Tag: D90

Niagara Falls Pics

Get ready to be bombarded with pics from Saturday’s trip to Niagara Falls.

We will begin this bonanza with pics from our hotel room. We were on the 9th floor and could see the water going over the edge of the Canadian falls, but we didn’t have very much of a view of the falls themselves.
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The US falls on the other hand. We had a killer view of those.
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Let’s not forget about the rainbow between the two falls.
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The Canadian falls are so impressive that they deserve to be zoomed in on.
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Let’s not forget about our awesome view of the Niagara River leading up to the Canadian falls.
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We went outside and looked for a path down to the river but we never found one. We did get a few good looks through the trees.
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We talked about taking a ride up to the revolving tower but we never got around to it. Next time.
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The spray coming up from the base of the Canadian falls made photography difficult at times.
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At this point we stopped looking for a path to the water and started looking for the bus.
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Once the bus took us down to the riverwalk it was picture taking craziness for me, Jen, and a few hundred other tourists. At this point the photo bomb gets a little out of control.
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If you were in a barrel, this would be the last sight you saw before going over.
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We cannot forget to give some love to the US falls.
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As always, we must also show some love to the love of my life. Hi Jen!
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Back to the Canadian falls.
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Back to the US falls.
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We saw the Niagara river above the falls, now we see it below the falls, including a look at the Rainbow Bridge. The US/Canadian border is in the middle of that bridge.
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At this point the focus shifted slightly from awe at the falls to messing with the camera. My wife’s Galaxy Camera has a waterfall scene mode. It leaves the shutter open for a little extra time and adjusts the amount of light that comes through the lens and it gives you a shot with blurred water and (if you can keep your hands steady or use a tripod) everything else in focus.

I know how to set my camera to do that, but I’ve never tried it. I actually ordered a neutral density filter last week so that I could take long exposures in daylight but it isn’t being delivered until tomorrow. I messed with the settings in shutter priority mode and ended up taking a few pics with the shutter open for about half a second. A couple of them came out okay, but they would have been 100 times better with a tripod. Here’s a look at the keepers.
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As the sun was setting we went back to our hotel room. I tried to take some pics of the falls with the lights on them, but most were crap. We had a good view of the US falls, but the angle was wrong for the Canadian falls.
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I did not try to take any pics of the fireworks, but we did get to see them from our room. Let’s just say that if you want an awe inspiring view of nature at it’s most beautifully ferocious, then Niagara Falls is a good place to go.

We are Home

We left on Friday, a little after I punched out from work at 5:30. We drove as far as Utica, NY and stayed over. The next morning we hit the road again. We crossed into Canada on the Peace Bridge because the back up at the Rainbow Bridge was so unbelievably long we couldn’t take it. We went North to Hamilton, ON and then to Burlington, ON. We had planned to go to see Rush in Hamilton, but we had a last minute change of heart and went back to Niagara Falls and stayed over on the Canadian side. This morning we woke up and hit the road by 7:00am. We crossed back into the US on the Rainbow Bridge and then started home. When we got to Albany, NY we left route 90 and headed for Vermont. We back-roaded it all the way to the Everett Turnpike a little North of Nashua, NH and then headed home the old fashioned way. We got home at a little after 6:00pm.

What a nutzoid couple of days!

There will be pictures of the falls. Lots of ’em.

Bird Feeder

I actually used a manual setting on my camera!

I put it on Shutter priority, set it to the fastest shutter speed and the fastest ISO possible and hung out near the bird feeder.

The results?

WOW!!

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The graininess comes from the high ISO, right? Didn’t I read this somewhere? Who cares, it’s cool!

My Timing Sucks

Birdfeederily speaking, my timing sucks. I have mathematically calculated that the chances of seeing the cardinal at the bird feeder increases exponentially to the distance my Nikon is from me. In other words, when the Nikon is nowhere near me, the damn bird lands on the feeder. The jerk.

He landed today while I was reading on my iPad, with my D90 far, far away. This is the best I could get.

The odds of seeing a cardinal on the bird feeder increases the further away my camera is from me.

By the time I had my camera in hand, this is what I saw.

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Note how a big chunk of the bottom of the bird feeder has been eaten away.

I was left with nothing to photograph except for the terribly ugly, horrifyingly terrifying spider that lives in the window. Safe to say that Mr spider will be dead soon. Very dead.

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Another Random Wednesday

Don’t ask me about hockey.  I’m not over it yet.  I’m going to need some time to get over that epic of a choke.

I can’t think of a topic for this post, so here’s a picture…

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I have finally come across a camera accessory I want to get that isn’t a new lens.  I want to get my hands on a neutral density filter.  I want to go over to the Spicket Falls Dam and take a nice long exposure, and I want to do it during the day.  I want the motion of the water to blur together.  Pictures like that are cool, and I want to take at least one cool picture before I die.

