Neenah at night.

I wanted to get the bridge and the moon into one shot tonight. Unfortunately, I do not have a wide enough angle lens for the shot. I will try again if it is clear later in the week, but a little earlier when the moon is on the rise. I have taken pictures of this bridge many times, and one other time at night, but I spent more time here tonight as it was relatively mild at a balmy 38° F. This is a re-purposed railroad bridge that crosses Little Lake Butte des Morts. It is now a pedestrian and cycling thoroughfare.

There is a nice power boat launch here and also a still water launch for kayaks as well. I have misplaced my tripod so of course I had to rely on the railing posts for keeping the camera steady during the 30 second exposures.

I think this one turned out a little crisper. When I saw this in the veiwfinder, I noticed the steam from the factory across the lake was getting a nice blur on it. So of course I turned to the south to the Neenah bio-mass electric plant. 

I thought the plume looked pretty cool and spent quite some time shooting it. Tonight, I tried again to use RAW format imaging.  I had tried it in the past with little success. I am glad that I did. I probably could have used the "remove a color cast" tool to take away the yellow in the shot, or paid attention and changed my white balance in camera, but shooting in RAW allowed me to do that out of camera. It ended up looking like this.....

These are two different images. I have this one cropped so it is a "panoramic" ratio. I think I like the blues better, But I think I may tweak out some the highlights to give a more even light. Some of the areas are still a little too bright. I hope I find my tripod soon, and am looking forward to getting my remote trigger in the mail. 

A study in skies.....

There must be something in the atmosphere as of late as the sunrise and sunsets have been amazing. I will start out with the Wednesday evening sunset.

I was not in a great position for these two shots, just shooting west down my street. I didn't have time after work to drive to one of my preferred shooting locations. The skies the following morning made me late for work.

This is another example of my "urban sunset/rise" series. These pictures were taken from the parking lot of the shuttered Hoffmaster plant. There is a large holding tank in the first picture, and the lightpole near an apartment complex in the second. If I had tweaked the contrast to lighten shadows instead of darken highlights in the third you would be able to see this railcar.

I actually shot "The AM FM Crew" on 12-22-2011. It was still there today when I went by. I may start a new gallery of graffiti on my website as I seem to be drawn to it (See here).

After a very long day of work, I again came home too late to get out so I shot down the street again.

I took a number of shots that I wasn't all that thrilled with as they had either 1: geese, or 2: airplanes flying through them. Of course I was focusing on the treeline and all flying objects were out of focus. I did however  turn to the east to catch our nearly full moon ascending. I dropped the ISO to 100 went to f/5.6 and took a 1/1000 sec exposure. Even though these two shots are about two minutes apart, the difference is day and night.

I but you would think that this was shot about 9-10 o'clock, but no, it was 4:30. I love to manipulate the sky, using my settings to turn day to night!

Ran Into A Flock

Wow! I was on my way to photograph a barn I had spotted for my 365 Project, and took a longcut to take a peek at a new road. When I came up over the hill I saw this....

Being that I am a microbiologist and some days count dots for hours at a time, I am pretty good at estimating the number of dots I see. There were at least 500 Canada Geese flying in the field and a lot more on the ground. I wish I had a wide angle to fit them all in. The noise was incredible!! I spent about 10 minutes shooting in beautiful orange/pink but fading light. I pulled out a few of the better ones for this post.

Wings set and coming in.

On the wing.

I have some solo shots of the pair top left, but nothing but an orange backdrop (kinda look lost).

At this point, most of the birds were on the ground. It took them about 10 minutes to get their OK for landing and come in. That was a fun shoot.

Sharing with ... This or That Thursday!

Little Barn PP for Barn Charm...

Original....

Canvas Texture....

B&W in camera reflection detail. I like that the owner took the time to tape up the crack in the window.....

Holy barn Batman!!!

Sharing of course with Barn Charm!

Lost and found...

I completely forgot about these pictures I took at Stone Mountain State Park on my last trip to Atlanta. My favorites are of this covered bridge. Here is a little history of it.

Nice note about the robbers!!

Side view of the bridge from down the shoreline.

I am amazed that this is still a working bridge. I saw a number of vehicles cross while I was there.

I do hope to bring the whole family back for a visit!!

Barn Details...

Today I had the opportunity to actually get inside a barn and "get to know it". It was great to be able to walk around and shoot so many different angles....

This is the south face of the barn that I was shooting today.

These are the tasty roosters (sorry for eating your brother, the pot-pie was delicious)!

This is an interior detail of an exit door from the lower level that used to house cattle. All of the stanchions were auctioned off for scrap metal. I was told that "modern cattle" would not have even fit into them. This is an interesting barn one part was built in the 1800's and then moved onto a newly built foundation at the turn of the century (1900 not 2000). Two additions were added in 1905 and 1906. This barn has a lot of history.

I was fascinated by the windows. I must have taken 30 or 40 shots, but I am only going to share a few. The cracking foundation and lack of glass caught my eye on this window.

The striking red of the barnboards and the weathered frame make an interesting contrast.

This isn't really a window, just the chute coming from the silo. I love the algae growing on the concrete to add a splash of color.

And this is the view from the bottom of the silo.

This is a shot of the haymow. The sun coming through the holes in the wall give enough light to maybe do a portrait shoot?? I need to work out the focus though. I shot this with my 50mm at f1.8. Very shallow DOF. 

Finally, a texture shot. I have been working on a series of these to possibly use as backgrounds for blog or twitter pages. And of course I need to put in a link to my share of the day Scenic Sunday!

Barn PP

When I did my photo dump for the day, I noticed that the lighting and aperture settings I used would be conducive to a little photoshop work. Here is the original.

You can see that there is a little blur and a washed out sky. I used the dry brush filter in PSE 7 to create this image.

I like the way that this looks like a colored pencil sketch or lightly painted oil. I will have to try this with some other of my shots that I feel were overexposed or blurred. I think it is a good save on a not so great image.

I will be sharing this with Friday's Fences, and Barn Charm.