Opening Weekend At Oriole Park At Camden Yards

Today's photo is a picture that I took all the way back during the Orioles Opening Weekend against the Minnesota Twins.  I purchased season tickets this year and got to enjoy an incredible season that has the Orioles making the playoffs for the first time since 1997!  I also had the good fortune during the game yesterday (which was J.J. Hardy bobblehead day, as a part of Fan Appreciation) to catch J.J. Hardy's 22nd home run, despite being hit hard enough, by someone behind me, that my sunglasses flew off (which is what I am reaching down for in the video after making the catch). If you would like to see the video, you can watch the highlight on the MLB website. I also posted the photo of me posing with the ball and the J.J. Hardy bobblehead to my Facebook and Google+ page if you would like to view them.

I took this shot from the top level of the stadium, directly behing home plate.  I used a different format than usual for creating this image, rather than relying on Photomatix for the HDR process I manually combined a regular, an under exposed, and an over exposed shot that I took from this vantage point.  I used some masking to make the crowd a bit brighter, the field a bit darker, the scoreboards a bit easier to read, and the buildings a bit brighter.  I could not get exactly what I wanted using the program, so I decided to do it myself.  I also added some of the Nik Color Efex Pro effects to the final shot.

It has been an incredible season so far, and it is not over yet! I hope you enjoy this photo (and the small story about my fortunate catch yesterday) and hopefully I get a chance to get some great postseason photos too!

Opening Weekend At Oriole Park At Camden Yards

Please feel free to click on the photo above to view it in various sizes.  Clicking on the photo also takes you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can browse this (and other) photos that I have posted.  If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please take a moment and leave comments and/or feedback.  Please also feel free to pass the link of this photo on to others if you so desire.  Thanks for stopping by!!

Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight

Today's photo is one that I have been looking forward to taking since I moved back to the East Coast, but I haven't had a chance until, well, until yesterday.  This photo was taken on what was formerly Route 61 near Centralia, Pennsylvania.  As you may or may not know, a mine fire started under the city in (possibly) 1962, and it is may burn for the next 250 years.  The residents of the former city have been forced to relocate as the entire area has been condemned, and today only a precious few houses and residents remain.  The State of Pennsylvania began a project in 1993 to create a detour around the area of Route 61 that was the most affected by the fire, which is a narrow, snaking road that takes motorists away from the area.  The road was blocked to vehicle traffic, however, curious onlookers and tourists can park near several places by either road block and venture (at their own risk) into the affected area.


I grew up about 20 miles from Centralia in Shamokin, and we moved from the area to Northern Indiana in 1995.  At that time I remember quite a few houses still being in the area, today what used to be the city is overgrown grass lots and remnants of roads and driveways that lead to nothing.  The cemeteries are really the only thing that is "left" of the area, beside the few houses that remain.


I took this shot with my fisheye lens, but positioned the camera vertically, rather than horizontally, in order to distort the sky.  I processed it through a variety of color and infrared filters in order to achieve, what I feel, is a "post-apocalyptic" photograph of the area.  We did see a very little bit of smoke rising from some of the cracks and were treated, a few times, to the pleasant smell of sulfur, but did not see any actual flames, unfortunately.


Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight




Please feel free to click on the photo above to view it in various sizes.  Clicking on the photo also takes you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can browse this (and other) photos that I have posted.  If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please take a moment and leave comments and/or feedback.  Please also feel free to pass the link of this photo on to others if you so desire.  Thanks for stopping by!!


If you would like to read more about Centralia, I suggest reading the Wikipedia page, and then using that for additional reading materials.




(AUTHOR NOTE: The blog post title came from a child and his mother that were looking for a geo-cache near a marked guardrail in the area.  I did not get their names, but maybe they will somehow stumble across this photo!)

Harpersfield Covered Bridge

Today's photo is a shot that I took over this past weekend during a quick visit to Ashtabula, Ohio.  I was planning to get a couple of covered bridge photos a few weeks ago during a trip up to Pennsylvania, but plans did not come together and that trip got pushed back a few weeks.  Fortunately I had the opportunity to get some of the covered bridge photos that I wanted, but in a location that I did not think I would get any!

Ashtabula County is about an hour east of Cleveland, and is not too far from Interstate 90.  I had heard that northern Ohio had some excellent wineries, but I was not aware of the covered bridges in the area.  As it turns out, Ashtabula County is home to a whopping 18 covered bridges, including the longest covered bridge in the United States, the Smolen-Gulf covered bridge, which is 613 feet long!  I managed to get a few photos of that bridge too, but I liked this bridge more and decided to work on this photo first.

