Downtown Farmer's Market

This was our first trip to the Farmer's Market this year.  Usually we are there the first weekend it is open but bad weather and poor timing has kept us away until this last weekend.  It was a cool but beautiful morning and we could wait any longer.  Our usual plan at the market is just to do a little shopping and a lot more eating and that pattern held true again this time but this time we decided to stop at the booth of the Iowa Balloon Artist (iowaballonartist.com)  He is a very charismatic artist who truly does amazing things with balloons.  After watching him make a few puppy's Elena decided she wanted one too so that is what she got.

European Vacation

My wife and I decided last summer that we were going on vacation for spring break 2013 and we wanted to go to Paris and London.  She loves to travel and I had never been overseas so it was definitely a win-win for both of us.  We decided to fly into London, take the Chunnel to Paris and we would fly out from there.  Then last fall we were asked (at the last minute) to host a foreign exchange student.  We hesitantly accepted and were we ever lucky.  Her name was Astrid and she was wonderful.  She was from Liege, Belgium.

One night when we were all sitting in the living room we mentioned that we were headed to Europe for spring break and she quickly said "You should stop over in Belgium and see me."  At first we were thinking "You don't just 'stop over' into another country" but then we considered the fact that we hadn't really set any hard plans yet so "why not!"  So now our plans were to fly into London and spend 2 days and one night, then take the evening Chunnel to Brussels and spend one night there and the next day with Astrid in the Capital of Belgium.  We would then spend the night at her father's condo and take the Thalys to Paris for three days and three nights of touring.  As it turned out that was a great plan and everything turned out great. I had an amazing experience overseas and I can't wait to go back and take more pictures.  These are some of the highlights of the trip.

London

Tower Bridge

St. Paul's Cathedral & Millenium Bridge

St. Paul's Cathedral

Brussels

Random street

The Grand Place

The Queen's Gallery

Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula

Astrid

Paris

 Eiffel Tower

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame

Random street

Rue Cler (street market)

Been a while.....More Rural Decay

I know I haven't written in quite a while so here's my pathetic attempt to get caught up.  Last fall when I was leaving work I couldn't help but notice the amazing sunset.  In my mind I had the perfect subject to photograph and I knew it would be awesome.  So I hurried over to the barn I was thinking of and got set up.  The whole time I was driving I kept thinking to myself "I'm gonna miss this great sunset.  It's gonna be gone by the time I get there."  Much to my delight it was not only still there but just a vibrant as ever so I started shooting.  This is definitely the best picture of the group.

Then a few days later it started to snow.  This was the first snowfall of the year (and first of many) and it was a really pretty snow.  I decided to make my way back over to the barn and see what I could get.  This was also the best picture of the bunch.

Finally, I decided on night after work to look for another type of landscape photo.  Something interesting but not necessarily unique to the area.  What I found was this picture.

Commercial Photography

The other day I decided to stop by my buddy's new dental office and take a few pictures.  I figured that he spent a lot of money building that new office and making it look good, why not try and do him a favor and get a really good picture of it.  So when I got close to the office and I liked the blueish color of the sky (I knew it would be perfect in just a few short minutes) I decided to give it a shot.

After I got done, I decided to immediately start processing the photos.  I wanted another try at HDR (trying to keep it realistic) and this was just my shot.  I combined the photos and started making a few tweaks.  I removed some garbage cans and a couple of handicap parking signs as well as a reflection on my UV filter and voila, this is the shot I ended up with.  Not too bad if I do say so myself.  =)

