Greeting all from a decent day in South Dakota. Light wind and normal temps! Hope all is well in your world.
I might have posted a photo of our lake in the past but an update on the draining....not happening yet. Maybe late fall. Trying to get all the alge out of it. We will see. Should be interesting to see what lurks at the bottom after all these years since 1921 I believe. Might be a few surprises! This is the beach where, as a grade schooler, I learned to swim. We lived a few houses to the left.
The triangle white roof is the Prehistoric Archeodome that covers a dig of 1000 + year old bones, mostly animal and pottery. This was the site of a Native American camp site. The creek that was dammed up to fill the lake ran very close to the far shore.
I recently reprocessed an old (originally taken in March 2005) favorite; tweaked the values and colors, and re-cropped for a better composition. I think these changes did a fine job of allowing the curving edges of the white petals to function as leading lines that more clearly draw the eye to the intended COI (the ladybug and the yellow structure of the Cosmos flower).
This was the first photo of mine to win an award. And I'm very proud of the fact that for the 2 or 3 years when I submitted photos for the highly competitive Orange County Fair (where less than half of submitted photos were rejected) every photo that I submitted was accepted.
Greetings all. Well, my town always has a Pre-Sturgis party the Thursday before the Rally starts. Lots of bikes, classic cars, food and fun. Here is a classic car, a 1938 Ford. A real beauty.
The link I posted is to my you tube channel showing the bike parade down main. I couldn't get a good spot with the right angle so they buzz by pretty fast. I found that clicking on the settings wheel lower right and adjusting the speed to 50% helps a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlKinDExrTY
Welcome back to Darlene! As you can see we are barely hanging on, primarily because of Dave, MFI and Rich... However, I did just renew the domain for another year so we will trundle on.
Here is a mill that we visited on our Mississippi River cruise. Converted to B&W and used an Infrared filter to make it a bit more interesting, at least to me.
We also saw many, many bald eagles but with my P&S I couldn't really get any good shots. I played with image a bit and tried to make the eagle stand out from the background.
Another week almost gone... I went for a short camping trip on the Spyder this week, leaving Tuesday and returning yesterday. I went to a State Park about 90 miles away, 2 hours or so. It was very hot, and I really shouldn't have chanced it. Here are a few snapshots. First is shortly after arrival and set up, next is all loaded back up and ready to start home. Number 3 - I started getting leg and arm cramps which I have gotten before, so I had to make a stop to drink some water and try to "walk it off". I had thought it was just age related, but after getting home and finally researching, it may be a combination of dehydration (although I tried to drink a lot of water) and lack of Potassium and/or Magnesium. Anyway, I have ordered some Potassium&Magnesium supplements, along with some pickle juice. As mentioned, it was quite hot, and even though it was early I was soaked with sweat after loading up for the trip home. We'll see if the supplements and pickle juice help.
Tonight a couple of friends of mine are performing just up the road at a sports bar, and I am thinking of dropping in to see them for a bit. We'll see.
Early last month something caused a memory from my college days to pop into my mind.
A friend was going to spend the weekend at his family's lakeside home in Wisconsin and graciously invited me along.
The small town was holding a regatta and my friend entered us in it. Even though I had never been on any boat with a sail, it sounded fun to me.The lake was small – maybe 2 miles by 1 mile (3.2 km by 1 km) and the course started near the shore, went out to the middle of the lake, then returned to the starting point. Most of the boats tightly rounded the far buoy and quickly headed towards the finish line, but my friend kept us heading far out onto the middle of the lake. Smart move: he knew we'd catch enough wind in the middle of the lake to double or triple our speed. So despite my inexperience, we quickly blew past the other 9 or so boats and won easily. Pretty neat.
One night we slept on a pontoon boat near the far shore. It was nice to watch the lake and sky darken as the lake and wildlife settled down for the night. We were awakened in the predawn by the haunting cry of a loon from somewhere across the still and dark water. A memorable experience.
Last week I tried to convert a bright and colorful photo of water reflections into a night scene. Here's the daylight version taken around 20 years ago at the nearby Bolsa Chica Wetlands Ecological Preserve:
I learned that this sort conversion wasn't as easy as I expected, and the results were pretty lame:
Later, inspired by this memory and by Japanese haiku poetry, I tried writing a short poem about that night on the lake.
These are probably the last of the photos from the river trip. Most of the remaining are basically travel snapshots and would be of little interest in a photography forum.
One of the towns that we visited on the river lit up their bridge with colored lights at night. This one qualifies as a travel snapshot. Then I reworked the building in B&W but not sure it works. The last one is a sunrise which basically looks like a million other sunrises, but it is hard to pass on an interesting sunrise.
More photos from our upper Mississippi river cruise. St. Louis Arch from a different perspective, and a street scene with color and patterns. Lastly, a view from a hotel window.
