Travelogue: China #2

When I was in China in 2009, my hosts took me to a venue for some souvenir shopping. There was a fellow doing calligraphy, so through my interpreter I asked him to compose something for me. Jan and I had been together for a couple of years already, so I requested something that would describe my feelings for her.

I'll leave it as a mystery for now exactly what it says... Drop a comment if you think you can interpret it.

Travelogue: Los Angeles

I had to dig through the archives to find this one, and I've dressed it up with a little HDR tonemapping, but here's a fun memory from a trip to Los Angeles back in 2005. I was walking around the "old town" part of LA (did you know there is such a thing?), and stopped for a bite to eat at a little Mexican diner with outdoor seating. Live music was a happy bonus to the delicious food I had there.

Up Close: Study #1

I enjoy macro photography, taking close ups of things around me. Now that we are just coming out of the deep freeze, I thought I'd offer one of my abstract images, which shows frost "ferns" on a south-facing window of my house. These frost patterns come and go daily. They form overnight as temps drop, and they vanish the next day as the sun comes up and warms the window. Like snowflakes, they are never the same twice, so it's a bit of a mystery to see what patterns they will take on any given day. On this day, they looked strikingly similar to fern leaves.

Travelogue: China #1

Since we are in the far east, let's take a look at China, too. My visit there was part of the same trip that included Singapore. The skyline in Shanghai is unrecognizable from what it was 20 years ago, so much construction has gone on there recently. One of the signature towers, but by no means the tallest, is the so-called Pearl Tower. My host in China took me there, and we paid to go up to the observation deck. This photo is a vertical panorama composite, treated with Photomatix to give the painted surreal effect.

Travelogue: Singapore #1

I had the opportunity to travel to Singapore a few years back. I did not take as many pictures then as I normally do now, but I did go back into the archive and dig up a couple little gems. While taking a walk around Singapore, I came upon this little outdoor fountain park. I enjoyed a beer at an outdoor bar, and watched little kids splash around in the water. I added a little fantasy to the image by using a process called tonemapping. Enjoy!

Minnesota Views: Keller Lake

These photos appeal to me on several levels, most of which are invisible to you, the viewer. Allow me to briefly explain.

I was out shooting with two cameras on a cold day in November... one camera shoots film, the other is digital. Part of Keller Lake had frozen over, part had not. I was having fun getting shots of the geese reflected on the ice when something startled them. I had both cameras around my neck, but neither one in hand at the moment, so I instinctively grabbed the film camera, manually focused as quickly as I could and caught the shot below. It has a painterly quality I really like, but was completely unexpected. Other than cropping, adding a small rotation, and adjusting the brightness slightly, this is how the image came out on the film.

My two cameras are both made by Olympus, one a film camera from 1979, and one a digital model from 2011. However, their respective lenses have different mounts. I've come across an adaptor that allows me to use the old lenses on my new camera. The old lenses are not ideally suited to the new technology. As a result, pictures come out with some graininess and other distortions which normally are unacceptable. In the following two examples, I think the flaws enhance the shot in some ways. Here are the geese reflected in the ice, just before they startled, and a look at the foot bridge at the far south end of the lake.

Travelogue: Norway #3

This turned out to be one of my favorite stops on our journey through Norway. This is the little town of Balestrand. Jan and I got up early to catch the sunrise over the fjord. This was the view as morning light fell upon Balestrand.