Some random images

I haven't done anything that's worth posting an entire series recently, so here's a smattering of odds and ends that I think are worth sharing.

Joakim Soria closes out the top of the ninth inning with three strikeouts. This is at full zoom with my 75-300mm lens.



The view from the exact same seat in the upper deck, but with a fisheye 0.42x lens attached to my 18-55mm. My wife won the fisheye/macro lens combo off Ebay for $60.



With the fisheye lens off but the macro lens still attached to the 18-55mm, I can take some insanely close pics.

Moss growing on a tree in my front yard:



An ant crawling on some flowers. Both the flowers and the ant are tiny, this fella isn't a big army ant, he's one of those small little scouts that's only a couple of milimeters long:



Test firing a gunstore customer's Yugoslavian AK47 pistol. Lots of muzzle flash even in broad daylight. Not a very efficient design but it does put on quite a show:



My friend Eric puts a silenced Ruger .22 through its paces. The sound of the rounds hitting the target is louder than the sound of the gun itself:



My friend and fellow attorney Michael Younker looks out from his back porch:



His wife plays with their dog for awhile, then rests in her favorite chair:




My friend Greg. No relation to Al Pacino:




A fire in the business district of my home town:







The state capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri, around midnight. The self-shots I took using a tripod and 20 second timer. Shutter speed was a full 4 seconds so I had to hold as still as I could:







That's all for now. Just bits and pieces of my life, hope you're enjoying the view, if anyone is even visiting this blog at all.

Family

Enough pics of flying machines for awhile. I've been sorting through some pics I took right after getting my zoom lens. Alot of throwaways, I was just learning the lens so alot of pics which seemed set up nicely at the time turned out poorly and couldn't be saved. But I still have some that are worthy of showing.

My brother David has four little girls. Sarah, Hannah, Stephanie, and Annie are one of the primary reasons I bought the 40D to begin with, but I've only really had this one opportunity to take pictures of them. I really need to fix that.

All of these are candids. I didn't ask the kids to sit still or do anything in particular, I just followed them around with the camera and let them do their own activities while snapping away constantly.

This is Sarah. She loves to mug for the camera, she poses like a little Marilyn Monroe.



This is Hannah. She's tiny but very serious. I can't wait to see what she grows up to be, she is always focusing hard like she's trying to do quantum physics in her head.



I was trying to take photos inside and was really fighting with the white balance. With the white balance set to auto everything looked very orange due to the indoor lighting.



After creating a custom white balance, things were much better. This is done by taking a picture of a blank sheet of paper in the room, then using a menu function to tell the camera's computer that the paper is white. The camera adjusts its color settings accordingly and you have a corrected white balance available. The white balance can also be tuned manually, which involves an intimidating looking Red/Green/Blue/Magenta square graph. Proper adjustment results in much improvement in the final image. Hannah has always had very dark eyes, be careful or you'll fall right into them.



This is Stephanie. She is hilariously mischevious and will gladly eat anything the willowy Hannah has turned her nose at.




Little Steffie saw her older sister posing for my camera and proceeded to immediately mimic the pose.



This is Anastasia. Annie is just as sweet as these pictures make her look. She is guaranteed to melt your heart.





Again, none of these pics are posed, that's just Annie looking like Annie. See why I wanted to buy an $800 camera?

I'll add in a couple of mom and dad real quick. This will help explain why all the girls are so skinny. Here's David:



And here's Katie, with the whole crew in tow.



I owe Katie a more flattering image than this, but still I'm going to post it because I think it embodies the kind of parenting it takes to raise four good little girls. Katie is helping Steffie hit a wiffle ball off a tee, with some success. Note the expressions on mother and daughter's faces. Steffie is having a ball and living in the moment, and Katie is making darn sure that Steffie is having a ball. And being safe. And not hurting anyone else. Its raining, and Katie is cold, but that's a small sacrifice for the happiness of her child. A small sacrifice, but added to many, many more she made that day and every day.