Abstract

Abstract, thinking outside the box or maybe just stayed up to late watching the lunar eclipse the other night and this is what you start doing after. Set the camera for a longer shutter speed and played around seeing what kind of patterns I could get from the Christmas lights on the tree.

Lunar Eclipse

We ended up watching the lunar eclipse last night, well more like we would go outside every so many minutes to see how it looked as it was freezing out last night. Each time out I would take a couple shots so I could put something together in the end. If I knew about it sooner and was thinking I would have borrowed a larger lens to get the photos. I used a Sigma 300mm to get these shots. It was an interesting event to watch and now we are having a lazy day as we stayed up so late.

Click on the picture then click on it again on the next page for a slightly larger view.

Oh Christmas Tree

These are just a few of the ornaments we have hanging on our tree.

This first one is a nice hand painted one depicting the scene of what it is all about, the birth of Christ our Savior.



Next up everyone should have a Federation ship patrolling the tree! This one would be from Star Trek Deep Space Nine.



With the Mickey fans in our house we also have plenty of Micky ornaments on the tree. I like this one as it gives me another chance to do some more aviation photography!



Of course no tree is complete without some Starbucks on it, or at least in your coffee cup!

California Adventure

Took these photos of the big Ferris Wheel one night while we were at the Disney's California Adventure park. Rachel seemed to really like this ride, most the carts slide along a bar and really get to swinging in a couple spots and she would just be laughing the whole time.

Bread

So here is something different, bread. I often struggle with cooking but one thing I like to do is bake bread. I have played around with baking several different types of bread and my favorites are usually the Artisan type breads. This is from a rustic baguette recipe but instead of baguettes I typically will do a round loaf. This one I baked today so I thought I would share.......well I will share the picture with you at least.

The P-38

Another interesting WW2 plane is the P-38. There are very few of them left and two of them were at the air races this year. I believe they were there more for show as I do not think they race them at all. These images were all shot the same evening as the Tigercat and I believe they were all going up for a photo shoot that you can read about on this photographer's blog HERE if you are interested, it is actually a pretty interesting story.

Tigercat

These are a couple images of the Tigercat's that were at the air races this year. There is usually one there every year though I am not sure I have ever seen it race but this year there were two of them at the races and as you can see in the bottom image both planes were racing. This is one of the planes out there that I find more interesting, though my favorite is probably still the P-51 Mustang.
The top image was taken in the evening after all the races were over and some of the pilots that have been working on their planes during the day will take them up for test flights so we were hanging out for a while catching some of these planes take off. Both the Tigercat's I believe were going up with the P-38's to fly in formation for a photo shoot.

More HWY 88 Fall Colors

These are a couple more shots from a few weeks ago up on highway 88.

FA-18 Super Hornet

These are some images I got of the FA-18 Super Hornet back in September at the Reno Air Races. With the Air Races and Fall setting in I have actually taken a lot of photos in the last couple of months so I still have a lot of photos from back then that I want to work on as well as several fall photos to work on.

Flowers

Couple weeks ago I took a few photos of the flowers in Tom and Ginny's yard. These are a few of the ones I liked.

Urban Decay In Fall

This location is just outside of Virgina City and I am not totally sure what it used to be but I would guess they are some structures that used to be used in mining that are now decaying away over time. I was there with Bryan who was shooting a short film project at this location and I like how the changing colors of fall were looking against the old concrete structures.

Classics In A Classical Way

For these classics I was thinking I would do black and white to give them that more classical look. I like the way they look presented in a black and white format that is more common for the day these planes are out of.

Leaves

One thing I like to do when I am taking fall color pictures is to find other ways to photograph things besides the overall view of the trees (which I also like). I will end up taking a lot of different photos from the leaves close up to a shot that shows a lot of leaves scattered about. I will usually just see something with in a setting that catches my eye and take anywhere from a few shots to several shots, recomposing and looking for the best angle or way to frame the shot, much like I do for any landscape shots. In the end I will usually get several photographs like these that I really like. These are just a few of the ones I took in this way last week up on HWY 88.

Fall Colors on HWY 88

Here are a couple shots from a drive I took with Tom up HWY 88 last weekend to look at the fall colors. These were taken up in the Hope Valley area.

Fall colors are on the way

I took the kids up to Crystal Mine yesterday to do some digging around and along the way several of the groves of trees are starting to turn yellow. On the way out we pulled over and walked around one set of trees for a few minutes so I could get my first few fall photos of the season. This is just the start of the fall season when the leaves are making their color change so hopefully I will have a lot more fall photos over the next month.
After we left we headed over to Truckee taking the dirt road that comes out by Stampede reservoir. As we were driving along I liked the way the light was on this mountain and took a few shots from different points along the road. This shot I also cropped down to give it the panoramic look.

Other Things That Fly

Over the last couple weeks I have been able to capture a few other things that fly other than airplanes. The duck and geese were photographed up by Alturas, Ca at a wildlife viewing area just south of the town. The dragonfly was in our backyard sitting on the top of a tree that I need to pull out and get rid of.

Opening Ceremony

These are part of the opening ceremony at the Air Races. During this part of it they are playing the National Anthem and this year they also did the Canadian National Anthem as the Snow Birds where there. The fighter jets do a flyby right as the last skydiver is down.

Reno Air Races

Spent another afternoon out at the air races with the kids watching the planes fly. These are a few shots from today.

WW2 Planes

Worked on a few more photos to post and figured I might as well also take care of the letter W with WW2 planes. These are a few more from today and the 2 that are in the air I think show the prop blur even better than my earlier post.