Bus Nap

Morning, bus ride to work. Don't know if it is the same for my fellow bus passenger - on the way to work, or home from it?

Got to love the attractive seat upholstery, huh?! Yes, a rainbow of dog/cat paw prints... just makes you ponder, it does.

Can You Tell It's a Photostitch?

I still look forward to actually successfully making a photo stitch of multiple images into one panoramic shot. This is my second failed attempt. The first was of the front of Rosenblatt Stadium, which came no where close to even looking as bad as this. Though, both shots were attempted with my little PS point and shoot camera... maybe I should try it on another camera...

Anyway, this was after I posted my last PS images here, I think, it was about two, or so, in the morning, I look out the window and see that it was foggy out... rather foggy indeed. So, instead of crawling into bed, decided to go out and try and capture some foggy night scenes.

This, of course, is the big white dome thing located across the street from where I live. This would have been a cool and good shot if it could have been better stitched together. I think it is the fact that I am using the PS to do them. It's exposure is not going to be fixed, but set to whatever scene it's pointed at, the left side, photo one, the scene was predominantly brighter, and so it compensated by a faster shutter speed. Photo two, the right side, was falling into the dark, so a longer exposure was had to let in more light, which produced two totally different exposed images, that you can see me just giving up in the middle of it of trying to blend them.

Also, the perspective of the 35mm lens... even though, unlike the failed Rosenblatt attempt, where I positioned myself along a plane in front of the stadium taking multiple shots, I just simply pivoted the camera to the right, from the same position... not going to get the same perspective that way... especially when shooting the object at an angle.

Oh, well... maybe one day I'll make a successful one.

Side of Big White Dome Thing, Fog

I was shooting with both my F4 and little PS camera this night... I don't know why I took these shots with the PS. Whether it was to utilize the wide 35mm lens of the PS as opposed to the narrower field of view 85mil on the F4... or if I was wanting to capture the image in color, as the F4 had black and white loaded in it.

I am wondering if the scene looked neater in reality, and I just didn't capture it in the photo... ?

Standing With My F4, Foggy Night

Why I took this photo... your guess is as good as mine. I really don't have the slightest idea'r.

I think, in the back of my head, you know how you visit some Photographer's site, they usually have a photo of them, like 'in action', with camera in hand, and just sometimes that pops into my head when I am shooting, because I am weird, and figure that I should take a photo of me standing there like a dork holding my camera, denoting to all the world that hey, I am one who carries a camera, and takes pictures with one.

I did take a photo with the F4 on this back drive behind my place, and can now be found in my Gallery, of me looking like a dark figure, standing there in the dark, foggy night. It was the opposite end of the drive in which I am standing here.

I do like the colors of this though. The street lights in background making an orange colored sky, the complimenting green of the grass and foliage, the cyan cast of the light to my right in the photo, falling upon the grey/black of the drive.

Storm Front

This is from the latest of storms to blow through the area this Summer. This one, literally blowing... the front of this storm was a wall of wind in the area of seventy-five to a hundred miles per hour, causing more destruction than the couple smaller tornadoes that have brushed the area also this Summer.

It was like a switch got turned on, I was inside, it was just normal, quiet, than all of the sudden, wind! Like a bunch of high powered fans were turned on all at once, and forget about any start and build up to full power, already at full blast.

Naturally, I grab my camera to head out and capture it all. Then stop, because I instinctively grab my regular camera... I look outside and see precipitation starting to fall also... um, yeah - not with my new F4. So, grab instead my little Olympic Stylus Epic PS, as it is labeled 'All weather'.

I run to the top of that hill just to the west of my place, this is up there, the trees there are bowing in the wind away from me there... I and the camera don't capture very well rain, dirt, dust, particulates that are riding the wind.

A moment or two after this, the sky opens up...

Passing Storm

... Well, opens up with an extreme amount of moisture to match the extreme gust force of the winds. Within a matter of seconds, I am drenched to the bone, standing atop a hill with seventy-five mile per hour winds, and now rain pummeling down on me, and who knows what else may be coming behind this... um, maybe not so much of a good call, Jeffrey, to come up here.

Just to the west on the top of this hill, is the new Coco Key water park, that can also be viewed towards the bottom and end of the 2008 Gallery, in and amongst the most recent posted in it... Anyway, there is a big metal storage container sitting in the far back corner of the parking lot of it, the storm is coming from the west, so I scurry down and stand on the east side of the container. This is looking off to the south... and seriously, not a minute has probably passed since I took the previous photo.

Coco Key, Passing Storm

Standing on the south, eastern side of the big metal storage container, I peer around it's south side, to the southwest towards the Coco Key building. It's about fifty yards from where I am standing, you can make out it's shape, and to a lesser degree, the external blue loops of the water slide that protrudes from the north side of the building. Amazingly, no damage was sustained to it, even though those external swirl of slides were facing the full force of the storm, and the building itself has an overhang on the north side also, as can be seen in those photos of it in my Gallery, that surprising didn't get ripped off. Downtown Omaha, the western side of the Qwest Center, didn't fare as lucky, and had the edges of it's blown off, at the start of the Olympic swim trials.

Anyway, I am pissed at myself that I forgot to switch off the automatic flash... I constantly disappoint myself that in the heat of battle, I become like a novice photographer who has just taken up photography, and not someone who has done it for over half his life, and doesn't pay attention to what I am doing! Think, damnit!

Well, who knows how these last two photos would have looked like without the flash illuminating the immediate area anyway... may have been less discernible... wish I would have turned the flash off though, so that I would now know what it would have attained, at least.

Thinking it might be better to be back indoors at this point, even though the camera says it is 'all weather', I don't think they were meaning this kind of weather, and as I am already drenched to the core, and have no way to tuck and hide it away from getting more wet, I don't want to ruin my little PS, so I make a break back down the hill to my place, and make it fine.

Not too much longer, the storm has passed by and gone, leaving tree after tree, after tree, after tree down all across the city. And by down, I don't mean branches and limbs broken, down and off, I mean whole trees, blown over at the ground level, roots exposed, old, old trees that have been standing for a hundred years, lying on their sides. Power out for a good lot of people for the next coming week.

Unfinished Foundation

Location, location, location. That's the three most important things in real estate, aren't they? Well, I think it is that, location, that this is an absolutely failed parcel of land, with started and unfinished lots, for over a year now.

This is just south of Center Street, off of 72nd, the signs that boasted of it's pristine business park, have long been removed, I think the property has even changed hands a couple times since, to no one posted as claiming it now, or trying to sell and get rid of it.

When I first saw the signs for it, I thought it was stupid place for these little strip of office buildings, as there isn't any convenient access to it. Who would want to be located there?

Anyway, when I take the bus to the Lab, I walk past this, and have wanted to stop and grab some shots of it... well, mostly from another angle which is to the west of this spot here, where you look down at it from 72nd Street... it just looks like a recently unearthed archeological dig, the findings of some ancient, failed society, with it's half complete foundation walls poking up from amongst the weeds. Nope, just a failed business idea from some brainiac somewhere.

This was on the way to the bus stop one morning, the clouds making it a definite not walk by, but stop and get the shot, Jeff!