Archive for the 'Photography' Category

Apr 26 2009

2009 Spring Break Road Trip – Zion, UT

Published by under Declan,Erin,Photography

We got up the next morning, found some breakfast, then headed north on I-15 to Zion. On previous trips in this part of the country, I’d stuck to the interstate. The views were always awesome, but I wondered what getting off of the beaten path would yield. I was not disappointed!

Zion is a short trip off of I-15, just north on St. George, UT. We stopped at a little town called Springdale and looked at some rocks:

I decided then that I’d resist my rock collection obsession or else the car would be laden with 1000lbs as we headed over the Rockies later in the trip 😉 Erin got her Mom some earrings, and we headed into Zion proper. I didn’t know what to expect – I’d done some research for the trip, but I didn’t want to look at too many pictures before I saw it for myself.

There’s a $25 entry fee, then you leave your car at the visitor’s center and hop on a shuttle that runs the length of the park.

I’ll put a link in the blog to all of the pictures, but WOW! Just WOW! It was amazing:

Erin has the photography bug too. I got here here and I was using my iPhone – one of my favorite images from the trip:

I was drawn to the rocks mainly, while Erin loved the water features:

I got a new wide lens piece for my Lensbaby and tried it out here, but only got one or two interesting images:

I need to spend more time with it to learn how to get some part of the image in focus.

I can paste beautiful rock formation pictures in here all day:

I also got a 70-300 Canon IS lens to play with, and it didn’t disappoint:

Erin goes in search of more water pictures:

We encountered much wild life, such as the Thanksgiving bird:

We couldn’t find the stuffing gophers.

Where’s Erin?

I was going to have some deep comments about ageless stone and modern technology, but I remembered that I’m not that deep:

Finally found some phone signal!

It was getting late and we needed to get to Bryce for the next day, so we headed out through the tunnel on Rt. 12:

and found even more amazing sights:

SOMEone was getting a little tired of stopping every 5 minutes to take pix, but I have to say – this was one of the most amazing drives I have ever made. Beautiful!

Good bye Zion. I’ll be back, and I promise to spend more that a day….

One response so far

Apr 19 2009

2009 Spring Break Road Trip – Las Vegas

Erin and I took off early on Saturday morning:

to get to our first stop, Las Vegas! This was Erin’s first time so I wanted to make sure she saw the most important part, Barry Manilow!

Ok, not really – our goal was the Blue Man Group but first we needed to get a good meal. I looked out the window of our hotel and saw the Peppermill, a great place my buddy TJ intruduced me to on my last LV visit. Erin was impressed with the very colorful sugar:

Ok, so was I:

Next, we walked (and walked and walked) the Strip:

Caught some amazing magic:

Then finally saw the men of blue:

When I took Nathan to this show a few years ago, I neglected to bring a camera, so we missed this shot…

Erin really wanted to see the Excalibur, so we hoofed it down the Strip again after the show and she scored a nice image:

Sadly, the dragon statue is gone now. A guard told us that it was breaking down and they couldn’t get parts. I blame the IT department, or this Emo kid:

No responses yet

Mar 01 2009

code4lib 2009 in Providence, RI

Just got back from one of my favorite conferences of the year, code4lib 2009, this year in Providence, RI. It was great seeing a lot of my liberry geek buddies, and it was a nice reminder of why I live in San Diego and not the God forsaken hinterlands of the East. Cold is just dumb.

I took a lot of pictures as usual. They’re all up on Flicrk, but here are a few I really liked:

Our hotel was right across the street from the Rhode Island State house. I forgot to fix my white balance before I shot it, but I kinda like the effect:

If all of the cars in front were as old as the one in the middle, I could have pretended it was an old slide 🙂

Here’s a more “accurate” shot:

We headed over to the local mall’s food court for lunch:

Lotsa folks in that one – Mike Giarlo, Rob Cassion, Ross Singer, Phil Cryer.

I really enjoyed spending a few days with our intrepid Esme:

(He lives in Florida, Mike.)

