Category Photography

What made me think standing in a the middle of a field for an hour on the hottest day of the year a good idea?  This shot, which is another HDR merged shot, to give both the sun-setting sky and the fields the correct exposure.  I didn’t think I was going to get the shot at first because when I left my air conditioned car, all of my camera gear fogged up!  After a lot of blowing and wiping I finally got the lens cleared and started shooting, luckily not too late.  I absolutely love all of the soft natural colors in the final merged image produced by the hot July sun.   Three separate images were combined in to make this one photo.

“Maize”

I love summer.  Have I mentioned that yet?  This was a busy weekend with a lot of things going on.  Family having parties, the Christian County Fair, as well as the Chatham Sweet Corn Festival.  We some how made it to everything we wanted to and had a great day.  Our last stop was in Chatham for Sweet Corn.  Sweet Corn is an annual gathering hosted by the Chatham Jaycees at the Chatham Community Park.  The main attraction is, of course, sweet corn (and beer).  You can get other food as well, but most people come for the corn.  There are also other vendors selling things like kettle corn and other fried snacks.  Once the sun starts setting, the music starts rocking.  This year’s saturday night band was Area 51 from Lawrenceville Illinois.  They are a cover band, and while I’m usually not a fan of cover bands (having been subjected to the now defunct F5 might have ruined cover bands for me, I could not stand them), I actually liked Area 51.  They played some really great songs and their vocals were really well done.  I enjoyed them a lot and would definitely go see them again and hope they play future Sweet Corns.

“Festival”

I had another shot planned for this week, but it didn’t quite work out like I wanted it to… soon hopefully though.  It’s just a bit too humid right now.  I headed out with a collectible O-No Sushi vinyl figure from Andrew Bell.  I have actually used his vinyl figures for a photo before, back on week 16 for Invasion.  This vinyl figure is more of an original Andrew Bell piece though.  While his Android stuff is awesome, and was how I was introduced to him, he has some really cool and weird original stuff too.  I hope you enjoy it because I had fun taking it, even if I got some strange looks from passers-by.

“Lost”

This photo marks the half way point of my Photo 52 project.  It is hard to believe the year is already half gone.  This week’s photo was almost in jeopardy of not happening though.  I knew I was going to be shooting fireworks tonight (Sunday), so I hadn’t shot anything else all week.  Well, this evening rolled around, and the rain rolled in.  Luckily the storms mostly broke up and it only ended up sprinkling lightly before sun down,  allowing the fireworks show to go off as planned.  I ventured back to my home city of Chatham Illinois and set up my tripod and Canon.  I ended up snapping 90 photos over the course of the show (a lot more than I thought I had).  I had a ton of really cool shots and it was hard to only pick one, but I ended up going with this one because it was sort of unique from the others.  It was a clean firework by itself, it was multicolored, and almost looks like some kind of space anomaly in the night sky.

Happy Independence Day Everyone.

“Independence”

It feels like it has been raining for 2 weeks straight now, but we finally got a break from the rain today.  It was an overcast day, but those types of days seem to make for some of the best shooting conditions since the sun isn’t blowing out your pictures.  This is another shot I’ve had in mind for a long time, and I’m glad I was finally able to get out and play around with it, even if every semi truck passing by on the road caused me to turn around and make sure there wasn’t a train bearing down on me.

“Railroad”

This is one of those shots I knew I wanted to get from the start of this photo project.  A cool lightning photo.  Friday night I was sitting at home, coincidentally watching Next Friday when I started hearing thunder rumbling off in the distance.  I checked the radar and there was a small storm cell headed our way, so I grabbed my camera and headed out.  I tried getting some lightning shots last week, but lightning is actually harder to shoot than I originally thought it would be, and I failed.  This week was much better shooting though, with a lot more visible bolts in the sky.  It took me a while but I ended up snagging a couple cool lightning shots.  I ended up going with this one because of the multiple bolts you can see flashing across the sky.  This is definitely one of my favorite shots so far this year!

“Lightning”

It was a beautiful spring day today, 75 degrees and sunny.  Friday night wasn’t so beautiful, we has some thunderstorms rolling through, so I tried to get out and get some pictures of lightning but it wasn’t meant to be.  As it turns out, lightning is incredibly frustrating to shoot.  Soon though, soon…  Today was a perfect day to head out and play with the camera in the sunny weather.  I drove out to a local sports area where there are a couple baseball fields, a volleyball field, and a football field.  I walked around and took some shots and came back to to see what I had.  I liked this shot because it had that nice “rule of thirds” appeal to it, and I feel like it draws my eyes in to the scoreboard.  I decided to try a post-processing technique known as cross-processing.  The short version is explained as using chemicals from one type of film to develop a different type of film.  But, this is 2011 and we can make such effects digitally with out have to play with nasty chemicals.  It basically gives the shot a saturated and retro feel to it.  I can think of some other things that I would like to shoot and use a similar effect on… maybe later this year 🙂

“Pastime”

I love summer.  Seriously, love summer.  There is so much more to do, and being outside is so much better than being stuck in doors all the time.  Taylorville had a little flea market Saturday morning on the town square, so the wife and I went down there with the wife’s family.  Taylorville is kind of a neat town in that it was first settled in the 1830’s.  Taylorville’s settling also happens to occur during Abraham Lincoln’s life, and Lincoln actually practiced law in Taylorville in its early days.

One of the stories is that Lincoln was once arguing a case in the Taylorville courthouse when some pigs under the floorboards started squealing.  Lincoln then asked the judge for a “writ of quietus” to shut the pigs up.

How much truth there is to that story, I have no idea, but there must be enough to it, because there is a statue of Abe Lincoln with a pig on the square right next to the courthouse.  I took a few photos around the courthouse today, but I liked this one of the statue with the courthouse in the background, plus it led me to learning a little more about the town I live in that I got to share with you.

“Abe”