Nothing exciting to report this week

 Well the early spring flowers are in full bloom and I've been out doing my daily walk with Snoop while trying to create some unique pictures. My two favorite lenses are still the 105 Macro & the 85 1.2. Still amazes me that as I'm going through a big pile of photos that were taken by a variety of different lenses anything by the 85 always stands out to me.  This week's pictures are from both the 85 & 105. One of these days I'm going to take Snoop for a walk somewhere else but its just so easy to walk out in the back yard :)

Purchased a new lens & teleconverter last week

 

In anticipation of our upcoming trip to Iceland next month I had been planing to buy a 100-400 & 1.4TC should I get a chance at any cool bird pictures or maybe whale watching. One came up locally for sale used so I jumped on it. Took it out for a photo walk today and while I did not find any birds that would pose for me nicely I did find a bunch of fungus and flowers that were more than willing subjects.  I have to say I'm really impressed how well this lens does for close up photography. 85% of these were taken with this new lens and the TC on it a few were without the TC and I'm guessing one might be able to tell which were which if I had not tossed in a couple with my 105 macro.  All are uncroped with a bit of color enhancement but nothing else. I now understand why so many speak so well of this lens. Frankly I'm not sure I have much use for it long term but will see how much use it gets next month when traveling. 

For now my 105 is still may favorite lens for photo walks. I have not used my 85 1.2 much and have only used my 24-120 once. I'm thinking of trading my 85 for a 135 but will have to try some street photography with it before I make that decesion. I really do love the look the 85 provides but I have no plans to do portrait work anytime soon. For now I plan to keep the 100-400 at least through summer to see how much use it gets. In my head I think the 24-120 & 100-400 will be the perfect setup for traveling which we hope to do again once Max graduates in a couple years. I really miss the small size and pictures I could get on my old F mount 50 1.4. Maybe I can find something equivalent one day for this system that will fit in the bag with these two lenses?

Week 7: In the distance

I found a Facebook group with a 52 week photo challenge that provides an assignment each week.  The first two weeks my photo's both involved my dog somehow so I decided to try and keep him in each of my photo's for rest of the year. So far I've only missed one week and it's been a fun interpitive challenge. This week's photo assignment was "in the distance". I choose to submit the power line picture but the bottom one was my other favorite from our walk today. I went out with a vision of getting Snoop in the area of the field with the grid lines (look at last weeks post) or these power lines.  Snoop was not very excited about either option having no interest in listening to the stay command or leaving my side. So this is what we got. Next week is splish splash. Maybe we will make a trip to Sterling State Park for some beach photos as I'm sort of running out of back yard photo ideas :)

 

Week 6.. Still shooting just not much exciting to share

Not much new to share we had a lot of rain and gray sky's around here all of January. The weather has now become uncharacteristically warm for February but at least we are starting to have a few days with sun.

I have been getting out with my camera every week but have not been getting much exciting to share from my daily walks with Snoop. Thinking I'm going to need to start mixing it up a bit to visit some parks or maybe a couple of the downtown areas new us for some different photo opportunities.

So far I'm still happy with my lens selection I bought with the camera (85 1.2, 105 Macro, and 24-120). I'm planning to buy the 100-400 sometime in the next month or so before we go to Iceland in May. 

Want to ensure I've had some time to practice with it. So far my most used lens has been the macro lens which produced 3 of the 4 pictures here. I take it out with me at least once a week when walking the dog to see what kinds of new things I can find in our back yard. The 4th was with the 85 at my son's Orchestra competition last weekend. I figured I would take the 85 for some cool narrow depth of field shots of the kids playing but didn't capture much that was exciting and failed to get my cell phone out for the standard group shots of the kids :)

Hopefully I have something more exciting to share next time.

Week One of 2024

 Today's photo walk was more of the same as last week.  Another gray day, the only thing different was that it's now colder out. Next week I'll try walking the trails at a nearby park to see if there is anything different on the other side of the street. This week's photo assignment is floating.. will have to see what I come up with? For now these are my favorite pictures of the week.  All were taken with my spiffy new 105 macro lens.

My buddy lost his footing going down a large gravel hill and scared himself while out on our walk today.

