Where have you been?

OK, my last post was about six weeks ago and I have about 15 different events (not the least of which is the remainder of our south trip) to catch up on, but it just wasn't happening. So... in an effort to break the logjam, I am posting some shots I took earlier today at the OSU MU. We needed some new shots of the girls for our frames and I was tired of the same in-house backgrounds from around here, so we decided to head over to the MU for some new backgrounds. Also, these were taken with the new monster 70-200mm lens. They would have been sharper had I remembered to lower the ISO before I got started. For these kind of pictures I don't like to shoot above an ISO of 400, but alas, the camera was at 800 for these-- even the outdoor ones. Bummer. I'll remember to look for that next time. By the way, Phia decided that all pictures of her on this day would be of the profile variety. Once she has made up her mind, there is precious little that can be done about changing it.

Cruisin' the Congaree

Did you know there was such a thing as the Congaree National Park? It's true, and we spent a few hours there today. The park itself is located outside of Columbia, South Carolina. A GPS is recommended for getting to the park, because it's basically a big swampy area and it's out in the middle of the boondocks, just like you would expect.

At the park, we took about a two mile stroll on along a boardwalk that gets you into the swamp, but not up to your ankles and knees. I couldn't keep from marveling at the number if 2X6's and 4X4's that must have been consumed to build this boardwalk. Another amazing thing is that a large portion of the walk is built ~8 feet above the ground to accommodate for rising waters. It must have been some project to build the thing.







The swamp scenery is also quite a sight. Although we didn't see any gators, we did see a few local creatures (including a dreaded mosquito) that I was able to capture. Along the way, Claire was also able to complete the requirements to become an official Junior Ranger.







On the way to Charleston, we drove some back roads and pulled over at one of the numerous cotton fields to sample the fibers. Perhaps we will make some sweet tee-shirts for the frogs out of the few cotton balls we picked. They probably wouldn't get it...







Tomorrow we go back to the Civil War with visits to Fort Sumter and other sights around
Charleston.

American Girl and Stone Mountain

Another few days have slipped by us on our trip. On Saturday, we took the girls to see the American Girl store near Atlanta and paid some hyper-inflated prices for some accessories for their dolls. What an awesome business model! You charge $22 for a stuffed dog to go with a doll and the girls (young and old alike) line up in droves to (have someone) pay it. After American Girl and a lovely mall lunch (all mall lunches taste the same, no matter if you are on the east or west coast), we took in some rainy sights at Stone Mountain. This solid granite escarpment near Atlanta is quite a sight. It is surrounded by a beautiful park and features a train, tram to the top of the mountain, museums, and a plantation house. When it is not raining and the attractions are open, we are sure they are all top notch. Because it was raining, they had most of the park shut down. As a result, we drove around the mountain, checked out a cool old covered bridge, and walked part way up the mountain. One interesting side note about the mountain is the bas relief in one side of it of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. It's a confederate Mount Rushmore blasted right into the granite.





By the way, the Anytime Fitness conference is over and we had a great time, but I didn't take any pictures. Oh well, there's always next year.

Down south part I

Hey! We have successfully made it up to and through the first part of our big trip to the south. After rousting the kids out of bed at 4:30am and making our way with them and all of our bags through the rigmarole that is airport security, (I seriously doubt anyone would make explosive devices out of their two year old's shoes, and if they did, anyone would clearly see the fuses) we ended up having a few nice flights and arriving in Huntsville Alabama in one piece.



After a comfortable night staying at the Greenfield's house and being treated to some great food and hospitality, we set out the next morning for Atlanta, by way of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Near Chattanooga, we visited the Chickamouga/Chattanooga Civil War battle sights. The area is beautiful, with abrupt, rocky hills, covered in thick hardwoods and pines all around. We were pressed for time, but would have loved to spend more time outside of the Chickamouga visitors center exploring the terrain. The torrential down-pouring rain didn't help much with outdoor exploration either.

Just before getting to Atlanta, in an area that was only slightly above the boondocks category, we visited a cemetery that has the grave of one of Andrea's mother's ancestors who was a revolutionary war soldier. This old cemetery had some amazing historical graves from the revolutionary, up through and beyond to the civil war. There were some particularly touching civil war grave markers that detailed the deaths of children in the civil war.



















