Outside!

I'm sooo happy we moved the clocks ahead. It's nice to actually see the sun again. I really enjoy outdoor photography, and especially love shots like this. There's so much complexity is something as simple as the bark of a tree, when you look at it like this, it's really pretty amazing. I love to take something you see every day and try to show it in a completely different way.

Okay, I know I said never again on the cell phone shots, but I saw something today that I absolutely had to share. We were at the grocery store, and I saw this display for these horrible new drinks obviously targeted at kids. They're milk drinks that are flavored like candy bars and Starburst. Wow. My teeth are rotting just thinking about it, and oh! Wait a sec! Yep, I just gained three pounds. Anyway, here's the display:
And as you can see, whomever made the sign obviously has a great sense of humor:
Any parent who gives these "milk" drinks to their kids should be rounded up and summarily executed.

Pez

Every year for Christmas, mom gets us Pez dispensers. Call it a tradition. This year, we got another, but as you can see, it is about 12 inches tall, and dispenses full packages of Pez instead of individual pieces. Pretty crazy.

I hate working Saturdays. For me, working 3rd shift, tonight is my Saturday. We generally work three Saturdays in a row, then we get one off. It sucks pretty bad, but at least I'm still working.

Spectral

As I've said before, I have some sleep issues. Today I had an odd dream that really inspired this shot. In my dream, I was coming up my basement steps, when I saw this dark, ghostly image hurtling at me from the top of the stairs. It was clearly some sort of spirit or ghost, and its intentions were not good. When it hit me, it was like a gust of frigid wind passing through me. That's about all I can remember. I don't know why I was in the basement, or why the spirit wanted to harm me, but it scared the hell out of me. Pretty odd, right? Anyway, when I was thinking about my photograph for today, I recalled a shot a guy did for our basic photography class very similar to this. His shot was slightly different, but had similar results. I guess maybe I need to lay off the hallucinogenic drugs right before sleep....

Baseball Fever

I've caught it. Every year is the same thing for me. New hats, new shirts, the occasional video game, this awesome jacket, I can't get enough. I love the build up every year that precedes the MLB opening day. I was just watching the Sox pound the Brewers in a spring training game, and I thought to myself, "Why am I watching a spring training game?" 19 more days!

Spring Breeze

It smells so good in our house right now. We've had some amazing weather the last couple of days, and today we had the windows open all day. There's nothing better than having those windows open for the first time in the spring. I guess that could be another of my unofficial starts to spring.

They did some more digging today next door, but I think they are all finished now. Naturally, being in a small town, all the neighborhood kids had to come see the hole. It makes me a little nervous seeing them climbing around near such a dangerous area, but I'm not their parents, so I keep my mouth shut.

Excavation

We have a great house. It's just the right size, it's in good shape, and the price was right. It has the worst location imaginable. To the north, two lots up, is the town's bar. You'd think that would be great, right? Go have a couple drinks, then you can walk home! Not so much. It's not great at all when the drunks are leaving at 2 am. To the south, about two lots down, are railroad tracks. When we moved in, those were my main concern. It's actually not as bad as you'd imagine. The lot in between the tracks and the house is the subject of this shot. The lot is basically empty, except for some buildings that are no longer in use. There used to be a fertilizer plant here, but that's no longer the case. We received a call last week telling us there would be some work done on the lot. When I got home this morning, there were about 6 trucks lined up in the street, and this backhoe tearing into the earth. When I woke up this afternoon, there is now this massive hole about 70 yards long. Apparently the owners of the property have to remove the soil in this area due to contamination concerns. Makes me feel great, considering we have well water....

I've added a link to the webpage where my images are hosted, Flickr.com. If you'd like to just view all the pictures I've taken to this point and in the future without going through the entire blog, you can use that.

Digital Black and White

No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will never get the quality of true black and white film from a digital camera. There are a lot of tricks and tweaks you can try in Photoshop, but wouldn't it just be easier to shoot film? This procedure is probably the quickest one I've found recently to convert color digital images to black and white. You could just desaturate it, or set your camera to "B&W", but what you generally end up with is a washed out, low contrast image. When taking photography classes, we shot Kodak TMAX 100 exclusively. We developed our own film and printed our own images in the darkroom. The shots I took in those classes are some of the most beautiful photographs I've ever taken. I'm really looking forward to shooting film again this summer.