First Photo Walk

New Year, new goals.. As I mentioned in the last post I got a new camera for Christmas and have made it a goal to post something here every week to see how my photography skills progress over the year. Looking back on this blog it seems my first post was with a goal to take time away from the work/business part of having a photography studio and carve out some dedicated time to take pictures of something besides a wedding/portrait/or event work. I noticed that the original post I had included a picture of my daughter that day so I decided to include a current one here as well. It seems like it was just a couple years ago she was little and sitting on my belly as I was rolling around the flower bed playing with my 105 Macro lens. So with that memory I figured I would start my first photo walk of the year with my new 105 macro lens. 

Almost 20 years later I still love the idea of macro photography. It was my favorite section of the high school photography class that got me hooked on photography and after getting to play with it a bit using lens filters for close up work I was desperate to get a macro lens.  About 10 years later after getting my first "real job" I bought my first macro lens and proceeded to never use it. The feed back between shooting film and getting it developed made the learning curve hard and as a result it got put on the back of my shelf. Today with digital cameras instant feed back and focus highlights in the view finder it's easier than ever to experiment with.  I'm really impressed with how sharp this new Nikon 105 Z mount lens is.  All were shot hand held with the camera set up for auto ISO.  I have a lot to learn/practice as far as depth of field and ensuring I pay attention to my backgrounds but for a first outing with a new camera I'm pretty happy with how these came out.

My ever faithful buddy looking for me to toss his newly found stick while out on our walk.

Back to posting again & Happy New Year!

Family at our house Christmas Day

It's New Year's day and it appears it's been about a year and a half since my last post.  A lot has happened since then.  Annabelle graduated high school and is now attending Ferris State University studying Criminal Justice, Max is now in his second year of high school and currently in the process of finishing up his Eagle Scout Project, Amy is back to coaching skating, and frankly I've had trouble coming back to land life but am back at my old job and now day dreaming about what our next big trip might be.  I think they call it summit syndrome where one gets to the peak of one mountain and then starts looking for the next one vs being able to simply enjoy where they are at.  We still have the boat. Unfortunately we did not use it much this summer with all of the graduation activities, camps, and other kids related activities going on.  Unfortunately a few months after our trip ended we lost our dog Penelope.  The original plan was to hold off on getting another family pet for a few years but after about a month the other 3 members of the family were desperate for another pet and we got a tiny English Mastiff puppy we named Snoop which is now just a year old and 130lbs. Males of this breed average between 160-220lbs so will be interesting to see where he ends up.  He is a slow and steady grower, most months he gained about 10lb but is not down to only 5lbs the last couple months.  It will be interesting to see how he does getting in and out of the dingy as he gets bigger? I'm not really sure what will be in store for us this year.  We have talked about taking the boat somewhere but Max already has two summer camps scheduled and then there is Fair Week.  I'm hoping we can use the three weeks between fair ending and school starting to go somewhere on the boat.  We might only get to Mackinac Island but at least it would be a small adventure.

In the mean time I decided I needed a new hobby and bought myself a fancy new camera with a couple of prime lenses.  So I hope to start learning to use it with a goal to use this site as a place to post a few of my favorite photos each week.  My real goal is to make myself get out and start taking pictures again while having a place to be able to scroll back to see how my skills and hopefully style develops this year.  Hopefully I stick with it :)

Celebrating New Years with friends at our home

Snoop

Happy New Year and I hope everyone has another good trip around the sun this year!

Day 7 - Buffalo to Monroe, MI (Home)

It was nice to sleep in before we left Buffalo.  We took our time returning the gate card and checked out the observation tower then took P for a really long walk as once one the boat she would not be getting off for at least 24 hours.  About 10am we shoved off on what would be the final leg of our trip.  It was going to be about 220NM across Lake Erie and we thought we could do it in about 24 hours.  This would be our longest crossing since we had originally purchased our first boat and did this same trip.  Last time it took us 16 days to go from Sea Bright New Jersey to Gibraltar Michigan.  This time we were on track to do it in half the time and didn't have to run from sun up to sun down.  How things have changed in the last 14 years yet here we are still in a hurry to get home so I guess not everything changes.

