Marci + Richard MORE

Another photo from Neskowin. I should do some post processing to enhance it more, maybe when I have more time. You can see Proposal Rock on the left and our condo way over on the right. I had fun writing "Marci + Richard MORE" in the sand, then showing it to Marci after downloading them onto my computer. We always say to each other, "Love you MORE!" then sometimes just simply, "MORE". :)

Two Panoramas

I love creating panoramas! All of mine are hand held. I've tried using a tripod before but I find it takes more time and the results aren't that much better - though once in awhile I don't keep the camera level enough and either have to crop way too much or leave it looking funky. haha

Today I couldn't decide which panorama to put up so I'm doing both. Thanks to Blogger not giving me enough space, I had to post the smaller versions. Please click the photos to see the larger sizes, these are much better larger! The first is from the Pumpkin Patch. Inside the maze there's this bridge you can walk on top and look around. I took several pictures and stitched them together to create this.

The second is from several years ago. We were in a parking lot and I saw this really awesome cloud. Took a bunch of photos and stitched them together. It came out very cool!

Again, please click these to see the larger versions, they are definitely more better!

Laser Headlights

This is shortly after I got my current camera. We were in Reno and I was having fun playing with long exposures - this one is 30 seconds. No post processing. I like how that car at the stop light looks like it has lasers coming out of its headlights. LOL!

Playing in the Misters

One year at the Oregon Brewers Festival, it was REALLY hot. So they got smart and setup some water misters that you could walk under and cool off. Being a kid, Riley of COURSE wanted to play in them. We didn't care, he got very wet but had a ton of fun. I really liked the composition of this one.

Philadelphia Mummers Band

This group came out to Portland to march in our Rose Festival Grand Floral parade. They were extremely colorful and bright, playing great music! Very fun to watch. One guy who you can't see here (but you can on my Flickr page) marched the whole parade carrying a full upright string bass! WOW! A very fun group.

Looking for our Christmas Tree

Each year we head to this great place to cut down our Christmas Tree. This year while walking around I saw this view, looking through the branches of one tree at the other trees, and thought it would make an interesting photo. :)

2009 Starlight Parade

I'm a member of the One More Time around Again Marching Band. We are about 560 musicians, dancers, flags and other auxiliaries, and I've been in it for 25 years now! Every year we march in two parades that are part of our Portland Rose Festival, a Starlight Parade (done 9pm when it's dark, hence the name) and the main event, our Grand Floral Parade. It's really a blast to march along, wave to the crowd, get silly, not worry too much how straight the line is, etc, after several years of doing this parade in high school where we were judged and HAD to be super perfect.

I was taking photos while on the parade route (which I love to do, give a different view of the parade) and forgot my camera was on the wrong setting. After I saw this one I actually liked it a lot. No extra processing here, just a camera goof that turned out well. :)

Heavy Rain

It does rain a good amount here in Oregon, though it's usually a really light rain, many times almost a mist. It can get quite annoying and bothersome, but at least when you're going from your car to the store, that means it's not raining hard enough to need to go through the "Put Up The Umbrella" dance while getting out of your car. We have a saying; you can tell the REAL Oregonians - they don't use umbrella's. LOL! Anyhow, on this day we had an exceptionally hard rain. Drops were very big and coming down HARD! It was mesmerizing to watch. Fortunately I came out of the trance and was able to capture this raindrop landing on our fence.

Rhododendron

AHH!!! I almost forgot to post a photo today! Slept in late, played games on the PS3 with Riley, Marci went to Chinook Winds with her mom so Riley, Maddie and I went Bowling then to dinner, it was a fun day, I just forgot about posting a photo. D'OH!

