Category: Photography

New photos last week, new look on the way

I’m a little late in announcing this here, but early last week I posted a photo album from the Gainesville Cycling Club’s annual Chilly Chili Picnic at O’Leno State Park. I realized when I first laid eyes on the suspension bridge that day that this summer marks 30 years from the first time I set foot in that park when I was 12 years old. That place has always had a special hold on me and I credit its “pull” to be one of the reasons I moved to Gainesville in 1988.

I also started working on a new page layout template for this site last week. I don’t know if or when it will ever get done. I’ve been doing a lot of site templating work at work lately so that may make me less likely to spend my evenings or weekends doing the same sort of thing. Or maybe not.

Vacation wrap-up

I took a little pre-Christmas vacation to the Florida Keys. Check out my photos from the trip.

3+ days (Dec. 19-22) in Tavernier, 1/2 day of good water sport weather. The Florida Keys Wild Bird Center was quite a neat find though and only about a mile from my motel. It really got hammered by Wilma and the web site doesn’t appear to have been updated much since then. For the obvious shots from the water, I kayaked from the Island Bay Resort, where I stayed, up the bay to the bird center.

I carried along my old Canon PowerShot G1 in a “dry bag” while kayaking. I forgot to take the AquaPac case with me, but the weather was not good for swimming so that wasn’t much of a loss. Most of the photos were taken with either my Canon EOS Digital Rebel with the 75-300 zoom lens or with my new toy, a Canon PowerShot sd450 digital ELPH.

Photography notes

I have come to one of the camera decisions that I hemmed and hawed about earlier. I ordered a Canon SD450 last night to become my new “carry everywhere” camera. It should be here next week before I go on vacation to the Keys the following week. Now I just need to decide which additional lens or lenses to buy for the Digital Rebel and whether or not to replace it sometime next year with an EOS-20D.

I have also run across some good new blogs about photography. Bookmark these if you’re so inclined:

Still more new photos

I posted one event album and started a new ongoing album in the past week or so.

  • My goal for “Dailies” is to post a new (or old) photo everyday. It could just be a grab shot from that day. It could have something to do with a recent event. Or it could be related to an anniversary of a past event.
  • I went to the Jacksonville Holiday Boat Parade & Fireworks this past Saturday night. I took the tripod, a folding chair, and a meatball sub from Firehouse. I’m pleased with the pictures. The panoramas were a surprise discovery while editing the images the next day. I may print the red one at 12 inches tall to see how it turns out.

Yesterday I found a possible solution for transferring my old online gallery to Flickr as mentioned previously. I haven’t had a chance to take a close look at it yet though. I am also weighing a couple of different options for displaying Flickr sets within the context of this site. The first thing I tried didn’t work quite right, but I didn’t thoroughly troubleshoot it.

Camera conundrum

I’ve been thinking lately about making some changes to my stable of photo equipment. Here’s what I’ve been mulling over:

Doing some combination of the second and third items is the most likely scenario. I like the specs of and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the S2, but I think it would have some shortcomings in my work.

Of course, I may do nothing and just be suffering from what Dad would call “money burning a hole in my pocket.”

More new photos on Flickr

I’ve been busy in recent weeks posting some new photosets on my Flickr account. I haven’t started moving the gallery photos there yet though. The new albums on flickr are:

  • Strays ride the Feagles – Yes, we did this ride six weeks ago, but this day we rode it in the opposite direction. A resident on the route who must be accustomed to bike tours going by even told us we were going the wrong way.
  • Night ride on the G-H Trail – We had permission for a night ride on the Gainesville-Hawthorne Rail Trail under the nearly full moon. The mosquitoes were a lot more numerous than I thought they would be given the temperature.
  • Las Vegas – SPJ Convention – I went to Las Vegas in October to work for the Society of Professional Journalists producing webcasts of selected sessions from the convention. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to run around taking pictures and the weather didn’t cooperate during the latter part of the trip, but I came home with some good shots.

Goodbye Gallery, Hello Flickr

I made a decision yesterday to switch from posting my photos here on this site using the Gallery package to upgrading my Flickr account to “pro” status and posting my photos there.

Everything will eventually move, but that will take some time. I hope to come up with a solution so that someone coming in off an old bookmark or outdated search result will be properly redirected from here to at least the appropriate gallery on Flickr.

A cavalcade of cycling photos

October was a busy month for cycling photography and hey, I actually had my road bike out of the garage twice. Here’s the gallery list:

  • Horse Farm Hundred – October 2. I drove a support vehicle that day, but I also stopped and occasionally took pictures.
  • Strays ride the Feagles – October 8. The Strays group met up south of Lake City and rode some very scenic roads roughly in between there and High Springs.
  • Strays ride from Hawthorne – October 29. The ride I try to lead at least several times a year out in my neck of the woods.

Enjoy!