Here Dan Chudnov does his Bollywood routine in celebration of Slumdog Millionaire’s big Oscar wins:

Jodi Schneider was thrilled to see me, as always:

I finally met Ed Summers, in the middle. It’s good to see him inspiring others as he does me. Bess Sadler is enjoying the fracas as well:

Gabe Farrell, on the right, forgot he owed me $20. Never do that. It gives me WAY too much license… 😉

Mike Park left me waiting to be picked up at the airport:

Well ok, he mailed me 3 weeks before the event asking if I needed a ride and I sent him an itinerary and said I’d confirm closer to the flight. Three hours before the flight takes off doesn’t really count! 😉 Mike drove me, Esme, Brad, and Dan all over the place, either because he’s a great dude, or I’m good at making people feel guilty. Either way, I win! 🙂 Thanks Mike for being a great host.

Actually, I gotta say that the whole Brown Univ (or is that Univ of Providence?) crew kicked ass in prep and execution of this conference. BRAVO Birkin, Jean, Bonnie, and other names I can’t remember because I drink a lot.

I also take a lot of pictures, so I’ll inevitably get something cool like this:

Heehee! I love my Lensbaby!

Pizza is good!

Did you know the lead singer of Saliva is a librarian?

Ross pretends to laugh at something while trying to ignore the fat dude sticking a camera in his face:

Just looking at this costs me 14 points:

Brad, Dan, and I visited the inside of the RI State House before we ran to the airport, and decided that we should hold the next code4lib in the Senate chambers:

Never get on that end of a canon, especially when I am on the other end…

As usual, way too many pictures here:

Awesome seeing you all again!

One response so far

Jan 25 2009

San Diego Night Time Panorama

Published by under Declan,Photography,San Diego

I’m SO happy with how well this shot worked:

Hit this link to see a big version.

And hit this link to see a huge version! 🙂

This is actually 2 shots from the Balboa Park bridge over Rt. 163, toward downtown San Diego. I used Autostitch to put them into one shot.

More pix from that night here:

3 responses so far

Dec 02 2008

Moon Jupiter Venus Convergence

Last night I shot some of the neat Moon Jupiter Venus convergence:

I also started playing around with long exposures:

This one was very long, maybe 10 minutes. In fact, by the time I went back out to close the shutter, the fog had rolled back in:

I noticed later that I had captured some of Jupiter’s moons. You can see a little bit of light from the spot on the right:

You may need to go to the Flickr page and view the large originals to see it better.

I also liked the foggy light last night and shot this as I was coming in:

Here are all the pix, and a link to Flickr:

No responses yet

Dec 02 2008

Foggy UCSD Morning

Published by under Declan,Photography

The fog was interesting in the morning as well. This was just as the sun was breaking it up:

More here:

2 responses so far

Nov 18 2008

It was 20 years ago… tomorrow, actually

Published by under Declan,Elaine,Photography

Love you E!

D

One response so far

Nov 09 2008

Fun night of poker

Published by under Declan,Friends,Fun,Photography,Poker

Thanks @dcrane2, @SDMike, @dwaynedomi, @dcrane’s Old Man, John, Preston, and @dblackman for a great night of poker. And cute photography:

Especially thanks to you guys for giving me yer moneyz!!! 😉

D

3 responses so far

Oct 26 2008

Waterfalls at Watkins Glen, NY

Published by under Declan,Photography

Another place that Maureen suggested I visit on my down day was Watkins Glen. There is a large gorge carved out that’s full of waterfalls. I got there fairly close to sunset, so I was moving as fast as I could, but I did bring the tripod to get some nice shots:

I need to tone the sky down on that one. I’m reading a book about image editing and this will be one of the ones I’ll pour some work into.

This one is a little contrived, but hey, it gets the path, some fall colors, and water:

The word “gloaming” kept coming into my head:

I didn’t know how much of the sky I wanted, so I tried leaving it out. Kinda works:

I was able to get behind one of the falls and shoot with a flash to get the droplets:

No responses yet

Oct 26 2008

Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum

While attending the Access 2008 conference in Hamilton, ON Canada, I got to visit the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. It was a social event where we could mingle, look at planes, and play video games on large screen projectors. There were some very neat planes:

Great colors:

And library geeks playing games:

No responses yet

« Prev - Next »