Vacation Part 2 (Subtitled: Day 2 in DC)

So this day was the 2nd day of the Cherry Blossom Festival for us, and thanks to a snow storm on an earlier weekend that had moved the Kite Festival we got to see lots of kites.  Some of these photos are my favorites from the vacation.

 This was the view as we walked towards the Washington Monument.  You can only barely see the kites even though they actually filled the sky on the bottom right.  I put arrows in the photo for the two kites that can just barely be seen.

This was the view when closer of the same bottom right area in the previous photo.

This is a very simple kite in comparison to many I saw that day, but it is still one of my favorite photos.

This butterfly/dragon type of kite as well as the long string of small kites were some of my favorite types.  It was really impressive to watch them get the small kites up in the air.  Hard to explain, but impressive.

 These large kites were also some of my favorites.  And I'm realizing that I'm saying these are my favorites a lot, but, well, they all are.  :-)

 This was my favorite from the homemade kite competition.  The kid who was flying it and presumably made the kite had that typical high school nerd look.

 Now this kite was my true actual favorite of all the kites that day.  Why I didn't take a video so you could truly see how cool this kite, I just don't know.  Those three tails swirl the whole time the kite is flying.

 This is just one of the shots I really like.

Once again one of my favorite shots.  If you look closely, you can see a kite flying on the upper right near the top of the monument.

And of course the obligatory cherry tree shot that must be shown having visited the National Cherry Tree Festival.

This is probably actually my favorite photo from the festival. It was late in the season so most of the trees had already turned from white to pink, but I just really like the contrasts in colors in this one.

Vacation Part 1 (Subtitled: Day 1 in DC)

We got up very early on Saturday morning and drove as fast as was safe with the trailer to make it to the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade.  We missed the beginning of it, but we saw enough of it.

I think the front of this float said these people were the council for the festival.

The Lone Ranger!

The next float had a band on it, and all seemed fine at first.  But you might notice a bit of gray smoke coming from the back of the SUV towing the float, and many in the crowd looking in that direction.  At first we all wondered if it was somehow part of the show, as it was a rock band.  But when the people in the SUV started scrambling out of the SUV, it quickly became clear that this was not a planned thing.

Before long a small fire could be seen under the hood that they had lifted.  They had found and brought out a fire extinguisher but decided it might not be good to use it on an engine.

 So it continued to burn and the fire got bigger.

And it got bigger still.  And I started looking around at the other parts of the parade that were held up behind this excitement.  I heard a large boom, and quckly looked back.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the explosion, but my mom saw it and said it was impressive.

The explosion caused the hood to fall, but the fire kept burning.



 The fire truck soon arrived to much applause.

They quickly went about putting out the fire.

 This was as they were towing the SUV away.  You can see the large hole that was melted into the hood from the heat of the fire.

They got the band another truck and got them back on the float and the parade proceeded.

 This shot would have been better with the batons they were looking up at in it, but I still like it.

 If you were lucky enough to be next to this guy during the fire, then you got a show for the entire time.  He was diagonally across from where we were.  We could see that he was caring on with his beat-box performance, plus there were dancers on the other side of his float.

 Here was one of the two ballons that we got to see.  I didn't have the camera out in time to catch the other one.

I took many, many band shots but this one is my favorite.

And this was my favorite one of the flags.

After the parade, we went to the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival.  I didn't take many pictures here, but I thought this little girl who was about to sing with a group of other young children was just too cute.

This was the other picture I really like.  It was my first view of the capitol building and it also shows the large mass of people at the festival.  Part of the reason I don't have many photos at the festival is that we didn't stay that long because it was really cold outside.  So after watching a few performances and walking the length of the festival, we decided it was time to go to the closest Smithsonian museum.

 I actually took this photo later, but it was the first thing we saw when entering the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.  This museum was just as cool as I remember it being when I was 10.

They had a special exhibit there right now with a coral reef display that has been knitted by people from all over the world.  It was a really cool display.

These were shining and sparkling in the light more than the photo displays.

This is actually my favorite shot.  Just looking at this large animals they have hanging from the ceiling really makes you feel like a kid again.

