This was a pretty cool area of Glacier National Park – the continental divide. For those of you that have never been there, this is the line that runs through the Rocky Mountains and separates the flow of water from one side of the continent to the other. We put Ethan up there and he did his own little part for erosion while I snapped away! 🙂
Dresden had beautiful building after beautiful building! They were just all lined up, waiting to be photographed. As blind luck would have it, a storm had just ripped through, leaving this incredible purple sunset. Well, heck, I guess I don’t have to tell you… since you can just look below and see! 🙂
And any of you in the Austin area that are coming tonight to my talk and tutorial (it’s free and you don’t have to be a mac user – more info here), be sure to come over and say hello! 🙂 Don’t be shy — I’d be happy to meet you in person!
I’m embarrassed that I can’t remember the name of that little island out there. I think it’s called Bird Island… but I am not totally sure! If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d open up Google Earth to figure it out for sure. But then I know I have a lot of clever readers who can probably tell me for sure!
This was taken in Glacier National Park. I woke up around 5 AM to drive out to this lake to capture the little island in the soft morning light. I really like this area of the Rockies. They seem very old and ancient to me. I spent the rest of the morning tromping through the forest, trying to find more interesting vantage points while making enough noise to scare away any grizzlies that might have been looking to get me in an interesting vantage point.
In reverse order of the titles, some of you might notice that I have added Facebook Comments below, so now you can leave comments with the old style or the new style. I left both systems in place since there are so many good previous comments, and they are not really convertible. The New Facebook comments are pretty cool because they re-use your Facebook info, and it extends that community and network of friends, since all these networks come together nowadays. It took a tiny bit of coding to set myself up as a Facebook Developer, but it wasn’t so tough (I knew that major in Computer Science would come in handy some day!).
There is a very nice community of people that come here to the site! You all are very nice and helpful… you give excellent comments, help one another out, give me advice, and drop all kinds of cool info bombs on the crowd. Thanks for that! I hope this Facebook comment thing can help more people to join the fun.
Anyway, to the photo for the day. This is not the usual, but it was such a cool slice of life, I could not pass it up! I was walking through the streets of Malacca in southern Malaysia, and building after building have all sorts of industry spilling out of them. Many of them are just deep garages where people have holed up to perfect one craft or another. This one was full of thousands of little bicycle parts. I stood out front for a while, watching all of them slowly convert the metallic entropy into bicycles…
The second photo below was taken in a similar fashion, although it was in the backstreets of Bangkok, Thailand.
There is a spread of farms in the plains that face the northern face of the Grand Teton mountains in Wyoming. I explored all around the area to find as many wonderful little things that I could find. There was this old little shack sitting alone in the middle of a field, so I had to jump a fence and circumnavigate a few bison to grab a quick shot for you all! 🙂
The one below here is one that Flickr deleted!
It was a nice clear night, which I normally don’t like for these sorts of shots. I prefer the sky to have some clouds and a bit of drama… but the best thing about a clear night is a little 10 minute window when the sky has a nice spectrum of blues and light reds while the sun plays with the atmosphere. Big cities always start to light up right around this time, so it’s prime photo-takin’ time. I thought the deco border of the building looked pretty cool, so I was aiming to have it become the bottom grill along the border.
For those of you that have never been to New York, Central Park is that big green rectangle in the middle there. You can see a few lakes, trees, and paths scattered about.
On one special night per week at Disney World, they have this pirates and princesses party. This last year, I took my son, who was totally into Pirates of the Caribbean at the time. He went in full regalia and ran around like a nut… it was great and he had a super time!
The fireworks show is over the top on this night, and they project all kinds of cool stuff on the “Cinderella Castle” (that’s what my daughter calls it as she screams it out every time I have to watch that infernal Tinkerbell DVD).
…and next Thursday night you are all invited to my little photography talk here in Austin. It’s free… I know its being put on by a Mac user group, but PC users are welcome too. I think I will be giving a little tutorial too! You can get a map, times and stuff, at this website.
Some towns seem to have taken the meme of painting everything in nice colors very seriously. I wonder how these things get started. I assume, like other things, a few well-connected neighbors in conspicuous places start painting their homes with interesting colors, and then it spreads on its own. Anyway, however it starts, I think its cool and I wish stuff was colorful like this everywhere!
Wow I have a lot of reading for you today! I hope you have a coffee, a stiff drink, and/or some good music to accompany you!
First, my new photo today is entitled “The Verdant Bough”. The photo was shot at this really cool place in Wyoming I found while running around Yellowstone with my rig. I’m glad I didn’t fall down that cliff while shooting, but I guess that goes without saying.
Second, I had an article posted today in Smashing Magazine. It was originally titled 10 Principles of Beautiful Photography. That links here to my website, or you can visit the Smashing Magazine as well, although it’s filled with a negative nancies down at the bottom with their own flavor of commentary. No worries… I have a thick skin and I enjoy all kinds of feedback. Both articles are the same, but I like the one here on the site a little since I think the photos are best appreciated in their larger size. The eye needs to surf across them to accept all the light levels and not let your brain reject them. It’s a longer diatribe… but part of the reason this blog is soooo wide… 900 pixels across for each shot.
Oh, also, you can DIGG the article here! 🙂
And here are a few photos from the article that you may never have seen if you are new to the blog!
Why are my blog titles getting so long? Sorry about that… I guess with one post per day, sometimes there is a lot to squeeze in!
So, a few days ago I received a letter from the Smithsonian saying that I have another one in the running for the 6th Annual Photo Contest! Cool! Two years ago, I had 2 winners in the 4th Annual Photo Contest , and one of those ended up hanging in the Smithsonian castle in DC. I know a few of you out there got to see it on road trips – maybe we can make another pilgrimage this year!. I didn’t win anything last year in the 5th annual contest… It was a bad year for me, what can I say?
The one that is in the finalist pool this year is the Times Square one that I have placed below. Just below that, I have placed a NEW photo of Rockefeller Center that I have been working on over the weekend. I hope you like it.
I will be speaking in Austin, Texas next week at the Digital Photography SIG on Thursday night, Feb 26 (next week). It’s free to come – please do – I’d be happy to meet you in person! I’ll be talking about photography and going through a tutorial. If you are in Central Texas, be sure to stop by — it should be a good time!
Also, over the weekend, I was interviewed at the Pro Photography Show, which is a podcast that should be made available in the next few weeks. I will be sure to put a link to it here whenever it goes live.
