Thursday, March 30, 2017

Looking Forward To A Long Weekend ::

I don't know if I've ever posted here that I'm a staff photographer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and, beginning tomorrow and continuing through Saturday, we'll be shooting one of our largest and most important events of the year, the annual Exploration Rover Challenge races with high school and college competitors from all over the world. Here's a photo from last years race:


4 of us will shoot somewhere between 6k and 8k photographs over the 2 day event ending on Saturday evening around 7pm and we will all be utterly exhausted.

We will barely have a week of rest before the next event, the Student Launch Initiative, occurs in a huge cornfield north of Huntsville, Alabama. This is a one day event with high school and college teams launching rockets with the goal of reaching 1 mile in height with a rocket carrying a payload and gathering different telemetry information.


This is my favorite event of the year and pictured above is last year's team from Vanderbilt University from Nashville, Tennessee.

Both events will be streamed live on UStream and the links can be found on the NASA web site for each event.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Early Morning Photographs ::

I really like to photograph in the early mornings when there is plenty of fog near the ground:


This little cabin stands by itself in a local pasture.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

The Time For The Lake Is Coming Soon ::

I'm fortunate that I live within about a 10 minute drive from the Tennessee River and Lake Guntersville.


I'll be up for some fishing soon

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Interesting Scenes ::

Interesting scenes are often within sight of home. I happened to spot this beach ball just across the street from my house this morning:


I'm curious just where it came from as there are no youngsters near where I live.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Continuing With The Old Chimney Theme ::

I found this one last year:



I really like photographs that the viewer can roam around in a bit. The chimney, of course, is the focal point but I really like that the water meter is in the foreground and the old bench is in the background.

Shot with my Nikon D800 and converted to Black and White in Photoshop.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Another Chimney Photograph ;;

This was taken in Huntsville, Alabama last year. I seem to have developed a love for photographing the chimneys that are left after a house burns around it. I've photographed several over the years but I've only recently been searching for them and really opening my eyes to just how many there are.



This photograph was shot with my Mamiya RB67 with a 150mm lens on Ilford HP5 which is my favorite black and white film. I'm happy to see that many of the historic films are being reintroduced! HP5 has always been available but now there are production plans to resurrect some of the Polaroid products as well as Ektachrome although I can't imagine what it would take to provide the lab services.

Sunday, March 5, 2017

The Great Search For Scenes To Photograph ::

I live in a rural community which entails something like a 10 mile trip, at a minimum, to do most of my shopping. I generally drive several miles out of the way in order to search for a scene which I think would be worthy of a photograph. I drive these areas often because I found long ago that no matter often I drive an area I almost always find something new.

Yesterday I found this old chimney out in the middle of a field. I had driven by it dozens of times without seeing it 'til this particular morning.


I seem to have developed an affinity lately for photographing the chimneys that are left after a house burns.


Here's a tree that I drive by most days, but I had never had the opportunity to photograph it 'til yesterday. I was looking for an afternoon shot with the warm sunlight that comes around 5:00 pm, but either the light was not right or I didn't have a camera with me. I finally took the photograph yesterday afternoon a little earlier than I wanted and not with the camera I had planned to use. I took the photograph with my Nikon D800, but I had originally wanted to shoot it from a greater height with my DJI Phantom drone. I still plan on shooting it that way.