This is going to be short for a few reasons. First the windows Evernote app is still not working right (I'm typing this in notepad++ sans a spell checker so pardon any you see). Second, this week has been fairly busy. Third, I just got a new car that I'm really enjoying (I'm sure you can guess what next week's picture is going to be).

This was actually taken during our family reunion. There was a nearby geocache that the kids went looking for. While they were going through the stuff in the geocache I snapped some random pictures, including these with high noon sun to get a lens flare. It's not a particularly good idea to be staring straight at the sun, even though I did have sunglasses on. Took a few and like the effect on this one the most.

This week I participated in the Worldwide Photo Walk. I went to the cleveland one that included a chance to take pictures from the roof of the terminal tower. Fortunately the weather held up and was able to go up there.

This was my first photo walk with a group of people and was amusing seeing what everyone did. Was also amusing watching all the bystanders having no idea why there's this group of people with camera's taking pictures of cracks in walls and close up views of puddles. Don't think I got any contest worthy pictures but still got some good ones.

The rest of the pictures are in the photo gallery.

Apologies on the brevity of this post. I use Evernote to write all my drafts and for some reason the application is being difficult so I have to type this in the web interface that keeps messing things up.

This week went to what's been called the vega building for the street it's on. Tried to get more information on the actual name of the building and couldn't find anything. Judging by what's there they did a lot of displays for various companies. Although it could have just been there as storage. In lower floors there's a lot more information dealing with chemicals and even a fallout shelter on the first floor. Another interesting feature are the rooms that are mostly filled with green light and "the cage" that's a service elevator for about 3 feet.

If you follow me on twitter you would have seen my enthusiasm about getting a good picture. This wasn't it. I took a bracketed series of shots of this and planned to fuse them together. While looking through I realized a major error in my logic, it was windy and the leaves moved a lot in each frame although they were within 1/8th of a second between pictures. I could have used it if I really wanted to but would take a lot of work masking out the leaves from a single image instead of just an automated fusion of the images.

Rest of the images can be found in the gallery

This was done out of curiosity what a flame looks like through a macro lens. Answer? Not that interesting. At least now I know.

I've been a rut of sorts as far as inspiration goes. I think I've finally started to get interest in doing model shoots again, so there's something to possibly look forward to.

Last weekend was July 4th which is Independence Day in the US (do I even have readers from other countries?) so of course this week is going to be fireworks. These were taken in Bedford, Ohio Saturday night. Was interesting in that I was front row and only maybe a couple hundred feet from where the fireworks were going off which meant it looked like they were above your head. Also, there was music playing but not sure how choreographed it was to the music, it seemed like it generally was though.

Looking at my pictures from last year I realized I don't really like the background being completely black so I made a point to adjust settings to make sure I got some of the sky in the background. Because I was so close even with a wide angle lens I had to go portrait orientation. This worked fine since all the fireworks only came from a few places relatively close to each other. It's also a little misleading in portrait orientation on a wide angle. The top of this image would be me looking into the sky at 60-75° angle, so it covered a lot of vertical space. One of the challenges with fireworks aside from the actual settings is going through them. There's so many that are good but you need to only select the great ones. Could have probably trimmed it down some more. As for my actual technique it was pretty basic. I had the camera on the tripod and I had my remote shutter switch attached. I set the shutter speed to manual and aperture stayed around f/8 or f/11. I took a couple test shots and just counted in my head and let go of trigger. If it was too dark I'd add a second, too bright I'd remove a second. It came to around 6 seconds to get the sky how I wanted. I then adjusted as needed as the sky darkened. The reason I didn't just set it to 6 seconds is there may be times where certain fireworks are going off and I have to take a shorter exposure. In bulb mode I didn't have to worry and just repress the trigger when I want.

Sunday night I tried going to the lakewood fireworks that I went to last year and had an awesome finale. Due to various reasons I was running late and had trouble finding a parking spot. Finally found a spot about a mile or two away from park when they started to go off. What was interesting was watching all the people. Some people setup chairs in their yard, people huddled around areas where there were breaks in the trees. For those 30 minutes or so everyone just tuned out the world to watch fireworks. Of course being the photographer I am I was trying to figure out how to convey this in a photo. I was distracted as well by the fireworks as I walked along toward the park to get a better view. My options were limited. In the US there's something referred to as the sidewalk rule. If you are standing on a sidewalk anything you can see with your naked eye is considered public and you can take pictures of just about anyone, including children, without getting permission. As a general rule I try not to take pictures of stranger's children since I know some parents are very defensive about pictures of their children. The law would be on my side but I rather not have it reach that point. Well my only options while the fireworks were going is setup my tripod in the middle of the road--traffic was literally at a stand still as other people that got there late just stopped and got out of their car--and take a long exposure shot of the kids watching the fireworks and hope they stand still for the 5 seconds or so I would have the shutter open. By the time I was finally thinking about doing this and just dealing with parents afterwards--I imagine they would just think I'm from a newspaper or something--it was getting close to the end and I didn't want to miss the finale, which was the reason I went to this again. Sure enough it was just as good as last years. Then there's the drive back home with fireworks going off everywhere. Kinda surprised how big the fireworks the public can buy. Maybe if I'm in the same situation next year I'll just take the pictures and see.

