The Dying Fields

Today's photo is a scene that I actually noticed on the way back from Austin a few weeks ago after seeing Jim "Hot Pockets" Gaffigan do his stand-up comedy routine. This area is just outside of San Marcos on Interstate 35 South. I like particularly like this shot because you can see just how bad the drought has been, but there are some green-ish yellow areas and trees in the distance that still provide some hope that we will get rain...eventually. The most difficult part of this photo was the short walk from where I parked to the fence line surrounding the farm, as I was extra, extra careful with every step because I did not want to step on a fire ant hill, or even worse, a snake to get the shot. I purposely set up so the barbed wire was in the foreground, as I think it captures the overall feeling of looking out to the distance better.

The Dying Fields

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Downtown during the day

Today's photo is yet another (and probably the last one that I post) taken from the parking garage behind the Rio Rio Cantina restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Some of my favorite pictures of the city (including one that even won a contest!) were taken from here, and after I move to Baltimore I will be no doubt exploring places to get skyline shots of that (and probably surrounding!) cities. This shot was taken with the internal camera bracket of -2,0, and +2, and I used some of the original brackets to get rid of the ghosting of the people and cars so it looks overall like a smooth shot. I also cropped the shot quite a bit to give a little more "balance" (I don't know if that is the proper word, but that is what I think cropping this shot did!)

Downtown during the day

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If you are gonna build a time machine...

Today's photo is yet another example of my geeky/pop culture collection taken through the 100mm macro lens. I think just about everyone knows where this is from, but in case you don't, it is the DeLorean from the Back to the Future trilogy. Doc Brown built a time machine (with plutonium stolen from the Libyans!!) into a DeLorean (One of the famous lines from the films is Doc's quote: "If you are gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"), and the movies revolve around trips to the years 1955, 1985, 2015, 1985, 1885, and 1985.

I really didn't do anything special for this shot at all, it is just a set of -2,0, and +2 in-camera brackets. I did not use any special lighting methods either, just made the DeLorean pop a bit from the background during post processing. The one modification that I did make was Photoshopping the DMC logo onto the grille, as the one that I own (which can be purchased from Thinkgeek.com) does not have the logo on the grille at all.

Back to the Future!

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Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?

Ok, to be fair, the title of this photo post is taken from Return of the Jedi, and this scene is from Empire Strikes Back, but I felt it was a better title than anything that I was thinking of at the time. I took this shot with the macro lens and an LED flashlight shining on the back corner of Slave I, with an in camera bracket of -2,0,and +2. I used a touch of Bokeh and desaturation of the background during processing to make the "Lego" portion jump out a bit more from the multicolored background that is a futon cushion. This is the last of the Lego Star Wars sets that I currently own, and what better time to take the last photo than the day after the release of the Star Wars series on blu-ray? (My own personal note on that: The sound quality is EXCELLENT, the picture quality is not nearly as good as I would have hoped though).

On the way back to Jabba

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Riverwalk Sunbeams

Today's photo is a shot that I took about two months ago during a trip to get some shots around the Riverwalk while trying out my brand new 64x filter. One of the advantages of the filter is that I am able to capture sunbeams really effectively by taking shots into the sun, and this is another photo that highlights that. This is taken just outside of the Rivercenter Mall, on the location that a Peruvian flute band is normally playing and trying to bilk tourists out of money in hopes of getting them to purchase their overpriced CD, which, based off the songs that the band plays, consists entirely of three songs.

The lighting in this shot is a little bit darker than most of my photos, it is not because of the filter, it is simply because I felt that making the shot brighter decreased the effect of the sunbeams, which is what I really wanted to highlight in this photo.

Riverwalk Sunbeams

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback below. Also remember that clicking on the photo itself lets you view the image in a variety of sizes by taking you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug. Thanks for stopping by!