Lets Go For a Drive

Cumbria, England -- rural, beautiful, and eminently driveable! Click to enlarge.

Pheasants at Market

One of the more unusual (to an American, like me) aspects of a Farmers' Market in England is that they actually have rows of game bird hanging up for purchase. These fine specimen were found in Leeds last December. Click to enlarge.

Departures

Today's photo is from the Manchester, New Hampshire airport. It's funny, airports are actually pretty interesting places to photograph -- but I'm usually too busy headed to the terminal or the baggage or hither or tither to stop and take pictures. Click to enlarge.

Fog in the Adirondacks

Today's photo is another large panorama -- click it to enlarge it to ginormous size. This was shot in the Adirondacks of New York in October on a photo trip with my buddy, Josh. He'd always told me that fall was spectacular in the northeast, and he wasn't lying! Usually in a nature shot you hate to see things like ski lifts -- but in this case I actually like it, as it gives a sense of massive proportion. Cloudtopped mountains seemed to be a pretty common occurrence in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York.

Panorama from the Adirondacks

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A pano in the Adirondacks, near Au Sable Forks, New York. The original of this is around 17,000 pixels wide. Click to enlarge to really, really big.

Oh hai

"Are I under arrests?"

Pelicans?

Today's photos are of pelican-looking birds on a recent photo safari in Nebraska. What are these things? If you know, leave a comment -- I've Googled, but to no avail. Click any photo to enlarge.

Elkhorn

Today's photo is a closeup detail of an Elk's rack. Shot on a photo safari in Eastern Nebraska. Click to enlarge.

Oh hai just relaxin'

Today's photo is of another frog -- this one seemingly mired on a deserted island, surrounded by a sea of algae. Probably feels right at home. Click to enlarge -- this is one of those shots that doesn't look terribly interesting in the smaller view. :)

HEEEYYYYY BABY!

If an Elk could talk, that's what he'd be saying. This was shot on an animal safari here in Nebraska, and we seemed to arrive when all the Elk were in heat and shouting "Come get some!" at each other. This one seemed to misunderstand the species of our car. Click to enlarge.

Self portrait after shooting a wedding

Shooting a wedding takes it out of you. :) I shot this at the end of 6 straight hours of shooting -- over 3,000 photos taken. Slap down the tripod, turn on the timer, viola. This was a long exposure, with a flash at the end to freeze the ghosts. Click to enlarge.

Just Chillin'

Today's photo is of a frog I shot on a nearby photo Safari. You wouldn't think an algae covered lake could ever look homey, but this frog looks like he couldn't ask for more. Click to enlarge to 985px.

New Blog: The Big Storm Picture

Just a heads up that I'm launching a new blog. This one won't go away, and I will continue to update it with all types of my photography -- but the new blog will center entirely on storm photography. And because this is the year 2008 and most people have big monitors and love huge, juicy photos, everything posted to that blog will be roughly 1000 pixels wide. Come check out The Big Storm Picture at bigstormpicture.com. See you there!

Dangerous trio

So, the thing is, my friend Josh likes to hang around mens' rooms. Wait, that sounds wrong. What I mean is that he likes to sneak into bathrooms and take pictures. No, no, it's not like that. It's just a fetish he has about bathroom photography. My friend Lanette has the same fetish, so they figured they'd get together and... wait, I'm making a mess of this.



Some photographers (my self included) try to slip in a self portrait whereever they go, to remind them of the experience. Lanette has this thing where she shoots a snap inside a bathroom. Apparently, Josh decided that that idea was "awesome sauce", and they've been doing it ever since. I guess peer pressure got to me. :) This is from a shoot I went on with both of them last winter. Click to enlarge.

The fruits of a thousand miles of driving

Storm chasing in November? You betcha. Unfortunately, even after around 1,000 miles of roundtrip driving, this (and a couple other like it) is the only fruit of yesterday's chase into southeastern Kansas. Shot east of Wichita, this is the mammatus lit by sunset behind a dieing storm. Still, it's November... it's hard to complain. Click to enlarge to 950px.

Winter Shots

Here are some more shots from last Winter's photoshoot in rural Nebraska with Josh and Lanette. Click any below to enlarge to 950px (or larger, for the pano).






This is a panorama stitched together from 8 or 9 photos. I love all the barns in Nebraska.






I also tend to have an affinity for haybales. They seem like such an enigma, out in the middle of nowhere.







Here Josh shoots Lanette apparently trying to hitchhike a train. Holy crap was it COLD that day; I ended up running back into the car screaming like a little girl about my face, which had gone entirely numb. Five degrees Fahrenheit plus a 30 mph wind do not make for a friendly photo-excursion day.







Josh noticed this shot as he was driving by. I stole it from him. MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

Old photoshoot from last winter with Josh & Lanette

Here are a couple shots from last winter. Josh comes up with these crazy ideas for model photography, and they usually work. :) Click to enlarge to 950px.

A few pics from the June 11th storm chase

Here are a few pics I forgot about from the June 11th storm chase. This was a squall line with a bunch of embedded supercells -- one of the embedded cells (about 20 miles north of this one) ended up killing several Boy Scouts at a camp in Iowa.





I've now increased the size of the photos that you see when you click the thumbnails to 950 pixels, reflecting the fact that most people now have at least 1024x768 px monitors. Click any photo to enlarge.









The squall line approaches. Looking west from near Valley, Nebraska.









Another storm chaser shooting video from a bridge near Valley, Nebraska. This is looking south at a lowering wall cloud that approached a bit more rapidly than I'd expected; I ended up bolting east towards Omaha. Big mistake; got stuck in on the Interstates in a metro area. Ended up crossing over into Iowa, as getting back west was hopeless. I should have gone a bit north I think.









The outflow above just ahead of the squall. This is just after sunset, in Iowa. It looks spooky, but the business end of the storm was actually to the west of what's above. This system had reported tornadoes well into the night. I ended up stuck at a Subway in rural Iowa, waiting for the squall to push through; there were too many embedded supercells and too many constant tornado warnings to punch through it back into Nebraska with the limited visibility provided at night.