The Harpersfield Covered Bridge was apparently the former longest covered bridge in the US, and is interesting as an additional metal span was added after a flood washed out part of the river bank and, rather than adding a covered addition to the bridge, the metal span was added and attached to the covered bridge. There is a nice park area on both sides of the bridge, where you can walk, fish, and even splash around in the Grand River if you so desire.

I took this shot with my Canon S100 (I did not bring my "big" camera on the trip as I was not sure that I would have that many photo opportunities, boy was I wrong!).  I balanced it on a rock in the river and took the three bracketed shots.  I thought about taking the leaf in the middle right portion out of the shot, but decided to keep it in because it shows just how low to the ground the camera was and how large the bridge actually is.  We only had a chance to see 3 of the bridges in the area (I would like to see & shoot all of them eventually, maybe put together some sort of 18 part series!) and this was by far my favorite.  The setting was great, and the small waterfalls in the background I think really accentuate the photo nicely.

Harpersfield Covered Bridge

Please feel free to click on the photo above to view it in various sizes.  Clicking on the photo also takes you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can browse this (and other) photos that I have posted.  If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please take the time to leave comments and/or feedback below.  Please also feel free to pass the link of this photo on to others if you so desire.  Thanks for stopping by!!

Airlie Gardens Walkway

Today's photo is another shot that I took while on vacation in North Carolina back in July.  This shot was taken at Airlie Gardens, which (according to their website) is a 67-acre park that dates back to 1886.  The garden has a large variety of flowers and vegetation, as well as a few bodies of water and associated wildlife.  The garden is also home to a 468 year old oak tree, which greets visitors not long after they begin the walk down the path.

This shot was taken near one of the lakes, I did not take my tripod as I was unsure of how many photographs that I would actually take at the Gardens.  I placed the camera on my camera bag, adjusted the bag until I got the angle and shot that I wanted, and took the bracketed photos.  When I started to process the shot, I cropped out quite a bit from each side to make the trellis appear to be evenly balanced on each side, with the centerpiece of the photo being the fountain.  Interestingly enough, the trellis beams themselves are crooked, so rather than adjusting and trying to fix that, I just tried to balance the positioning of the beams on the side of the walkway as evenly as possible.  I added some additional blur and desaturation to the entire shot with the exception of the fountain, in an effort to make the shot appear "dream like".  Thanks to the power of Photoshop and Nik Color Efex Pro 4 I managed to create the shot how I envisioned it in my mind, and am quite pleased with the resulting photo.

If you would like a full-size copy of this photo, please contact me (either with a comment or by emailing me).  Airlie Gardens has a non-profit photography stance, so in order to abide by the rule, if you would like a copy of the original photo please let me know and I will provide it to you at no cost.

Airlie Gardens Walkway

Please feel free to click on the photo above to view it in various sizes.  Clicking on the photo also takes you to my online gallery, hosted over at smugmug, where you can also browse this (and other) photos that I have posted.  If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please take the time to leave comments and/or feedback below.  Please also feel free to pass the link of this photo on to others if you so desire.  Thanks for stopping by!!

Carolina Beach Fishing Pier

First of all, I know that it has been quite some time since I posted a photo on my blog.  I have been very busy this past year and the past few months have been tumultuous, but at last things have started to settle back down and hopefully I will be able to have some more time to devote to my photography hobby!

Today's photo is a shot from underneath the Carolina Beach Fishing Pier that I took while on vacation in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, in the beginning of July.  I used the fisheye lens to capture this shot and I tried to tweak the angle of it so that the pier itself appeared fairly straight, but the rest of the background had the fisheye appearance to it.  I tried to wait for the right moment to capture the sun in the approaching storm clouds (thankfully we only had a storm interfere with our plans on one day of the vacation).  I was very lucky and managed to get some additional shots that I am looking forward to getting some time to work on that I think you all will enjoy as well.  Hopefully I can find some more time and update this blog and share my hobby more often than once every four months!


Carolina Beach Fishing Pier



Please feel free to click on the photo above to see it in various sizes.  Clicking on the photo also takes you to my online gallery, hotest over at smugmug, where you can also browse through additional photos that I have posted.  If you enjoyed viewing this photo, please take the time to leave comments and/or feedback below.  Please feel free to pass the link of this photos on to others if you so desire.  Thanks for stopping by!!