many that I hardly had to go very far. Then I heard some bees behind me and decided to try and get them as the worked. As I turned around little did I know that the reason I had heard them was because one had just been caught by a spider sitting hidden by the petals of the flower. The second one was flying close to the spider then away just as a bird does to other birds or animals threatening their young. The second one soon left and I watched and photographed this scene as the bee first struggled then became still. I had seen spiders on flowers before and yet never thought about the struggles of life that might occur because of it.

I went back to that same flower the next day and sure enough there was that spider sitting hidden by the petals again and I wondered when and what it would catch that day.