Tiny Tree Moss, The Big Picture

One of the best things with camping is that it makes me look around at stuff outside.

Let's pause momentarily and note this sentence is a breakthrough for me. There used to be few good things about camping: I would always rather be clean indoors than muddy and sweaty outside. I'm saying this as I scratch a fresh mosquito bite.

But on the last couple campouts I've brought my macro photo equipment with me. Looking at the fine details all around me has given me a new appreciation of nature and all its intricacies and dependencies. You could say I'm starting to understand the observation component of the Environmental Science merit badge.

This is about one inch worth of tree moss, taken at Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

Let Them Eat Pah

I was eating at an authentic semi-backwoods BBQ in North Carolina with some friends from graduate school. The waitress came after the meal to see if we wanted dessert. I asked what they had for dessert, and she stopped to think for a minute, then said, "Well, we have pah."

I was stumped. What was pah?

She was saying they had pie, except with a really thick NC accent. It took me more than a moment to figure out what she was talking about.

Joanie's mum taught her to make crust and after a few years of trying, she finally got it down. We had blueberry tonight — exquisite. I hear the recipe is on its way to the web.

Farrah vs. Mrs. Lunga

Somewhere in my basement in a box is this Farrah Fawcett-Majors cover of Dynamite Magazine, ordered from the Scholastic Book Club in 1977. Inside this issue there's a picture from her wedding to the Six Million Dollar Man in a white tux. I can still remember my 5th grade teacher at Norcrest Elementary, Mrs. Lunga, sticking both index fingers into the corners of her mouth and pulling her lips sideways to imitate Farrah's toothy smile.

Mrs. Lunga let me bring my telescope to school that year, and on certain days I would set it up on the playground and the whole class would rotate through in small groups to meet me outside and identify cloud formations. I didn't know the first thing about clouds; we spent most of the time looking into the windows of houses bordering the school.

One day someone in another class flipped off one of my classmates. Mrs. Lunga said 'big deal, you got five fingers' and spent the rest of the day motioning kids to "come here," using her middle finger. She was pretty cool.

Crinkly Terminator

After cloudy skies all weekend we got some clearing tonight and could see the moon in a lovely crescent. Zooming in on my camera I noticed the terminator between night and day on the moon was not a smooth arc, but crinkly. I had never seen that before, but it only makes sense — it's all them craters.

Streetlight and Shadows

It's late night on the streets of downtown Baltimore. Just me and a thousand dollars worth of camera gear wandering around in the dark.

I was coming back to my hotel from taking pictures at the Inner Harbor, but I already went shooting there last year, so nothing was really grabbing me.

So I took this. It was originally going to be in black & white, but the car tail lights on the left added some nice color streaks.

Gone Far Too Long

I bring home the shampoo bottles from hotel rooms. I assume the half-used bottles end up in a landfill somewhere, so this is how I'm saving the earth.

This is also the bar graph I get each morning to see if a trip is approaching. If they start to stack up faster than I can use them up it's a pretty good indicator I've been traveling too much. Pictured are shampoo bottles from San Antonio, Honolulu, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. I'll be home for a while.

It's challenging to make shampoo bottles look interesting in a photo.

Peonies 2009

Our peonies always arrive in early June and smell fantastic. The first day they bloomed I was in the house with all the windows closed and their smell was still drifting in from the backyard.

I've heard a couple experts say it's always good to go back to photograph something you've shot before, it helps you see new things you may have missed last time.

Here's the third installment of peonies, this time around with the fisheye lens, after previous shoots in 2008 and 2007.

Smithsonian Gardens

A couple shots outdoors on the south side of the Smithsonian Castle.

Smithsonian Castle

Walking around Washington, DC tonight at the Smithsonian Institution.

Mets 6, Orioles 4

I'm in DC this week and had a meeting Baltimore. Tonight after a huge seafood dinner (fish, shrimp, crabcake, lobster, oysters, sushi) I caught an Orioles game at Camden Yards, a very nice stadium.

Roaming through the stands taking pictures I met a pro AP photographer with three cameras strapped to him, including a bazooka 400mm lens. In between plays we talked about what he did, his camera setup and settings. Super nice guy. I got some good tips for shooting.

Milky Way

We went to Blue Mountain Lake last night to camp, deep in the middle of the Adirondack Park, 100 miles from home. They have fantastic dark there. I got my first shot of the Milky Way, along with a few local stars while I was at it. Overclocking exposure in Photoshop reveals even more stars in every nook and cranny possible. Someone left the lights on for us out there last night.

If you look closely at the large version you'll find two arcs from either planes or satellites. The stars are starting to trail around polar north — can you find the Big Dipper pointing to Polaris?

