Some Favorite Christmas' Past

                                                     

                                         Some Favorite Christmas' Past

                                         I must have been about 3 when this was taken, I still have
                                    those Bibby Overalls from GBH with my name spelled Jimmie,
                                                              they don't fit any more.

The year I got my favorite present, my Teddy Bear,

when I saw him under the tree, that was all I cared about that Christmas,

I don't remember any other gift that year. Also in the Picture from the left,

sister Susan, sister Treva and sister Anita

Christmas

Some favorite Christmas pictures

Our Home

The canal nearby

                                                   Frosty The Snow Man by candle light

Mama Kitty

Our Tree

Grandon Civic Center at Midnight

Grand daughter Chloe's Traveling Team Soft Ball Game

Went to Chloe's Softball game yesterday, they won both games, actually tied the second one.

                                    Chloe at bat, see the ball?

                                    Stealing Second

                                      Stealing 3rd
                                   
                                    
                                 
                                Scoring a run! See her Dad Peter in the middle left?

It was a beautiful Sunny Day made better by thier wins!

K200mm f2.5

Just purchased a new lense, new to me any way, she's a K200mm f2.5 which  is still the fastest 200mm lens that Pentax has made and is also the fastest Pentax lens over 135mm. Not bad for a lens released in 1977. I got her for a reasonable price and first pictures tell me I got a deal. Just in time for a road trip/photo shoot early next week in Nebraska. She is heavy, built like a tank, and is fast for hand heald shots.

Read more about this lense at: http://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/SMC-Pentax-K-200mm-F2.5-Lens.html#ixzz1WA0rrd3l
 Here she is on my K10

Sample shots right out of the box.

I love the way that f2.5 blows out the background

This lense is tack sharp, see the cobweb?

Backyard

I happened to look out the window and saw a Tiger Swallowtail and a SpicebushSwallowtail on our Butterfly bush, both on the same bunch, so I grabbed my camera and went out and took the following pictures, never did get them both on the same bush again.

Also enjoyng the Butterfly Bush was this Skipper of some variety

While I was out there I noticed a nice bloom on our Hibiscus and turned around and saw the Naked Lady Lilies were blooming.

Also got this shot of a Humming bird at one of our feeders.

There were 3 of them, chasing each other and darting here and there, managed to get this shot.

Improving Pictures

Another time I was on the road to several locations and at the last minute I was asked to swing by a location and shoot a set up in a quarry, I arrived in mid afternoon and a storm had just passed. The sky was gray and as the afternoon proceeded it wasn't getting any better. So I took some shots of the equipment that was wanted and here are the results.

Not very impressive, so I went to work and sharpened the picture a little, carefully striped out the gray sky, and added a different blue sky with fluffy clouds. What a difference adding a blue sky can do for a picture, it brings out the best of the colors in the picture.

At the same location was another shot they wanted, here is the unaltered shot.

Not at all impressive, so I did alittle Photoshop and achieved these results.

This shot was used in a equipment calendar and in a Job story in a publication.

What I do

People often ask what it is that I do. I tell them I am a professional tourist; I travel the world and take pictures and then come home and "play" on a computer.
One time I wasn't able to go to a location in Venezuela to shoot a piece of equipment, there was a salesman going there, so I met with him and explained what we were looking for, how to shoot it, and told him to literally take 100's of pictures, so I could throw away 99 to get the one good shot.
 He returned with a total of 6 pictures, none of which would work for the piece of literature I was going to prepare.

The best picture, had way too much dust in the air, and we don’t want lots of dust, as it doesn’t promote the image we are after.

The first thing I did was clean the picture up and make it better, the results, while better still wasn't acceptable to the customer.

So I stripped out the back ground and added a different background. In doing so I got rid of all of the dust
                                    
This is the picture that was used in the advertising piece.

Barn

These shots are from the farm i grew up on and the barn that was a fertile imagination playground, but that was in its better days.

Airshow

I went to a local air show called "The Last Time" it was a gathering of vintage DC 3's and was so named because it was possibly the last gathering of so many DC 3's in one spot.

 Parked off to the side by it self was "Moon Beam McSwine" a P-51.