For the last day we have been at the Anytime Fitness conference. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and the girls are going with Poppy and Gigi and Andrea to the American Girl store near Atlanta as well as Stone Mountain. I will be staying at the conference and indulging myself with the overly abundant meals and snacks.

Over the next few days I should be taking more pictures and will get them up here as soon as I can.

plAYSOccer time!

Well, isn't this a blog of firsts. Claire started soccer a few weeks ago and had her first games yesterday. She played well. The first game was a tie and the second a 4-0 win for her team. She seemed to do especially well playing defense and not allowing the other team to get in close to the goal. It's a good thing she got her ears lowered last month, because playing soccer at mid-day when it's 90 degrees would have been significantly more miserable with an extra foot or so of hair to carry around.



This brings me to the next firsts. This is the first blog in September. It's the 13th. I guess I'm just saving up the best stuff for the second half of the month... This is also the first posting on the new MacBook Pro. I picked it up a week ago so that I wasn't monopolizing our other laptop with my school studies. It's been interesting being a Mac so far. It is certainly superior (in construction) to any PC laptop I have used. My only physical complaint so far is the rather sharp aluminum edge at the seam where the top of the screen meets the typing/hand resting area. This is fine if you are using the machine at a desk or on your lap while sitting, but when used while lying on your back (which I am wont to do from time to time) it does tend to be a bit uncomfortable against the underside of your forearms. Getting used to the OS has been a bit dicey on occasion, but it is similar enough to Windows (or the other way around) that I have not gotten too stymied on anything.



There must be some firsts that I am forgetting, but I'll save them for another post.

Fun with two lights

I broke out the light gear this afternoon to experiment with lighting up the back wall with colors. There were, of course, mixed results with this technique on the first pass in Washington last week. For this try, I was really just hoping to avoid the B movie look. I think things are better this time around, but there are some areas for marked improvement. One thing I noticed in particular is that the girls were sitting too close to the background. Because of this, I wasn't able to effectively throw the it out of focus while shooting at the aperture I had to for the desired light. Next time I'll take over the whole family room.

Washington times...

We spent last weekend in Washington at the Peck estate. Amanda had flown in for the weekend and while I was preparing this post, I realized that I will be including no pictures of her. For some reason, I failed to get any shots of her for most of weekend. I did get a few pictures near the end of our stay, but they look suspiciously like an effort that was past its time. I know that the Pecks will be posting their shots that include the activities prior to our arrival and Amanda.

The opening picture of Claire was taken at Port Gamble. Like they say, "You never know when a it will be handy to whip a 5-in-1 Westcott reflector out of your backpack." Or something like that.


















The funky pictures of Brett and Carol were taken with a red gelled second flash shot on to the wall behind them. I grabbed a red gel at random and shot that flash through a thick glass blender container. I was hoping for more light variation on the wall, but it ended up being a flat red that lent the pictures a slightly seedy quality of a B movie poster. Although this has its place, I will have to make some refinements before using this technique to get kid pictures suitable for framing. In the mean time, I will be satisfied with trying to come up with a name for the movie that features Brett looking vaguely creepy and Carol moderately alarmed. I was thinking along the lines of, "Intrigue Amore! A cautionary tale of what the parrot saw." This adequately sums up the scene for me, but is probably a bit much for the marquee.








This picture could use a bit of explantation, but...

Sweet shades!

A few days ago, April was trying to save on our air conditioning bill by walking around the house with these impossibly cool glasses. She was chowing on some chocolate cow shaped cookies that we picked up at the Tillamook Cheese Factory earlier in the week and her offer for me to have one had to be refused for fear of frost bite-- that, and the fact that I had woofed down a double scoop Tillamook ice cream cone the day before. I would love to include that fun pictures of our outing to the cheese factory, but the camera was really hard to use while it was in Albany. I guess this mean we'll have to go again, for the pictures if nothing else. OK, for the fresh cheese curds and ice cream too...