The Big Photo Challenge...Reflections

This week's topic is Reflections.

I haven't been participating in the photo challenge lately. Partly due to work committments and partly due to weather and lack of daylight. I decided to share this picture from a few months ago when we were still able to enjoy the outdoors.

I took this picture in the Idaho Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge. We were looking for fall folige scenes and went to the Priest Lake area. I took this picture with My Canon Power Shot S3 IS in program mode with color set to vivid. I was fascinated by the trees reflection in the stream. If you look closely you'll notice that the picture is actually displayed upside down.

I also took this shot of a small pond a little further down the path.

I was trying to capture the REFLECTION of the hill in the background in the still water.

We went up the path a little farther and when we returned we found a totally different scene.

Two otters were sitting on the log in the water and a blad eagle was in the dead tree behind the pond.

The Big Photo Challenge...FALLLLLLLLLL

This week's theme is Fall

It's about 2 weeks away from a full Fall color extravaganza in the Inland Northwest. We make a point to take a couple of days off every year and go some place to enjoy the rich Fall foliage. This year we will go to Lake Pend Oreille near Sandpoint Idaho. In the meantime, here is a picture of the only trees in our neighborhood that have changed to their Fall color.

Picture was taken with my Canon Power Shot S3 IS in program mode with color set to vivid F stop of 4.0 and shutter speed at 1/320 of a second.

My wife Julie has an entry for this week as well. This is her favorite picture of our grandson Aiden taken in the fall of 2005. She took it with a small Sony digital camera while at the downtown park on a beautiful day in October.




Isn't he cute?!!!

The Big Photo Challenge...EXPRESSIONS

This weeks challenge is "Expressions"



I took my grandson Aiden to Pop Warner football practice tonight. He's only 6 and they play tackle football with full pads and helmets. He lost a tooth at practice tonight, it was a loose baby tooth. He played anyway and I thought it would be the perfect book end to Jen's picture of his toothless brother Connar.



After practice I asked him to show me his most menacing football grimace GRRRRRR!!!!. You can see the hole in his gum and the tooth in his fingers.
I took the picture in the dark and the camera focused on the helmet instead of the face. I didn't realize it until I downloaded the picture at home and then it was too late. But I thought the picture captured the theme so well I put it in anyway.

The Big Photo Challenge...SIGNS

This weeks Big Photo Challenge is Signs.

I've always been fascinated by the faded and crumbling signs painted on the old brick buildings around our town. These were the bill boards of yesteryear. They advertized old wagon, tobacco, and dry goods as well as soft drinks we still see today. I went around town on the way home tonight and shot some pictures of some of these signs with my Nikon Coolpix S210 pocket camera so you could see some of them before they are all painted over or torn down.

This is an old wagon maker with the giant steam plant smoke stacks in the background.

Taken in sepia.

LaAzora cigars were only 15 cents and hotel rooms were 50 cents per day and up and boasted of steam heat.

The Frederic Hotel encouraged us to buy Rex Flour because "Rex is King".

Black and white photo showed Ketchum & Son sold Wholesale Dry Goods (what are dry goods?).

Coca-Cola was even popular back then, I guess because it was "Delicious and Refreshing".

You can see another rendition of the Cola-Cola bleeding out from under the paint.

The Globe Hotel is still operating as a Bar & Grill but don't exspect to get a room upstairs for 75 cents. Sepia seemed appropriate for this vintage sign.

The old City Ramp parking garage must have been a beautiful sight in its heyday with Art Deco finish and salmon paint. It's now dirty and falling apart with paint peeling off onto the sidewalk below.

and finally...

The modern version of the store side advertizing sign completed just today.

It took a vivid setting on camera to get the whole effect of this bright and shiny new painted sign.

The Big Photo Challenge...ME

This weeks photo challenge is ME

Or a picture of me or about me that shows what I am about.


This time of year I am all about Arena Football (American, with an oblong ball). Our local team, the Spokane Shock, are number 1 in the league with a record of 13 wins and 2 losses. We only have one game left and have earned a spot in the playoffs.

This is a picture of ME and my better half, who completes me, outside the football arena. We dress in the teams orange and blue colors and cheer are heads off. There is a fantastic series of metal sculptures outside the arena that represent an athelete jumping into the air. We dressed them in the orange fuzzy hats that we wear to the games. The last one behind us shows his head gone and legs stretching like a spring. There is another in front of us that you can't see of just his legs with the springs sprouting out.

Go Shock!

And check out this link of the team high-fiving my grandsons and wife.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_y9YGzRf88

Yay! We're in the newspaper. Me on the right, my son Derrick to my right, my wife Julie, my son Kyle (9th man jersey), my daughter-in-law Jen below me, and my grandson Connar to her right. Shock game Aug 12 against the Milwaukee Iron. Shock win 60 to 57 and are going to the Arena Bowl. Watch us on NFL network Aug 20 at 5 PM PST.http://www.spokesman.com/photos/2010/aug/13/111566/

The Big Photo Challenge...TECHNOLOGY

This week's theme is Technology.

I decided to take a picture of my work station.

7 computers (2 RAID Servers under the keyboards) running on 4 dual input monitors.

These computers are used to configure software to run a utility plant.

Then I noticed everyone was submitting pictures of their iPods, so I decided to follow suit. Until I realized I don't have an iPod. So I took a picture of my multimeter since it is small and has wires coming out of it.

