Wall of Skulls, Chichen Itza

So over in Switzerland they actually do put bells on their cows before turning them loose to graze on the mountainside. Which, if it’s just one cow, adds to the quaint, pastoral feeling of the Swiss countryside. However, an entire herd of cattle, all with bells around their necks and their heads bobbing up and down as they graze, make a racket that can be heard miles away. Christopher Walken would be proud.

More Cowbell

Well it’s no longer spring, of course, but I’ve had this one sitting around for a while. I was thinking of writing up a short bit on the Holga that I used to shoot this, but then I realized, what can I say about the Holga that hasn’t already been said?

Razor Wire

I will say this much: anybody who’s at all interested in photography should have a Holga in their arsenal. In today’s world of auto-everything, ultra-fast digital machines, it’s kind of refreshing to work with a camera that has some real limitations, and it can turn out some interesting pictures to boot. And at a lower cost than a decent filter for your do-everything DSLR, the price is definitely right.

Oof. Busy week. I meant to post this earlier in the week, but it seems like I simply haven’t had a chance. Any rate, this is one that I processed for posting long ago, along with this one, in a post about the little Canon S330 digital that I used to carry around, but said post never materialized. At least I don’t think it did. Sorry if this is a double post. Man, I’m gettin’ old.

High Bridge

Another month, another post… I’d write some sort of apology for the silence, but you’ve all heard it all before…

Anyway, I’ve been working on importing my photos into Lightroom and getting them organized there, partially in the hopes that it’ll be a lot faster in the future for me to get stuff posted on this blog after shooting it. In the process of reorganizing stuff on my hard drive, I’ve found a handful of photos that have “fallen behind the sofa” so to speak; stuff that I processed at some point but didn’t post for one reason or another. I should be posting a few of them over the next week or so while I get this Lightroom thing figured out.

Rainier #1

First up is one that I did when Luke first sent me the photo in this post. I got to thinking, what if I took a super-clean, picture-postcard shot and “dirtied it up” in Photoshop? I ended up with what you see above. I never posted it, partially because it feels pretty derivative when compared to Luke’s shot, but also because after looking at it for a bit the effect feels pretty over-the-top to me. What do you think?

A couple of weekends ago I took an afternoon and went hiking up at Chain-o-Lakes State Park, and of course I hauled the camera along. Unfortunately, Indiana is in that sort of “awkward phase” between when all the snow melts off and when all the greenery starts showing up, and it’s really kind of ugly unless you like brown. So I decided to try my hand at a little bird photography, since there were lots of songbirds around and the lack of leaves on the trees made them (relatively) easy to spot.

Nuthatch

I’ve tried this before, but it was a good reminder of how hard bird photography really is. This is the first time I’ve gotten even remotely acceptable results, and these are really only good enough for web display. I can see why bird photographers invest in high-end cameras and massive telephoto lenses; these guys are tiny and move fast, and it’s tough for even the autofocus on the D200 to lock on to them. And my telephoto lens runs out of steam at 300mm, and I still had to crop pretty heavily to get these shots.

Chickadee

Still, it was a nice diversion, and something I’m going to have to try more of. The “one that got away” was a beautiful Pileated Woodpecker, who flew off into the woods before I had a chance to switch lenses. And of course I could hear him tapping away at the trees, but I never saw him again. I think he was taunting me.

So apparently winter is really here. I’ve basically been stuck at home for the last day and a half, since we’ve been under a snow emergency and work’s been closed. It seems like things should be getting pretty well cleared up tomorrow though.

I’ve got a better image (in my opinion) in the pipeline but it’s not quite done yet. In the mean time, here’s one from the same shoot. It’s not from this blizzard (I wasn’t about to head out to the park today; digging my truck out once was plenty, thanks) but it was pretty darn cold out when I shot it.

No Swimming