Charlie's Fake Blog

Today was a great day for a walk around the ( brother-in-law's ) farm.  I don't go for walks without a camera so I decided to take two. The little Sony a6000 with a 10-18 wide angle zoom and my a7 with a Canon 100mm macro FD. That pretty well covers the things I really enjoy taking pictures of. The wide lens for everything big and the Macro for everything small. Armed to be able to take a picture of anything means that I will take a picture of anything. Like a leaf nailed to a wooden pallet. Or my shadow. Or some wrinkled berries. Or I'll take that picture I've seen a hundred times. The wide lens pointed straight up at the tree tops. The previous shot is cool only if there is fog and light rays streaming through the trees. I think i managed, however, to get somewhat of a unique perspective on looking up in the woods with this next shot. The distortion from the lens has the trees leaning toward the center as before, however, I tried to use t...

This past week a storm blew through.  I had a blast taking pictures.  I was running in and out of the house, changing lenses, changing cameras, just plain having fun. I also had some fun working on some of the shots I took.  I'm no Lightroom / Photoshop expert, but I enjoy learning how to do things like HDR.

The Moon and Venus were together again tonight.  Not really together but more or less aligned in the sky. The jet flying off to the left added something I hadn't noticed when I took the picture. The tree seemed like a good way to add some scale to the picture.

I woke up early Thursday morning and was treated to this scene from my bathroom window.  It took me about ten seconds to decide to drag out the camera, the tripod and a couple lenses and have a go at capturing the mood of the scene. Snow storm in early March.  I've seen worse.  We could still get more.

I've had some time off from the job over the holidays and have been using up some of that time taking pictures.  Something that has interested me for quite a while is the quantity of bridges over the Youghiogheny river.  I know, another old guy going on about irrelevant crap.  But hey, this is my spot, I'll do what I want.   This is a railroad bridge near Banning.  It's pretty high.  I have heard people brag about walking across it.  I've even heard one or two say they have ridden a dirt bike across.  They are bat-shit crazy.  There are no cat walks on a railroad bridge.  There is only enough space across the top to lay cross-ties and track.  This one has no hand rails or bulkheads along side the track.  Trains cross this bridge.  Get caught on it with a train coming and you are dead, no ifs or buts or maybe, just dead. The obligatory Selfie Near this bridge is an abandoned concrete building.  It ap...

To me there is something special about early morning.  Getting out and about while the grass is still wet and the air is cool and still. The last, best shot with my Pentax K10D.  After having that camera since 2007, I finally figured out how to shoot bracketed exposures for an HDR image.

On certain rainy days the sky is flat gray and other times the clouds have texture. Sometimes the the atmosphere is so unsettled the clouds get "dramatic". I had one of those days recently.  I don't have a fish-eye lens to try to take it all in but I stitched a series of shots together in elements and it almost captures the moment.  I stood there admiring the changing light when I caught the start of a rainbow. The grain field was lit up golden. Behind me the sun was blaring through the poplar tree. So, what about the rainbow. Cue the choir.