Rest of the pictures can be found in the image gallery.

This week is the rest of the pictures from Faymore's Castle a couple weeks back. In summary Dr. Faymore became very wealthy and decided to build a castle... in the middle of nowhere. He got arrested for I believe writing false prescriptions. Don't know what happened afterwards if he's still in prison, died, or just gave up on the property.

Like this picture for the depth of field. Debated for a minute or two if I wanted the foreground or background in focus--I took both when I was there--and like this one better. Worth noting this is number 26 of POTW so the year is halfway over.

Rest of the pictures can be found in the gallery.

First off sorry for the delay as I try to get this out before Friday. Also I'm kinda cheating here. This is part of what will probably be next week's set from Faymore's Castle. I really like this photo but it doesn't have anything to do with the castle so didn't want to title as such, but also wanted to have one for both the castle and this. This week I'll show this picture and next week I'll do the rest of the castle.

I took this picture on the way back from the castle. Was walking back and thought this would look good and it came out even better than I imagined. It retained detail in the foreground but also had detail in the clouds, which is a wide range of light.

Like I said, next week will be the rest of the pictures. May be cheating a bit but at least I should have them up earlier in the week.

Was cleaning my hardly-used leatherman multi-tool when I thought it might look cool close-up. Had a few good ones but liked this the most. It's the edge of the serrated blade that unfolds on the outside (it's a leatherman wave). Still have the Opteka Macro Extension Tube Set on my wish list. Would let me get a lot closer. I could also fake the close up by just do a tight crop of the area I want. I would have taken a setup shot but all I did was set the tool on the middle separator of the sink and hand held it, which is really hard at this distance. Because it was on that edge you can see where it dropped off in the corner.

Not sure where to begin for this con. Actually for the most part things were all right, probably one of the better cons I've been to aside from Saturday night which I'll get to in a moment. It's smaller than Ohayocon but a little larger than Anime Punch and felt like there's a lot less drama happening around. As for Saturday night, it started out around 3:00 AM when the fire alarm went off. Everyone started to go outside when then other con-attendees (not staff) were like "There's a tornado warning, we should go back inside" which we did and then just went back outside. Was all rather confusing. After that we were told everything was closed till 7:00 AM while they look into the alarm issue (FWIW it was a fluke related to the fluctuations of the weather outside). So everyone goes back to their room. I'm on the patio and I start to hear tornado sirens. Long story short we were evacuated to the basement with the rest of the hotel to wait out a Tornado that possibly touched down in the area. There was an earlier one at around 11:00 PM about 50 miles away. Never found out if one touched down at 4:00 or if it just looked like a tornado was about to form. The whole ordeal was quite... memorable to say the least. But nothing happened and aside from working on a few hours sleep on Sunday everything was fine.

Only had one photo shoot this time of... two characters from Twilight (not the two main characters). I don't know anything about the series but I guess these were the evil ones, or something. I kept getting thrown off by the one person's red contacts. I'll look at the screen and know the flash shouldn't have created red eye and yet I see it. Also not to happy with the flash. Not sure what caused it to not do what I wanted and didn't really notice till I saw them on the computer. Main thing I regret/learned from this is to use the WhiBal white balance card I have. I had it on me but just didn't think to use it. Made color correcting the last couple shots kinda hard. Unfortunately the one I was looking forward was one at night. Brought my light stand and outside wasn't windy which is good for my umbrella but no one showed up. I almost think there was confusion between "registrations" since I just said I'd meet them at registration and there's one to get your pass, another for cosplay, another for games, etc. Now that I've been there I'm more familiar with the layout to give better instructions for a meet spot.

I work at what was once an old elevator factory. The number of companies currently in this complex outgrew the limited amount of parking space. To fix that they are tearing down a couple of the buildings to turn the area into a parking lot. Demolition has been fast. It's only a week later and it's almost completely gone. As far as what this once was, all I know is it was once an elevator factory. This has backfired on us since all the elevators are custom elevators they tried out, so there are no standard parts available. The elevator in our building seems to always be down. Usually I just take the stairs, it's safer that way. Glad we're on the third floor and not the seventh. View may be better on seventh but I don't want to do all those stairs when the elevator is down for repairs.

Like this picture from the group because of the perspective it does. I'm still trying to figure out how to show depth in an image. For example that strip of ground on the left and bottom are the roof. The dumpster is three floors below. Because of the wide-angle is did some warping so the dumpster seems to be on an angle when it's flat. An interesting side effect I noticed is it gives a slight tilt-shift look to that part of the image because it's not in focus. It's subtle, but it makes the distortion look a little better. The rest of the pictures can be found here.

I'm going to be at ColossalCon this weekend. Besides meaning next week's picture is going to be of a person for a change it also means I'm going to do a couple more photo shoots. Hopefully applying what I've learned in the past to make these even better.