Archive for February, 2010

Two sunny days in a row and  to celebrate here is another photo from the same park as yesterday.  This time it is baseball practice.  Gar is taking pitches from his father or perhaps his friend’s father–once again I’m not demonstrating my photo journalist ability to ask the right questions.

Gar at Batting Practice

Really nice blue day today.

Went down to the park and found Taj playing with Corinna’s dog Dixie.   Taj hardly blinked twice when I asked if I could snap a few photos even though we just met.  Dog people are great that way.

Wind!

One of the things in life I dislike is wind.   This probably comes  from growing up in the desert where the wind would blow non-stop for weeks at a time. I’ll take 110 degree heat any day over a windy day.

Didn’t spend much time trying to find something interesting to shoot today and I’m afraid this photo of a flag waving in the breeze shows it.  I do have a fondness for shooting flags  that stems from the number of photos I’ve  had published of flags.  This specific flag is actually a large flag and having it fully extended and flapping in the wind would show how strong the breeze was if I had managed to show some reference.

The other thing that caught my eye was the McDonald’s Corp flag.  I’m sure I’ve seen flags like this before but  it is a clever way to get around the City ordnance of banning tall street signs.  The McDonald’s flag is actually not small but just looks small below the large patriotic American Flag.   Here is the link to the Google map street view of the flag pole.

American and Mc Donald's Flags in the wind

Today’s shot is just something I took quickly in the parking lot  on the way back from lunch.  Fun contrast with the sunny sky but then the sky isn’t as interesting as I would like.   Perhaps something to try another day with some color in the sky.

Another raining day.

Todays photo takes me a bit back to my roots.  I saw a tow truck driver pulling a car out of a ravine.  Figuring that since I grew up on this sort of small town news,  I would shoot the average stock newspaper photo.  I failed to show my skills as a photo journalist as I only know the “where” (here is a  link to Google maps showing “where“) in the “who, what, where and when”

But before we get to today’s news,  I shot a backup photo of a wildflower just in case nothing else came up today.  I like the results and hence here is a bonus shot.   Much more pretty than the shot to come.

Wildflower in the rain

And now the news:

The driver drove the car away as soon as the tow truck driver drug it back on the road.   Appears based on the tire tracks that the driver just went straight instead of turning.

Car being pulled back on the road

Monday evening already and I failed to get the camera out during the day. Somehow between arriving to work before the sun came up and going to the Red Cross Board meeting this evening I didn’t see much sunlight. I  probably could  have brought the camera into the board meeting for old times sake as  I have shot plenty of meetings for newspapers over the years.  It it somehow different when you are there in an official capacity.

I have two shots tonight.

The first is just a quick shot of of the daffodil lowing their heads in from the rain.

Daffodils in the rain

The next is a simple shot of the night rain and the street lights against the trees starting to bloom.

Street light and Tree in Bloom

I have always been a dateline Washington type of  photographer.    That is to say I much rather shoot a sporting event or a news conference any day over something that stands still.   Therefore the hardest part of this photo-a-day blog has been finding inspiring subjects to shoot.  Today I was inspired.

I grabbed lunch at Del Taco.  In addition to  being between work and the post office I really like the staff at this Rocklin Del Taco. One of the crew members actually remembers what you ordered last time around and can ring you up with nothing more than asking if you want the usual or in my case if I want 3 or 4 of the 79¢ tacos.  It is really a remarkable ability and great customer service.

I happen to bring my camera into the restaurant to review some earlier shots for today’s photo.  I couldn’t help but notice an incredible mother and her child.  You can always spot the great mothers since they have an amazing ability to interact with their child.   I got brave and asked if I could shoot a few photos.   I have not shot for newspapers in a long while and  am out of practice doing this.  Also my dorky photo-a-day experiment is hardly an attention grabbing press outlet.  Amanda (the mother) was very gracious and Kathy (I hope I got it right) was all ham.

Mom and Daughter Outing

Took a small walk along the walking path today between the rain drops.  The path goes along a wandering stream with a couple of wide spots in it.  Since I originally identified the geese as ducks in the first day of this blog,  I shot a few photos of ducks.

Wikipedia to the rescue shows that these are mallards:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard

Female Mallard Duck

Mallard Ducks

Went for a drive out to Lincoln in hopes of finding some trees in full bloom.  A bit early in the season still.  We were optimistic after seeing the start of budding on our own backyard fruit trees.

This photo was run through gimp color controls pretty heavily to bring out what little color there was in the otherwise gray day.

Roadside Orchard

Day 3 already.

Made it home from work when it was still light out and grabbed my trusty macro lens. The macro lens actually is an old lens that I inherited from my grandfather. Doing a bit of research on the lens found that my 90mm f2.5 Vivitar Series 1 lens was manufactured in 1977.    The 1978 edition of Modern Photography’s photo buying gave this lens got great marks.  Photo.net has the original write up on it.

I’ve used this lens on my Nikon F that I had back in high school, two different Nikons FE2 that I used throughout college and most recently on a Nikon N90s before its current use on my D70.  On the D70 the internal light meter does not work with this lens so I have to have to manually set it.

Anyway I have two photos tonight.  Both are from my yummy white peach tree in our side yard.  I wish I had thought to take  a basic photo showing the size of the tree and how small the actual peach blossoms are.  These photos are shown full frame with only minimal editing in a photo editor to just slightly enhance the color.  Really not necessary to do that.

Peach Bloosom

Peach Bloom