Beginning of classes

Well, just like that the Delaware County Fair is in the books again. We'll have the carcass show tonight for the few animals which were purchased and slaughtered and that will be the official end for one more year. There's a lot of pictures from the fair showing up on the website, so check them out. Not only are there great photographers entering in the show (including my wife, who won 3rd place!), but it seems there were a lot of good pictures shot by fairgoers and submitted to the site throughout the week.

As we sort through all of Amanda's pictures, mine have been posted to the Picasa album. Suprisingly, Picasa has not been cooperating well with her Google-brother Blogger, so I'll include the link to the album so you can go there straightaway. In the end, only 25 pictures made my cut onto the site, but as I fill up that site I'm trying to weed out some of my less good shots, including a cut yesterday on some pictures which lacked clarity or subject focus and were just on there for sentimental reasons.

I also began a new photo website which I like less, but they tricked me into joining with a contest for the best geocached photos. I'm a sucker for contests like this so hopefully I'll win something, and if not I've at least put in a little ad online for the Delaware County Fair. Yahoo's Flickr is just a little bit too glitchy and gimmicky for me to use it much yet.

Class is started here on campus and so now i have to adjust to a new schedule once again. I have yet to remember that I TA a class in the morning, so luckily it's for my forgiving mother-in-law because I haven't showed up to it on time yet. Coffee gets me through the long days of adjustment and by November my pigs should start coming off trial. Looking through the fog of chaos to the future of lab work and predictable schedules. Well, here's to hoping anyways...

Pictures!

Brace yourself, it's high volume picture season. This summer I've added about 8 GB of pics to my computer, but during this week alone, another 8-10 GB are added to my computer for the Delaware County Fair. With the addition of Amanda on the photography staff at the county fair, I'm thinking it's about time she got a Picasa album of her own to showcase her good shots. She has some really good pictures, especially from the sheep show last night and we both also have winnings this year again in the open photography show!

I'm toying around with some watermark ideas as well. Some pictures are getting put this year on the county fair website, so I don't want something obnoxious, but I do want something which draws more people to my Picasa album and hopefully eventually some photography gigs someday. I'm still in the growing stages and so looking for practice rather than contracts with expectations - this freelancing for Del. Co. Fair has been perfect. I'd appreciate commentary on two things: 1) watermark locations - I don't want to be obnoxious, 2) keeping the ScotchPine Photos name is a go?

Speaking of pictures, I'll share the MSU photos through this link for the jazzy uniforms to be used in the Michigan game this year (which we'll be at!). There's a lot of debate going on about the MSU uniforms and I agree with most people's intelligent commentary. I realize the traditions of school colors, and also the history lesson in the bronze inclusion - but to paraphrase a LinkedIn comment, "Why bronze, isn't that third?".

Slug Paparazzi

I think I scarred a slug today for life. It's not every day that you crawl out of the grass, roam across the sidewalk at just about 0 mph and find someone waiting for your picture at the end of the long, dry desert. If you want to see the pictures, just follow the sidebar link to my Picasa album's newest pictures. A couple of them turned out very well (these being the only ones you can see on there) but I've post a couple more here too, just snapshots compared with the two I uploaded to the official album.

Slugs and snails have always been something that I found fascinating. You would think for as slowly as they move that they would be some of the easiest living animals for portrait photography that ever were, but that is not the case. The hardest part about shooting photos of them is the fact that they move so slow. You might be stuck staring at them for an eternity, waiting for the scenery or lighting, angle or shadows to change just enough for a good picture. I got a bit lucky with the lighting today and took some different angles to try and find the one that would work best.

You can actually see his eyes looking straight at the camera lens in the photos. Well, I wish you could've seen me taking the photos because I was literally a mere inch away from his head on most of them. My macro lens is touchy at that range for focus, but I got a few decent pictures with appropriate size for enlargement. But I was in his face long enough, that he actually turned 180* and headed back the opposite direction. With him camera shy, I headed to work, just a few minutes late... Take a look at the photos and have a great day! I'm just around the corner from the county fair and photography entries so I welcome any comments on favorites for printing this year. After loading the slug photos up, I can tell they won't be show quality because of the size, but they sure were fun.

Picasa Album!

I just wanted to share with you all that I've added one more thing to the side of this blog. I was realizing recently just how many pictures I've taken over the years and some of them are actually pretty good. It's a shame to have good pictures and keep them all to myself, so I'm gonna post them onto a public Picasa album (program I definitely recommend!). Check out the photos and enjoy my work as I upload them semi-chronologically from when I first got a digital camera. I'm totally all about sharing these around, but please be respectful of my work/fun. I hope you enjoy how beautiful nature looks through my eyes. You'll find the link on the sidebar.