Gray and Green

A fixer-upper. The best kind of barn there is. Unless you need a roof on your silo.

Found along the road to Penetanguishene, Barrie, Ontario. You know you want to say it out loud — Penetanguishene.

All Ears

We usually visit Canada each August; by coming earlier in July this trip we missed the time of year where Joanie's mum picks up corn from farm stands just about daily and we have it with all our dinners.

Farm along Penetanguishene Road, Barrie, Ontario. We had just returned home from a busy day at the beach, but when I saw the dramatic clouds sweeping through town, I grabbed my camera and went for a drive.

Penetanguishene Road

There's a lot of pretty farmland around southern Ontario, once you get outside of the enormous sprawl of Toronto.

The next several photos are scenes from farms along the eastern borders of Barrie, above Kempenfelt Bay along Penetanguishene Road.

Wasaga Beach

Tuesday was our last day in Ontario, and we went to Wasaga Beach, which is part of Georgian Bay off Lake Huron. Not a lot of people think of going to interior Canada for sun and surf, but this is a huge body of water and there's a quaint beach resort town there.

When we got out of the car the wind was sandblasting our eyes — that's a good thing. I've probably been to this beach 15 times and these were the best waves I've seen. With the gusts we got some decent 4-5 foot waves even while touching bottom 500 feet out. And no sharks. Malcolm and I stayed out for a long time riding the waves. Best day ever.


Here's a panorama of the spot where we like to go — click to view large.

Looming

Angry-looking clouds rolling in over a field of Queen Anne's lace last night over Barrie, Ontario.

We've been in Canada the last several days visiting Joanie's family north of Toronto. I spent much of today watching Lake Ontario out the car windows as we circled it to get home. I grew up 2,000 feet from the ocean so I love the water, and the Great Lakes make me just as happy.

It was fun to be on holiday, but it sure feels nice to be home. Except now with vacation over it means summer's days are numbered ... I don't even want to think about that.

Bay Flowers

Flowers along the edge of San Francisco Bay from my unplanned stopover in May. I was surprised how much color there was in this scene for as dead and scrubby as everything looked.

I had to hop the edge of the sidewalk to get down to see these. Some passersby gave me a sideways glance when they saw me jump over the walk's edge down towards the water. I miss a lot of photos because I hold myself back from getting a better view.

I got rained on shortly after making some pictures of these flowers. Perfect as a quick wash for the outfit I'd be wearing the next day, too.

Blue Bay

San Francisco Bay in May. I got stuck on the west coast after a flight delay made me miss my connection to Hawaii, with no luggage.

It turned into a nice, quiet evening of watching the clouds roll in on the water.

Plan B

Quiet night in my DC hotel tonight, my plans got quashed when I called the temple and found it's closed temporarily for summer maintenance. I always call first.

Before we had kids Joanie and I drove from our new home of Springfield, Missouri 8 hours to Dallas just to go to the temple. We pulled up and the gates were locked. We felt so stupid that we agreed to tell nobody about our mistake when we got home!

It turned out to be a fun trip: we went to the art museum, ate well, went shopping and looked around town. The framed Matisse print in my office came from the museum shop over that weekend.

Coruscant Tower

Sensor array just outside the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel as you head into Manhattan. I liked how futuristic it looked.

Moody clouds courtesy of the bus window I was shooting through.

Flatiron 2

Acute corner edge-on at the Flatiron Building, New York City.

Another photo from the same shoot.

Viewfinder

That's me with the jazz hands teaching a photography night with the young women from church. I think I know who took this blurry picture — we're going to have work on her camera technique.

I get asked to do these classes a lot. I was reading Larry King's latest book this weekend and found we have a similar problem — we both have a hard time saying "no." That's OK, I love teaching. And free sharing of knowledge is a really nice aspect of the photo community. I can get behind that.

So far I've done photo classes with the young women and young men from church (a few times), our local Relief Society, at least 20 Boy Scouts earning a merit badge, a Cub Scout den, several hundred government web managers across the country, even a 4-H club with elementary-age kids.

Here's a PDF handout I use in my classes on camera settings that affect exposure and how they're related. I came up with it on a picnic table at Scout Camp last year. But I made it prettier, just for you.

Thomas Circle

George Henry Thomas is considered one of the Union's three most important generals in the Civil War, along with Grant and Sherman.

Thomas disliked self-promotion — as opposed to fellow generals who wrote their memoirs or sought political fortune after the war, he went to the extreme of destroying his private papers to avoid the public eye. As a result, history knows less about General Thomas, but he led and contributed to several successful campaigns and was known as a master of battlefield logistics. He is buried in Troy, NY.

This equestrian statue of General Thomas stands at the center of Thomas Circle in Washington, DC.

Here's a 1922 image of Thomas Circle showing the same statue, complete with streetcar, early autos, and a horse-driven buggy.

Don't Fence Me In

Metalwork in front of a home in northwest Washington DC.

One of my first test photos using a lens that opens up to an aperture of f/1.4. The bigger the aperture, the better the blur.

Carter and Calvin, Age 6

Carter was knocked out his first week of summer vacation with a major fever and cough, I've never seen him spend days in a row on the sofa like he did last week. He's bouncing back nicely but still gets tired quickly after dinner.

I've been reading 10 years' worth of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes to the younger kids every night before bed ... this week we just started the third volume of 500 pages. Carter could relate to the strip where 6-year-old Calvin is sick the first week of summer vacation and insists it shouldn't count against his time off from school.

It's fun to watch Carter smile at Calvin's extreme antics. So far one of his favorite new vocabulary words learned from the series is the name-calling option, "Booger-Brain."

Sometimes I call Carter "Calvin" by "accident." He likes that.

Found Bounty

I learn all kinds of things about our house as we go. Claire and I were walking in the backyard picking up sticks when we stumbled into a surprise — a patch of black raspberries ready to pick and eat! We've been dropping them on Stewart's Philly Vanilla ice cream, which on its own already approaches perfection.

More house history I learned this week. My next door neighbor Sandy (with the clematis) was telling me how our homes were originally built and occupied by a father and son, and how the well water originally supplying our homes had a lot of sulfur. When the mother and father moved to Saratoga Springs (known for its pure water) the mother used to bring in stinky sulfur water from her son's place. It turns out the water helped keep things "moving along" for her.

You should have stopped reading at the part about the raspberries.

Clematis

When I was a kid my grandparents owned a Sir Speedy printing shop on 506 Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. I guess I never thought about it, but I didn't know what the word clematis meant. Until last year when my next door neighbor was talking about the clematis growing on his front yard lamp pole.

Whenever we were visiting the print shop and we got bored, my brother and I would walk down Clematis to the railroad crossing and put pennies on the tracks. As the train barreled through we'd try to watch which direction our pennies flew off the tracks so we'd have a better chance finding the squished coins later. As a parent now I shudder at the things we used to do when we were young.

Drive-By

Late afternoon sun gleaming on the Capitol through the window of my airport shuttle.

Foundation

Underside detail of a statue of Martin Luther, Luther Place Memorial Church, Washington, DC.

Shot handheld in low light at 9:25 p.m. well after blue hour using ISO 6400, f/1.4, 1/20 sec. — the newer Nikons can just about see in the dark.

Schenectady Seed Co.

Abandonment and overgrowth on Erie Boulevard, just before Freeman's Bridge, Schenectady, NY.