State Fair'n it

Attending a state fair is always a unique experience. Where else can you find so many options of food on a stick?

The Indiana State Fair is no exception. Scott and I did the whole fair experience last week: Rode the Fair Train, ate tasty-but-bad-for-you foods, and took in the balloon glow.

I found photographing an evening at the state fair a great chance to challenge myself behind the camera. Throughout the evening, I was constantly adjusting exposure settings to compensate for the fading light. For the price, you can't beat the photo opps at the fair!

See the whole set in my Flikr Stream here.

A Rainy Evening

A few shots from after the rain came through this evening...

By the way, Digital Photography School has a whole thread dedicated to the 50mm. Seriously, the whole thread is a great example of its versatility. Have I mentioned I'm in love this that lens...oh, I have...like a hundred times...

A week of composition

For Amy's Photo Week, the topic of interest was composition. I found this to be quite the challenge. The idea was to pick a principle of composition to focus on for the week and shoot with it in mind.

I pretty much failed at this concept! It felt really unnatural to me for some reason. So, I modified the concept a bit. The week was spent shooting whatever I found interesting, then examining the pics I like best, and figuring out which composition principle drew me to the photograph.

Not too surprising, two of my favorite shots I would consider in the realm of lines and curves. Of course, they all have multiple principles within them, but I feel these first two are dominated by lines.

This final shot I would consider negative space in action...

If you want to see the rest of my favs, check out my set on Flikr.

Father's Day at the Library of Congress

One place I've spent a massive amount of time browsing is the Library of Congress Digital Archives. It almost sounds smart to spend that much time in a library, even if it's only virtually!

The archives are full of old photos free of copy right restrictions (for the most part.) Combine that with some Flikr inspiration found in pennylrichardsca's photostream and suddenly I've got a nearly instant personalized Father's Day gift.

Here's the concoction:

This picture from the digital archives, which I believe might

be the original pagoda at the track (or at least one like it.)

+

This picture I took of the 2009 Indy 500 Pace Car

=

This gift for my dad.

(I love the way the guy in the front is eye-ing that hot ride!)

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Hopefully, you don't get your computer fixed till after this weekend...

Dog Olympics

One item on my neglected list of 28 for 28 was to donate my time. You might remember this post a few months ago about volunteering through photography. I contacted my favorite animal rescue organization, ARPO, and volunteered to take pictures at different events. Here are my favorites from their annual Dog Olympics fundraiser a few weekend ago.

Anticipation building before the Pie Eating Contest.

(The people ate regular pies and the pups ate cupcakes from a dog bakery.)

One of a litter of adoptable puppies and one of the youngest volunteers.

The winner for the Bark Contest, by a landslide.

(A surprising amount of stage freight going around that day!)

To see the whole set, click here.

The Perfect Storm for Photography

Last night, "the perfect storm" for photographing lightning passed just north of our home. It was really fun to play with manual camera settings and enjoy the beautiful show the skies were performing.

I set the camera up on the tripod and used the remote to control the shutter. For the pictures from earlier in the evening, I cranked the aperture nearly as high as I could to allow for a longer shutterspeeds without being over exposed. As night fell, I continued to lengthen the shutterspeed to increase my chances of catching a strike.

A Sky Timeline

Saturday evening, Scott and I were driving home from Danville. We were in seperate cars at the time, I was following, one eye in front of me and one eye on the sky. The sun shining through the clouds was beautiful. All the sudden Scott pulled over and said we have to get a shot of that...my thoughts exactly.

We enjoyed the little stop, took a few shots, and continued on our way. About the time we're rolling into Lebanon, 30 minutes up the road, Scott calls on the cell phone to tell me a funnel cloud was spotted a few miles north of Lebanon. Evidently, over my singing along with the radio, I didn't hear the tornado siren going off in town. I spent the rest of the ride home, about 30 more minutes listening to local talk radio station.

The radio advised of a possible tornado headed toward Sheridian at 8:45, just the time we'd be driving though! We decided to forge ahead. I took this shot out the window on our way into town.

We finally made it home where we proceeded to stand outside and take in the amazing depth of colors in the sky. Luckily, we never saw any funnel clouds or tornados, and the skys finally calmed down after the sun went down. These last two shots are from our place.

Anyone remember the end of Ghost Busters? Same sky...