This is another I took at the Crystal Sprints Rhododendron Gardens. I liked how the rhody is in focus and the background isn't, and the framing. :)

Footbridge Pulled Up

At our favorite beach, Neskowin, there's a small river that flows into the ocean, it's very shallow. Going from the condo's to the beach there's a footbridge. In past years it had often been wiped out by high tides. Finally they replaced it with one they could pull back. It has worked great, just means you have a longer walk to get to the beach. Here they pulled it up. This was taken after I had learned the rule of 3rds and was playing around with that. I like how the composition turned out. :)

Morning Birdie

It was early in the morning, things were quite, calm, the sun was warm, I looked out and saw this little bird sitting on the fence. I was really happy he stayed there long enough for me to get my camera and take a picture. :)

Cub Scout Camp Ireland

Riley started Cub Scouts last year, I'm his den leader. It's been a lot of fun. Last summer was his first Cub Scout camp, we'd go in the morning and come back around 3:30pm. We had a GREAT time - even though all week the temps were above 100, which is really hot for Oregon! This photo is of the entry area where the little store is. It's six photos merged with Hugin, then I did the fake HDR thingy in Lightroom. I thought about posting a smaller version, but decided only a little bit was cut off and people can click the photo to see the whole thing - and when you click the photo, you can also click "All Sizes" to see the full original sized version.

Watching the Waves

I love going to the beach for many reasons, digging in the sand, playing in the water, skipping rocks across the small river that empties into the ocean, and of course all the wonderful photo opportunities. Here's Marci, Maddie, Riley and mom Mom watching the waves.

Summer Sunset

I really love taking photos of sunsets and sunrises when the clouds glow with such great colors. Here was a wonderful summer sunset.

Red Tree

In the fall around here the oak trees stay green longer than other trees, like the maple trees. I went outside with the kids to watch them play and saw this small maple that had turned a beautiful red with these two huge oak trees in the background that were still a nice green. I loved the contrast! I like the zoomed in photo much better, but thought I'd also share what the whole view looked like. I couldn't really capture how cool the whole view was with the camera, I still have more to learn. ;)

Marci & Maddie at the Beach

Another photo from Neskowin. The sun was setting, Marci and Maddie were walking by the waves and there's nothing quite like a mother and child photo. I really like the reflection. This is shortly after I learned about the rule of 3rds and was trying it out.

Beautiful Sunrise

One morning while driving to work I saw the sun starting to come up and could tell the clouds would look pretty. I got to work, looked straight ahead and the clouds looked ok, but not as cool as I thought they would look. Then I got out and looked behind me - WOW! I quickly grabbed my camera and took this photo.

I put my camera away, grabbed my stuff and started walking to the building. I can't remember why, but I turned around and looked back towards my car - and saw this! I've never seen a rainbow with such an amazing sunrise! My camera couldn't get the whole thing so I took two photos and stitched them together in Photoshop.

County Fair

This was in early August. While was overcast, it was still quite warm. Eventually the sun came out and it was hot! While waiting for the kids to get on a ride, I stood back, turned the camera sideways and took four photos, then stitched them in Photoshop. It turned out pretty cool, I was happy quite happy with it.

Then I decided to have some fun. I saved the jpg, pulled it into Camera Raw and played around with the settings trying for some kind of fake HDR look. It ended up being too over saturated, so I pulled the saturation WAY down and then it REALLY looked great! TOTALLY different feel from the original photo, but I really like it a lot!

Through The Trees

This was taken at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens. They have this really nice man-made lake that separates the gardens from a golf course. I liked how these two huge trees framed the photo. When I got home to process the photos I took I noticed there was some kid in this one. D'OH! Oh well, I still think it turned out nice. :)

Sun over Proposal Rock

I've been really busy lately which hasn't allowed me a lot of time to take some new photos. That and I haven't seen anything that has interested me either. So I'm still cycling through my older photos.

The beach at Neskowin is one of our favorite places to go in the summer and fall. Here the sun was setting over Proposal Rock. It wasn't a super photo, until I took it into Photoshop, cropped it and played with the colors. I like how this came out. In one of his blog posts, Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms.com (who has some simply amazing HDR photography) said to seek out other photographers and ask them to look at your photos. So I asked him to look at mine and it was so freaking awesome that #1 he did it and #2 he liked this one! WOW!!