First National Bank Building at Night

Continuing from yesterday's blog, we also went to Raspberry Island last Saturday. I thought the First National Bank Building looked so festive with all the decorated trees around it.

According to Wikipedia, it was completed in 1931. They had a hard time getting the materials to construct it because the Empire State Building was being built at the same time.

We can see the flashing red of the sign at home through the trees in our back yard. Actually, it isn't flashing. There are three "1st" signs and they alternate being lit. Since this was a long exposure, the shot had to be timed just right to only have one sign visible.

Here is another timed exposure where I made it appear that two signs were lit at once. Oh, by the way, that "1st" sign is 50 feet tall!

35W Bridge At Night

Last Saturday we went to see the new I-35W bridge in all its evening splendor. For anyone living under a rock, the old bridge collapsed August 1, 2007, killing 13 and injuring over 100 people. The new bridge opened September 18, 2008. Anyone who wants to know more about the collapse can look here.

I guess they had originally planned for white lights on the bridge, with colored lights for special occasions. But something malfunctioned that they can't fix until spring, so we have blue lights instead. I hope they keep the blue lights. I think they are pretty.

Here is a view from a different angle. I had one more shot I wanted to get, but it didn't turn out. I guess that give me an excuse to go back and try again some time.










Here are a couple documentary photos I took in the daytime back in October.

Crackling Fire

The weather has been rather gloomy all week. Nothing like a cheery fire in the fireplace to brighten things up.

Techie Corner
I took a lot of pictures of this fire last night! Fires are kinda tricky to light properly. I used Photoshop to tweak the lighting.
Shot at: 1/20 Sec @ F2.8, ISO 200

Close-ups in the Gloom

It was a gloomy and rainy day for most of yesterday. I was watching all the birds going to town on the food in the bird feeder. There was food on the ground too, and the birds were everywhere. Then I noticed something on the ground that was not a bird. After getting out the binoculars, I discovered that a shrew was also being sneaky and grabbing food. I tried getting a picture of the little critter, but he was too sneaky for me to get a good shot.

So, I decided to get a few shots of the last bits of plant life before winter sets in. Above is a branch from my bridal veil bush.

Here's some funkiness on a log. If you click on it for the larger version, you can see just how weird it is.



And then, of course, we have all our grape vines. I've never been quite adventurous enough to try eating one of these home-grown beauties.


Techie Corner
I used a f-stop of 2.8 on these images at very close range, so the focus is very selective. I was balancing on a ledge to get the grape shot, so it wasn't as crisply focused as I would have liked.

Experimenting in HDR

We went to the Franconia Sculpture Park on Saturday. We usually go there once a year to see what new and weird sculptures they have. Emphasis on weird.

This sculpture was installed recently, and it's huge--over 23 feet tall. Some of those parts are from actual steam shovels.

Here's another head-scratching creation.


Techie Corner
I figured this would be a great place to experiment with HDR. That sounds like some kind of drug, doesn't it? Actually, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It's a fancy way of saying that you want to have a wider range of light and dark tones in one image than your camera can handle. To achieve this wider range, you have to take at least three images and vary the exposure. (under-exposed, over-exposed, normally exposed) Then Photoshop (and other programs) will combine all the varying exposures into one image.

Both of the images above are HDR creations. If I exposed only for the sky, the sculptures would be too dark. If I exposed only for the sculptures, the sky would be a washout.

Here are single images of both the sculptures. This is the best I could do without HDR.