I took the picture with my Canon PowerShot S3IS. I used the Shutter priority mode and set the shutter speed to 4 seconds. The camera adjusted the aperature to F4.5 automatically. I had to put it on a tripod due to the slow shutter speed or it would blur. I also set the timer delay to 2 seconds so I would have my hands off of it when the shutter opens. The meter is actually dark red but I used a black light to give it the eerie glow. I balanced the meter on a small rubber ball to give it the effect of floating in air.

The Big Photo Challenge...GREEN

This week's topic is GREEN


This is a picture of lily pads in Newman Lake in Washington State I took while kayaking.



I took this with my Canon S3IS using the Scene feature called Color Accent.
You can point at an object and press the set button and when you take a picture it will make a black and white picture except for the color you set.

8th Picture

So Jen has challenged some followers to show what the 8th picture in the 8th folder of our picture hard drive is. Well I had to take it one level deeper by selecting the 8th picture in the 8th folder of the 8th year folder.

Wow! What a surprise, it's her youngest son Aiden in 2005.

Well, not really an unexpected outcome since 75% of all my pictures are her sons (my grandsons). This is little boy blue, which just happens to be his favorite color.

The Big Photo Challenge...SPECIAL

I went kayaking Sunday with family and while moving through some lily pads a duck started making an obnoxious sound at me. When I reached for my camera I realized she was warning me to stay away from her floating nest on the other side of the kayak. I snapped a picture of a nest that floats on top of the water in heavy lily pads that had an egg and a new born duckling about 10 minutes old in it. I had already taken a picture of a Special Medal for this week's challenge but decided this was much more special and used it instead.


The picture was taken with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS with F3.5 and 1/1600 speed.




I was also able to get a quick video of the duckling.


Or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wry-og9qGFM To see it in other sizes.



This link is to another video with the duck growling at me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wvlBBPJ_o4



This is what another duck looked like sitting on its floating nest.

The Big Photo Challenge...small

This week's challenge is small.
When I think of small, I think of macro.
So when I want to capture the essence of macro photography I use the Super Macro setting on my Canon Power Shot S3 IS.





This is a picture of a computer video board that uses Surface Mount Technology (SMT). The little blocks are resistors, capacitors, and inductors; they are only 1 MM wide. They are attached by machines and soldered all at once with a wave or flow soldering process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology . The U600 chip is the DVI output driver and is also machine soldered. I have tried to replace chips this small while in the military with limited success.

I found it very hard to get even lighting and focus. I used several lights and in Super Macro mode you can't manual focus. I took many photos with different aperture and shutter speeds and learned how to use several new functions on the camera. But when I looked at all the pictures, I found this one with shadows looked the best. It seems more 3D and surreal kind of like a moonscape.

The Big Photo Challenge...SUMMER

This week's theme is Summer! Ah... remember when you were young and looked forward to the hot days of summer so you could set up a lemonade stand and sell drinks for a quarter. Well my grandsons carry on this summer tradition with a few minor changes. Now they sell Gatorade for a dollar a bottle. But with inflation, we still got more candy per day than they do!

This picture was taken this weekend with my Nikon Coolpix S210 pocket camera. It is so small, I can carry it in my shirt pocket. I needed to force a fill flash because the sun was so bright. But the sun does make the umbrella colors bright.

The Big Photo Challenge...NEW

This week's challenge is NEW.

Lacking a cute little baby of my own

or the funds to purchase one,
(baby Piper, photo by mother Melissa)


I decided on the next best thing: New Growth


Summer seems to be coming late to our great state this year. Most of the evergreen trees are still showing their new growth. I took this shot on a bike ride this morning on the Centennial Trail near Coeur d'Alene Idaho. I used my Canon Power Shot S3 IS in program mode with the color enhancement feature on Vivid Green and the Macro setting on to get a clear and close shot.

The Big Photo Challenge ...WATER

This week's challenge is WATER, which I was very eager to try out my new underwater camera on. Unfortunately, it still thinks it's winter here. Rain, Rain, Rain. So after settling for the hot tub for underwater pictures I tried to get a picture of my wife's beautiful feet with blue toe nail polish. Unfortunately, you can't tell it's underwater. It just looks like feet. I tried again but the rain chased her inside. So, using the rain to my advantage, I settled for this shot.

This is a picture of a glass top table on my deck after the rain storm. I used my new Polaroid t833 8 mpixel underwater (10 meters) camera. It has scene settings for everything you would normally find on a pocket digital camera plus many additional settings for underwater. I actually didn't get to use the underwater settings and instead used the color controls to select an overall purple picture. So I guess I will call this picture Purple Rain.

Big Photo Challenge...OLD

I am participating in Adori(ble) Photography's Big Photo Challenge. I have been following this for the first couple of weeks but could not find a way to add a picture since I don't have a Blog or Web page. I finally broke down and asked my talented daughter-in-law Jen to help me set up a blog just so I could post a picture. Since I already had a picture for last week's topic (OLD) I decided to sneak it in late.

I took this picture near Grays Harbor in Washington state USA. This is a cranberry bog used by Ocean Spray Cranberry Drink company. The Cranberry plants can be seen in the bottom left corner of the picture. When it's time to harvest they flood the field and the cranberries float to the top. After they are herded up, they drain the field and dig out the old cranberry plants with this old truck mounted tractor. This poor old work horse has seen better days but is still in use. I took this picture with my Canon Power Shot S3IS in the Program AE mode with the color settings forced to Vivid to get a higher contrast between the green and yellow.