Rural Decay 2

For the first couple of years living in our current house I took a certain route to work.  Every day on my way home I would notice a certain old car that was a little ways off the road.  This was a car that was really unremarkable in almost every sense of the word.  It was completely rusted out, in the middle of nowhere with no real hope of ever getting restored.  Anyway, there was always something about that old car that drew my attention almost every time I drove past.
Now for the last year or better I have been taking a different route to work that does not take me past the old car.  I had almost completely forgotten about it until the other day when I was in the area with Elena and my parents (in another car) and again noticed the old car.  I didn't have a good chance to stop at that moment because E was on the verge of a melt down and it would have required leaving her in the car unattended (apparently that's frowned upon.)
So the following Friday I walked out of my workplace and noticed the layered clouds of an overcast sky and decided right then to try and get a good picture.  As I got to the place on the interstate a few things were going through my head that had nothing to do with photography.  Should I really be parking my car along an interstate?  Can this really be safe?  Am I prepared to trespass on private property?  Is it really trespassing if there are no signs?  What if a state trooper sees me (what are the chances of that actually happening?)  What if the owner of the car spots me and starts to come down there?  Like I said, nothing to do with photography but everything to do with my surroundings.  As you can tell, I decided that no, I should not be parking on the interstate but I was going to anyway.  I was prepared to trespass, and yes it is still trespassing even if there are no signs.  I will accept whatever a state trooper decides if that should become an issue.  I would ask for forgiveness from the property owner if they confront me.
After scoping out the scene and deciding which lens to use, I got my camera setting set and took a few pictures.  I started shooting in color but decided B&W might work better and switched to monochrome.  B&W was definitely the right setting for this scene.  I recomposed and took a couple more.  All-in-all I only took 6 total shots.  I figured if I can't get it figured out in those shots with no interruptions or distractions then I deserved to have to come back and try again and maybe I would learn my lesson.
When I got home I waited 'till that evening to process the photos and when I did I immediately had a favorite.  I went through my typical processing techniques and showed my wife the photo.  She thought it was pretty good and so did I.  It was sharp and had plenty of contrast.  So I stopped and went to bed.
Fast forward to Monday and I wanted to show a couple people from work.  When I showed the picture to my buddy Matt he thought it was pretty good too, but when I was tabbing through the pictures he caught a glimpse of the very last photo I took that day and said it was his favorite.  I asked him to explain why and he did.  After looking over the two photos again I couldn't help but agree.  It was a much better composed photo with stronger visual cues and fewer distractions.  I hadn't even given this photo a chance when I initially reviewed them and I'm glad I waited for someone else to see them before I sent it to the cutting room floor.  I went through the same processing techniques for this photo and cropped it down a little and came up with the photo you see below.

IMHO I think this is a great photo (not just "pretty good") and I am one very happy camper.

Upon further review...

One of the things that several blogs and websites have talked about is saving your RAW files so you can go back and take a second (or third) look at pictures when you've learned something new or gotten a new program or whatever might produce a different/better resulting image.  As I've been trying to work on my post-processing techniques I have picked up a few things that have helped me get better results on my finished pictures.  I still don't want to over process my photos and I'd like to stick with basic editing techniques so I was extremely excited when I learned how to get my finished photos as sharp as I thought they should be.  Previously I was struggling to get my photos from RAW files to look even as sharp as the JPEG's straight out of the camera.  Imagine my elation when I was able to get a photo to look better than my camera could.  That meant I was finally starting to get some real benefit from shooting in RAW.  One of the photos I had previously been pretty disappointed with was the photo of Buxton park that I took last winter.  If you remember I was on my way to work and I stopped and handheld my camera out my car window and took the shot with my 50mm (no IS) lens.  After PP the shot just didn't look as good as I had hoped and printing it off at 8 x 10 confirmed my suspicions.  It was such a cool scene and I was pretty bummed about the lack of quality.  Fast forward about 8 months and I decided to "re-process" the photo and see what I would get.  The resulting image was much better than before and about as good as I had originally hoped.

Here are the before and after shots.

Before...

...after

Beautiful Fall

This is possibly one of the most beautiful times of the year.  All of the leaves are turning colors and the farmers are in the field for harvest.

The other night I saw a post on Facebook from my cousin regarding the farmers in the field and that it was one of her favorite memories as a child.  That really got me thinking about how much I enjoyed being out in the field with my grandpa (either in the tractor or combine.)  I truly loved it.  I would take naps in the cab next to him and the next thing I knew we were headed in for lunch (or dinner.)  So I set my sights on getting a good picture of a combine in the field.  I was keeping my eyes open on my ride home from work last Friday and that is when I noticed this scene.  It was perfect.  I love the expanse of the field with the beautiful trees in the background.

Later on, I couldn't help but notice the beauty of fall on display once again as I entered the more heavily wooded area of my bike ride.  I decided this one was also too good not to attempt so here is what I got from that shoot also.