Fall 2010 Photos

I finally got around to downloading and processing some of my photos from this past fall.

I hope you've enjoyed them.

Cades Cove, Part 3

I know, I know, it's been months since I said I would finish this series.  But I procrastinated. Why?  Because I was pretty sure I wouldn't like any of the bear photos.  And sure enough, I am not overly pleased with any of the photos below.  They are ok, but I none are as in focus as I would like.  Oh well, I am slowly but surely getting better with the camera, and this can be a record of improvement hopefully.

But onto the photos....

Out of about 10 or so photos, this was the only one of any decency.  Most of the time, the bear was digging about.

This photo and the one below are of the same butterfly, taken not long apart.  But I like the composition of both photos so they are both here.

So there they are. I hope to get to Cades Cove more this year, now 2011, as I really did enjoy the trip. Plus I'd like to get better at wildlife photos, and it seems to be a good place for it.

I have a camera full of photos to process taken between September and December.  I will try to be more regular about posting, but who knows.

Art

So I was in the mood for a blog post today, but not up for processing the remaining photos from my Cades Cove trip last weekend. So I started with pulling together these actual art pieces made at the office last year. And yes, my job paid to bring someone in for us to make this art in early 2009. It was fun. And happy workers do better work, right? So why not.

This first piece is actually my least favorite of the three I made, but for whatever this is the one that the art guy chose to frame and that still hangs in the Nashville office.

This piece is one I really and would have been the one that I would have chosen to frame and post in the office if it was my choice.

And this piece is actually my favorite, but I can see where it can be viewed as not right for the office.

So after pulling those together, I wanted something new and original for this post, so I decided to make a digital art piece.  I used three Apophysis randomly generated fractals and then played with them in Photoshop.

Here it is on a mousepad on Zazzle.

Heart Vortex by DigitialCreations
Make a custom mouse pad at zazzle.

I think it works particularly well on the mousepad.

I hope you all have a good Sunday.  I'm off to take the mom to satisfy a Kingdom Heirs craving.  Unlike church, Dollywood has a wheelchair rental available so she won't have to walk.  Just as a reminder, any and all prayers appreciated for her this Wednesday when we go to the hospital so they can figure out what to do about her blocked artery.

Cades Cove Part 2: A Deer

So it's taken me a few days to get the photos ready in a way that I liked and wanted to present them.  But I am really happy with the final results.  All of these photos are of the same deer.  She was happily eating her late lunch the whole time I and many others watched and took pictures.

Click on image to view full size

Click on image to view full size.

 If you look at the full size image of the collage above, you will notice something on her eye.  It seems to be some kind of strings that are stuck on her eyelashes.  That's actually the reason I went with the collage instead of just the bottom left photo.  The strings look like something wrong with the photo, but it was just something on the deer.  But I ended up really liking the collage of three photos.

Click on image to view full size.

So the last part of this Cades Coves series post will have a bear (assuming I can get one of the photos to a satisfactory state) and butterflies.

Cades Cove Part 1

So I decided to break my visit to Cades Cove on Sunday up into multiple posts. Since it took me a few hours to fix up just two of the photos, I realized if I waited until I had them all ready then it would be next Sunday before I posted any.

One of the fun things about the drive to and in Cades Cove was that the butterflies were out in force. I saw a bunch of Swallowtail butterflies while driving. Unfortunately while stopped with my camera, there never seemed to be any around. So the first two pictures were actually when I stopped after a black bear had run across the road in front of me. I was hoping he would still be sight-able in the woods, but, all I saw were some deer. And the photos of them did not turn out well enough to do anything with.

However on the way back to the car, I saw these flowers.

Remember to click on images to view full size.

I then took a second picture of part of the same bunch of flowers from a different angle. When I looked at it on the view finder, I didn't really think it turned out. But I usually don't delete anything until I get onto the computer and look at it full size. When I zoomed in one this one, I was quite pleased with what I found.

Remember to click on images to view full size

 I truly was surprised when I viewed the photo at 100% and saw the butterfly. I was hoping to get a nice crop with just one flower, but was more than pleased with the final view I found.

Well there will be more to come...up next some nice deer photos...