The weather forecast looked great for the next 36hrs and we decided to go.  The weather was great it was almost flat clam the entire trip across.  The engine ran great and the crew held up well.  P was not too excited as she decided to hold going to the bathroom for 24 hours but we expected that and really attempted to limit her water to keep her from being too uncomfortable.  Before leaving we had worked out a shift schedule so everyone could get at least 8hrs sleep with a plan to rotate watches every 4 hours.  Once underway Max and Amy seemed pretty happy running the boat.  I took a nap and watched a movie amongst other things.  Then about 9pm as it started to get dark I took a shift & Max decided to keep me company until about 11:30.  The plan was that I would run the boat until 2 or 3am but was feeling pretty good after my rest earlier and kept going until Amy came up about 5:30 at which point I took a couple hour nap and all of the sudden we were almost back at our home dock.  It really was an uneventful passage.  Amy made cookies, we ate well, the weather was great what more could we ask for.  The only weird thing that happen was the generator overheated at one point and shut off.  We didn't really need it but I suppose that will be one more thing to put on the fix list after we get home.

About 9:45am we were docked at our home dock at Monroe Boat Club where we had left from last August.  The trip worked out to be slightly less then 24 hours.  Luckily for us we have a great extended family that had dropped off a car for us.  We loaded up a few things and any food we thought might go bad and headed home.  Just like that our trip was done.

Day 6 of the Erie Canal - Albin to Buffalo

 

Today we completed the Erie Canal.  We traveled the last 20-30 miles going though a few more lift bridges and the double set of locks in Lockport.  The big thing I noticed was how much rock they had to blast though to create much of this section.  Up until now most of the canal looked rather natural like a river but most of this section looked like they had cleared a highway though a mountain.  It was quite impressive and would have also been hell should multiple boats be traveling this section at speed at the same time as there was no where for the wake to dissipate.  Luckily we were the only ones and it was no big deal.

After going though the double set of locks we asked the Lock Master if there was a place to tie up so we could see the mesume about the locks there.  Turns out there is one spot and its first come first serve and we were lucky enough to get it.  We wondered over to the museum that told about how they built the original flight of five locks, why they picked that location, then how they modernized it in the early 1900's to just the two much bigger locks but had also recently restored the one side of the lock so we could see what the original 5 looked like.  While wondering about the lock we ran into a Swiss couple that had come over and were biking from Boston to Denver over a planned period of 7 weeks averaging about 50-60 miles a day.  Their daughter had also just completed an exchange year in the US and was the same age as ours.  Seems I may have to get in shape and start thinking about the kinds of adventures we could have on a bike?

On the way back from the museum we stopped by the local farmers market and picked up some locally made cheese, salsa, and organically grown beer.  Once again a strange thing happened we saw an ice cream shop and walked right on by for the second day in a row.

After taking the dog for a quick walk we all piled back into the boat continuing on until we got to Buffalo completing a 50 mile day.  After coming though Tonawanda we ran into quite a lot of current in the river and decided to take the ship canal.  After I called the lock master and we were locking though I started to read about how much notice the new 2-3 bridges in this section needed before they would open.  It seemed I may have made a mistake as most wanted 2-3hrs notice and were no manned.  I'm not sure how it worked out but as we got closer to each they all opened without any calls needed.  Not sure if the Lock Master controlled them or what but it worked out great for us there was no current and no waiting for bridges!

We pulled up to the fuel dock in Buffalo and got stuck paying the most for fuel we had yet on this trip at almost $7 a gallon.  Luckily we had only used 70 gallons since winter harbor and really probably didn't need to fill up but with our next leg being a 240 mile run across Lake Erie I wanted to ensure running out of fuel would not be an issue.  They gave us a decent dock for the night and we decided to walk around a bit to explore the harbor area.  I was impressed with the size.  They had two ex navy ships and a sub on display that one could tour if they so wished.  4 or 5 restruants (maybe more?) and lots of other docks.  This is where we ran into our 3rd 42 Nordic Tug that was made in 2000 and looked much more like ours.  Unfortunately the owners were out to eat so we just left our card and wondered off.  As we walked back to the boat we decided to break the streak and bought some ice cream.  Turns out we were not sick of it yet we just needed a day off :)