Tomorrow

Things are still looking good for tomorrow, storm-wise. Heck, I doubt I'll even need to leave Lincoln until late morning. A fairly potent cold core low is still set to drift out of Colorado and across Nebraska tomorrow. There should be some convection in Nebraska tonight (hasn't fired yet, but it should), so I hope that all clears out in time to get things hotted up here tomorrow. That, and any lingering outflow boundaries could really toss in a wild card. There really isn't a terrible amount of energy in the atmosphere, but the largescale forcing dynamics are there.







Storm motion is going to be truckin; 35+kts to the NE. I'm not really used to chasing stuff that moves that fast, so hopefully I can keep up or at least position myself where I can close in. That probably means going well north of here so that I'll be ahead of the storms, as there's no way in heck I'll be able to catch up with them from the south.

Thursday

Thursday looks like it might have some chase potential, with a fairly strong cold core low ramming it's way through Nebraska. HPC seems to think that it'll go quite far north, further than the models hint. The models show a pretty strong LLJ up here. I don't know if all the snow will be off the ground by Thursday -- I suspect not -- so the temps may be a bit depressed. Elevated storms? I have the day off, so here's to hoping we get some action.

Grand Canyon

Today's picture du jour comes from the Grand Canyon. This shot is, if you can believe it, not posed. At least not by me. I had hopped over the guard rail and was climbing down a bit when I saw this guy doing this. Josh talked to him later; he was posing for a photo that his friend was taking, though I doubt that his friend got a picture this cool. ;) Click to enlarge.

Cranes, part deux

I went out shooting with my sister tonight so that she can learn more about photography. Thought I'd pay the cranes a visit, even though I don't have my telephoto back yet. Surprisingly, I didn't really require a telephoto for good shots -- though it would have helped! :) All photos get way bigger when ya click 'em.








I let my sister use my old EOS-3 film body. Dunno how the pictures turned out yet, but I'm betting they'll be good.













After the sun set, I thought it'd be fun to revisit an old spot near Kearney high that I like to shoot bulb shots in. I tried to make my sister look like a ghost with my flash. Not perfect, but it didn't turn out half bad!








All in all, a great time, and she had a great time too.

Golden Gate

Today's photo of the day is from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Hoofing it across the Golden Gate bridge is well worth the worn soles. :) Click = bigger.

Leprechaun sighting

One of the most amusing local TV news stories I've ever seen. The drawing is priceless.

San Francisco

Today's photo of the day comes from the archives. I've been having some incredible fun with the negative scanner that I got from Josh. :) This is the San Francisco skyline at sunset as seen from the top of the Coit Tower. Yessir, the very same tower that Bill O'Rielly invited Al Qaieda to blow up. Fortunately for me, they didn't decide to blow the thing while I was up there! :) This photo gets a lot bigger if you click it.

Alley

Today's photo of the day is something that I recently rescanned with the Nikon Coolscan IV that I traded a lens to Josh for. This was shot with Velvia 50 on the EOS-3 using the lens that I just traded to Josh -- a Tamron 17-35 2.8-4.0. :) Clicking makes this photo much larger.

Waiting for m' lens

Went out shooting with Josh today, but because I have no telephoto and no wide angle, I haven't had much luck. When in doubt, take pictures of cats. ;) Click to make them really, really big in a new window.

Holy crap, it snowed!

Sorry these aren't the best photos -- it was 1AM and I wasn't highly motivated to spend lots of time composing. :) (Not to mention, I had to send my superwide lens back because it was defective; I was stuck shooting with a 50 prime & a crappy Sigma 28-105). But getting back to the subject at hand -- holy crap, it snowed! 14-17 inches according to the Omaha NWS, though that seems a bit on the liberal side if you ask me. Maybe it compacted or something -- this is some seriously heavy snow! If you look close, you can see my Honda buried under the tree in one of the photos. Is it really Spring?!



As always, clicking the photos makes 'em much, much bigger in a new window.

New lens

I've been playing with a new lens that I bought -- a Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6. Pretty slow glass, and not as sharp as the Tamron 17-35 f2.8-4 (which I won't have much longer), but it's a ton of fun and I'm hoping that all the new crazy shots I can take will make up for the few shortcomings. :) Here, Josh's neighborlandlord trys to get Josh's cat to play with a cat toy at a party over at Josh's tonight. The cat's sayin' "Hey! Not interested!"

Look, ma!

I had a few friends kindly point out that, living a bajillion miles away, they don't have access to the Journal Star, so, here ya go: (clicking makes them larger in a new window)

UPS

Today's photo of the day is from last week's crane shoot. I saw a plane flying overhead, so I took a snapshot of it. It blows my mind that the lens was able to pull this much detail out of something that was flying at least 35,000 feet overhead.



I asked some plane buffs on the internet, and they tell me that this is a UPS package-hauling jet. The rear fin is actually brown and yellow, but I guess the 6+ miles of atmosphere between me and the plane made the brown appear brown blue.



Clicking this one makes it a LOT bigger in a new window. :)

Speaking of cranes...

If you live anywhere near Lincoln, make sure you pick up a Journal Star tommorrow (Saturday). :)

Cranes, cranes, cranes!

Still plowin' through my crane photos. Click 'em to make 'em much bigger in a new window. Here goes!





Josh setting up in the blind. That monstrosity of a lens to his left is what I rented.







The sun sets on the Platte River as cranes fly overhead.







Here they come!










The MOMENT the disc of the sun was completely gone, a bajillion birds started funneling down to the river. It was uncanny how accurate they were with the sunset.







This is just a very small fraction of them. The whole sky was filled with these guys.







I like how the guy on the right looks like he's lookin' up. :) In actuality, he's just gulping down some water.







Another from the sunset.







This is from the next morning, as the cranes fly under the somewhat stormy skies.







We spent most of the next day driving around the fields looking for dancing and flying cranes. Here, it looks like he's coming in for landing, but he's actually dancing. :)







The cranes here in the fields were doing this weird thing where they'd pick pieces of stalk off the ground and toss them into the air. I had no idea what they were up to, though Josh had a hunch that maybe it was part of their dance. Sure enough, when we asked one of the conservatory employees, it turned out that it was part of their socializing, and that we were very, very lucky to have seen it.







Here's a parting shot of Puffy Pufferton, the coolest Eastern Meadowlark ever. "Hi, I'm Puffy Pufferton, and when people are looking, I like to say "tweedle-dee-deet!"



I'm still digging through stuff, so I should have some more photos to post tomorrow. :)

Meadowlark

This is a photo of an eastern meadowlark singin' on a branch. These guys seem to love singing more than most birds love flying. I have a few more of this guy that I'll probably post later once I get 'em toned up.



Photo info: 300mm f/2.8L with 1.4x teleconverter, 1/1000 sec, f/4. Click to enlarge.

Just got back

I just got back from shooting the cranes. I have a bajillion pictures to go through, but as you can see, I had a great time. (Click for a much larger version in a new window.)

Compass

Josh called today and told me to bring over some stuff that I wanted to shoot. I brought this old WW I compass, which has a tremendous amount of sentimental value to me. He was doing this cool stuff with his macro lens where he'd put drops of water on a pane of glass and then place an object under it -- this would cause the object to reflect in each of the droplets. When it came to be my turn, while I was setting stuff up, he decided to mess around by trying to blind me with my flash. ;) However, this caused some really cool shadows to form off of my hand, which gave me the idea for this photo. This was shot at ISO 200 at f8 on 17-35mm 2.8-4.0 Tamron lens zoomed in to 35mm. The light source was a radio-controlled 550EX flash set up at ground level. Click to open it larger in a new window.

A moment in history