Picture this, only with the falling water all smoothed out.

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Yeah. Cool.

I also want to get a Forest Lake parking permit. I think I can do that tomorrow during lunch. Maybe I’ll bring my camera along for the ride. Maybe I’ll make a lunch ahead of time and eat it by the water. Maybe.

I also want to get a few more songs recorded before July 4th comes along. July 4th is the start date for the FAWM 50/90 challenge. Write 50 songs in 90 days. Yeah, right. Maybe I should change it to the 10/90. That might be more manageable as a summertime project. There was also talk of a bunch of RPM Challenge participants doing some sort of mini-challenge this summer. I thought it was going to be in June, but the site has been down for maintenance every time I’ve gone to it. Today is no exception.

Oh well. I’ll figure something out.

I was Not Flickr Robbed

Ever since Flickr released their redesign I have been using the hell out of as much of the site as I can.  I have been posting to groups more often, I have been marking more photos as favorites, I have been leaving more comments (although still not many) and I have been adding contacts galore.  Flickr includes a recommended contacts page and sometimes I will just go and add 10 or so for no reason other than they are there.  The result is a lot of really great looking stuff coming across my main page.  I’ve come across a lot of talented folks who post a lot of really interesting stuff.  I am pleased with my post-redesign Flickr experience.

Then yesterday something came across my main page that threw me.  It was a picture of a white gravestone with one word carved into it, and the letters were covered in an orange/gold colored moss.  My first thought was, I’ve seen that before.  Then, I have a pic in my photostream just like that.  Then, I wonder if it’s the same cemetery.  Then, I wonder if its the same stone.  Then, did someone steal my idea (har har).  Then, did some one steal my picture!?!?!?

No.  No one stole my picture.  I found mine in my Methuen, MA set.  It was very different.  Theirs had the name Mother on the stone.  Mine has Ralph.  Theirs had moss sprinkled across the whole word.  Mine had it clumped around a few letters.  Theirs was taken in a cemetery in… in… Chicago?  Philadelphia?  Whatever, mine was taken in the cemetery on Grove Street in Methuen and their was not.  Their photograph was awesome.  Mine was not.
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I looked at the other pictures I’ve taken that day, but I could not find the stone with Ralph’s last name. I did find that he had a brother named Jackson.

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The plot that Ralph and Jackson are in is a family plot. I like the idea of these plots, and I like the look of them too. There is one large stone with the family name on it and all of the dates. Then there is a smaller stone marking each individual.

The Gleasons are a good example of this.
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The Websters are also a good example.
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The moral of this story is simple. Just because I saw something that was worth taking a picture, doesn’t mean that if some one else photographs something similar they are stealing my idea. I am not a photographer, I am a nerd with a camera. However, that does not mean that I can’t find the things I see cool, right? Right.

Wildlife

I may have developed a new lunch time ritual for the days I telecommute.  More on that in a second, but first there is gore to share.

I went downstairs this morning at a little before 9:00 to put a load of laundry in the washing machine.  There was another garter snake on the cellar floor.  I walked up to him, he didn’t flinch.  He’s dead, thinks me.  I put the wash on, went upstairs, closed the cellar door so the cat couldn’t get at the slithery bastard, and started working.  When it was time to put the wash into the dryer I went downstairs with a bucket and something to scoop up the corpse.

It wasn’t there.

DAMN IT!  It was still alive!

An hour later I went back downstairs and he was back, just a short distance from where he was when I first saw him.  I wasn’t taking any chances this time.  I went upstairs and got a couple of things.  One was the camera… obviously.

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The other item I brought downstairs was a big honkin’ snow shovel with a nice sharp edge on it.  I brought it down on the snake with a vengeance.  His back was nice and crushed.  I waited a few moments.  He didn’t move.  I scooped him onto the shovel and what do you know, he started moving.  Damn thing still ain’t dead!  I dropped him and gave him another slam with the shovel.  I paused again and then brought it down one more time, just south of his head.  He didn’t move again.  I scooped him out and threw him in the woods.  I hope something gross eats what’s left of him.  Something like a slug, or a worm, or whatever.  Stupid home invading snake.

So now that that drama was over, I could happily go back to work.  When lunch time rolled around I had an idea.  Every time I got up today, I went to the bedroom window to check on the bird feeder, and every time there were squirrels and chipmunks all over the thing.  I yell, they run, I leave, they come back.

I decided that for lunch, I would cook some hot dogs on the grill, grab a camp chair and my camera, and sit outside on the grass.  I could watch the birds and keep away the rodents all at the same time.  Success!

 
I was lucky enough to catch a couple of birds just as they jumped off the feeder. I think a good clear shot of a bird in flight is the new goal for the summer.

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I got some pics of birds just hanging out and having a snack.

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Mostly what I got though was a lot of near misses.

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Should anyone know what the name of any of these species is, please feel free to share. I haven’t a clue.