Fierce: Week 3 (Digital)

Cory and I went to Pioneer Park in downtown Dallas to walk around and take pictures. There's an old cemetery there, a Confederate War memorial, and a massive sculpture project featuring some cowboys driving longhorn cattle down a hill. This is one of the cowboys. He looks intense and a little scary. No wonder the cattle are running from him.

Here are a few more pictures from that expedition.

Snow: Week 2 (Digital)

I live in Texas.  It snows maybe once a year here.  So when I woke up last week and it was snowing outside, I leapt straight from my bed, grabbed my camera and whatever shoes and jacket were nearest the door and headed out to document this event.

It's a good thing I acted fast, too, because the snow didn't last too much longer and it certainly didn't stick.


Here are some more pictures from that brief snow event.



This last picture is a personal favorite. I took it (unlike the others) from inside the house and the old glass in the window caused some interesting distortions in the image.

52 Weeks: Week One

Since I finished my Project 365 a few weeks ago, I've been wanting to start a new (but not daily) project. I think I may have mentioned this before, but what I decided on was a pair of 52 Weeks projects, where I take a post a dedicated photo every week. I'm doing one on film and one with my digital camera. I started two weeks ago; it's just taken me a while to work through all the photos from that week and decide which ones to use for the project. The photos I chose to represent the first week (digital first and then film [taken on my Zeiss Ikon folding camera) are ones I've posted before, but I'll post them again for the sake of the project:


I'll generally try to post the digital photos near the end of the week they represent, but the film ones will, since I don't develop them myself, always be late.

Honeymoon, Part 12: Holga

This is the final honeymoon post. I'm not actually thrilled with the Holga pictures. I should've used film with a higher ISO. These are too dark. And then ones that have decent light have more light leaks than past rolls.  I guess I need to tape it up a little more.  Oh well.  I'll remember that next time.

Honeymoon, Part 11: Zeiss Ikon

Honeymoon, Part 10: Lake DeGray + Creepy Cowboy Statue

Driving out of Hot Springs on Highway 7, you cross Lake DeGray.  When I lived out there, this is the lake we used to go to for fishing and swimming.  We stopped there for a while to look around and take pictures.  Because it was a cold and gray day (and a Monday), it was pretty much empty, though occasionally people would drive by very slowly and look at us.


The part of the park we visited had a playground as well.  I would've gone down the slide if it hadn't been wet, but wet butt is really no fun in the cold.  Cory did play on a mysterious piece of playground equipment, if playing means standing on it and giving me and my camera the stink-eye.


I liked taking shots of the water itself.  The second of these is documentation of Cory's failed attempt to skip rocks.  It didn't skip so much as splash.  I must point out that he did successfully skip rocks, too; I just didn't memorialize the successes.


And then there's this weird fuzz.  It was all over the dead leaves on the ground, but I have no idea what it is.  Anybody know?

 
Finally, on the drive home we decided to stop somewhere in east Texas to eat something and discovered this creepy cowboy statue outside a neighboring Best Western Motel.



This concludes the digital photography portion of our honeymoon. I have just gotten the film photos back from the lab, though, so I'll be posting a few more honeymoon photos soon before it's all over.

Flickr Inspiration: PyunpyunMaru

This week in my Flickr Inspiration series I want to highlight PyunpyunMaru. He is a photographer in Tokyo who takes stray cats as his primary subject.

I love cats (and good photos of cats) and frequently find myself searching flickr for the next best kitty picture, so this is probably how I came across his stream. His series of stray cat photos includes what are perhaps the best photos of stray cats I've come across.  They stand out as good photographs, but more than that, they regularly capture elements of normal feline life.  In other words, his cat photos are about more than just cats being cute. 

Ordinarily, I would feature samples of photography in a post like this, but this time because of copyright and licensing issues I can't really do that. Instead, I will just urge you to click on over and check out his photostream.

Here are a few of my personal favorites from the stray cats series:
cat_117 (sad and lonely)
cat_174 (I think. Therefore I am.)
cat_177 (Say Cheese!! part.2)
cat_180 (C'est la vie)
cat_229 (expansive mood)
cat_269 (feel left out.....Is three a crowd? ...)

Honeymoon, Part 9: The Fog

On our way out of Hot Springs, we stopped near a house where I used to live. It's at the foot of a small mountain and so we--of course--decided to drive up to the top of the mountain and look around. Cory was a little nervous because it was a steep and windy drive and his car isn't really made for that, but we made it fine. We drove into some serious fog before we made it to the top, which compromised our view. Plus, the very top was fenced off and housed some kind of power exchange, but we got out and I took some pictures anyway.


And then we headed back down. We stopped partway down so I could take a picture of the view from as high up as possible.


At the time, I was a little sad that it was such a misty (and foggy) morning because I'd wanted to take some nice pictures of the two of us downtown in the morning sunlight (we only have one picture of teh two of us together, not counting the one from this trip where he's biting my head), but seeing these pictures now, I'm glad of the change in weather--and I'm glad it didn't happen until we were done hiking and on our way out of town.