Taken just before midnight, 10.5 mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens, 3-1/2 minutes at N 43° 51.08' W 74° 25.59'.

Albany By Air

There's this nice view of downtown Albany on airport approach. I've tried to take this photo I don't know how many times unsuccessfully. I finally had the right combination of camera, long reach lens, daylight, and luck to snap this in between lurches from turbulence.

The State Capitol is the building with the pointy red roofs. It is on the north end of the Empire State Plaza, taking up the center of the picture.

The sandy building at 4 o'clock is the Albany VA Medical Center; my office window has a pretty good view of downtown.

Albany is built along the Hudson River; it is on this river that Henry Hudson traveled to the area in 1609 and European claims on the region began. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Hudson's voyage.

A Girl and Pudding In Love

Why does Claire start eating with her hands, then save the spoon for the end?

Banana Bars

Joanie put up the recipe for these on her blog, but when I asked if she wanted a photo she said no. That pretty much clinched it — I was doing a shoot. She'll be sorry when she sees her own baked goods upstaging her on another blog.

I've been to a couple of short classes on food photography just to try something different, it turns out there's a whole side-industry with specific techniques for making food look so good on the package you'll buy it.

The banana bars recipe came from Deanna and Dave, and there's cream cheese in the icing, so you can be doubly sure they're good. Go make them.

Go Fish

I added a new lens to my photo arsenal this week, a 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye I've been eyeballing for a long time. I will be slipping this into the gear bag every so often, it's the Cream of Tartar of lenses. I want to learn how to use it without it being immediately obvious it's a fisheye. Like in this shot of Claire, she looks very normal in the center, and on second look you see the edges are distorted.

This week I came across a site of beautiful and really original photographs from inside waves on Hawaii's rough North Shore. It's a former surfer snapping with a fisheye in a watertight camera housing the moment before he gets plowed by a huge wave.

Hawaii Days 7 & 8 — We Went Home

We left Honolulu at 12:30 p.m. Friday and took an overnight flight that got us home Saturday by 10:00 a.m. It was an excellent trip all in all, but a long haul. It was great to see the kids, we were really missing them by the end.

Special thanks to Megan Andrew who stayed with our kids for a week, she made the whole thing possible and took care of everything at home so well. If you were looking for an excuse to get away together for a couple days, Megan being on summer break from college is it — book her and don't look back.

Hawaii Day 6 — Hanauma Bay, Best Day Ever

Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay was the highlight of our trip. Neither of us had ever done this before — we swam with all kinds of beautifully colored fish, urchins, coral, and Joanie even spotted a moray eel baring his teeth at us.

I grew up having a mask, fins and a snorkel and even living on the beach part of that time, but my childhood was at the height of the movie Jaws. We stuck pretty close to the pool. So I never went snorkeling on a coral reef like this.

Hanauma Bay itself is an old volcanic crater that the ocean has flooded on one side. When you're driving the perimeter road on the east side of Oahu island you come over a hill and suddenly see this gorgeous sight. This is a panorama from 6 photos. Wish I had an underwater camera to share some of the sights under the surface. Next time. It was just amazing.

Hawaii Day 5 — Waikiki View

This is a panorama representing a 180° view from our 18th floor balcony at Embassy Suites. Diamond Head volcano crater is a little right of center, right over that very pink hotel. It took 20 photos to put this together, 10 along the top row and 10 along the bottom; Photoshop figured out the rest.

Hawaii Day 5 — Manoa Falls

We drove up into the hills above Honolulu to hike up to Manoa Falls. Our guidebook said it is not a strenuous trail, suitable for older folks, but we found a few pretty steep spots. Are we even older than what they consider old?

To get up to the falls you cross through this amazing jungle, almost rainforest. The sky was overcast but we were lucky the rain held off — it was already muddy in a couple spots. It sounded like the jungle too: the birds' chirping would echo through the forest canopy and there was a babbling creek alongside the trail.

There was not a lot of water coming over the falls when we got to the top, though the 150 foot drop was impressive.

Hawaii Day 5 — Pearl Harbor

While we were waiting to visit the USS Arizona Memorial I looked around some submarine artifacts, including a conning tower pulled from a WWII sub and a navigation periscope. I think submarines are cool and love any movie involving them. I've never been near one, so I was just fine with the delay; on the other hand, Joanie went to find a Diet Coke.

I was fascinated by the controls in the con, the knobs for navigation and torpedo settings all still turned freely and each one made a different dial spin on the panel. The craftsmanship of those mechanical controls was amazing, there was a lot of precision on display.