Raven Run and McConnell Springs

Raven Run

It was very wet

This past Saturday Erin and I went to Raven Run, then McConnell Springs. We headed for Raven Run after lunch, and got there a few hours before closing. There were a surprising number of people there, but I guess it was actually a pretty nice day for hiking. It was a nice mild temperature and overcast. The hiking was... ugly. It was extremely muddy. I guess that shouldn't have been surprising since it rained most of the past week. I did spot a snail on the trail, and that was pretty much it for my pictures here.

Erin says it's cute

Well there was also this wildflower. It took us a while to figure out what it was, but we did it. Go us!

Fire pink

 

McConnell Springs

Next up was McConnell Springs, which turned out to be much more fruitful for photography and surprisingly, wildlife. It was also much less muddy, since their trails are either paved or mulched pretty well. It's a great place to visit, especially after a rain, and I'm always searching for a repeat of something I witnessed here a couple years ago that I'd love to get a picture of.

I was sad to see that part of the roof at the nature center had burned.

Burnt over the picnic area

 The blue hole was looking very blue. There is a path going through with one sided flooded due to heavy rain, and the blue hole is on the other side. The side-by-side below shows how blue it appears.

Left image - normal water, Right image - the blue hole

 The heavy rain had the boils really going. I took a brief video since pictures don't really do it justice.

Link to Video (I can't seem to embed it anymore)

The final sink was also flowing well. Erin and I have been to McConnell Springs 6 or 7 times, and this has definitely been the most active we've seen the water.

Lots of water

There are a lot of tent caterpillar webs around during this time of year in Kentucky. We happened to see a tent caterpillar.

Tent Caterpillar

They've done a lot of work over the years to build up a marshy area in the park. Which leads me to the prize of the day.

Great blue heron

There were also these birds that we watched zig-zag around the pond and splash into the water briefly. We're pretty sure they were chimney swifts. I didn't manage to get a picture of them hitting the water. Maybe someday...

Chimney swift (mostly certain)

While I was watching the chimney swifts, I happened to catch a glimpse of a larger bird flying into the trees. I didn't manage to get any particularly good shots of it. I would have cropped closer if I had. This one is blurry at full resolution, but pretty good at the standard upload size (2048 pixels wide).

Cooper's Hawk

And because I can't resist, another shot of the great blue heron.

Vertical

Then came a really lucky moment. The heron started preening and looking restless, then decided to take flight. I wish I could say that the flight sequence were my best pictures of the day, but I got my camera caught on my jacket while I was lifting it. Hopefully next time I'll do a bit better. In the meantime, this is still a pretty good picture when it is downrezzed.

Great blue heron in flight

And finally as we were leaving, we managed to scare a groundhog and watched him quickly scamper for cover. I thought my opportunity was lost, but was saved by a cute bunny.

Bunny, grooming

And while I was taking a few pictures of the bunny, this fat little guy decided to pop back out.

Groundhog

So overall a very fruitful visit to the springs. We also saw a few other creatures... squirrels, which I've had a surprisingly difficult time getting a good picture of. Robins - they are plentiful around here, and I've got a ton of photos of them. Cardinals - they were singing loudly today, but I didn't get any pictures worth posting. I also think I caught a glimpse of a red-headed woodpecker, though it was too fleeting to know for certain. Definitely a great day, and I'm glad that even though we were exhausted after trekking through all the mud at Raven Run, we decided to go ahead and visit the springs.

Spring Break (part 3)

Chillin'

Spring Break (part 1)

Spring Break (part 2)

Spring Break (part 4)
Spring Break (part 5)

Next up was Wannamaker County Park. I spotted the lizard above while we were walking along the trail. There were trails around a windy pond and through some marshland. The first thing we saw while walking was a spider. I couldn't resist a close-up.

Ick

 We walked past the pond and into some marshland. I tried taking some pictures, but they didn't turn out worth posting. Then we started around the pond and saw a couple of turtles.

Tiny turtle

Not tiny turtle

After that we started walking through the more recreational area of the park. We saw a goose, and started wandering in its general direction. It suddenly decided to take off and flew right by us.

Goose in flight! 

And finally we saw this guy hanging out in the parking lot as were leaving. I was maybe 10 feet from it when taking this picture. He was much too brave for my liking.

Squirrel, looking all innocent, but I know it's plotting

Spring Break (part 2)

We weren't the only people braving a chilly day to visit the beach!

Spring Break (part 1)

Spring Break (part 3)
Spring Break (part 4)
Spring Break (part 5)

Day 2 of spring break involved a trip to Sullivan's Island to visit the beach and then a visit to Wannamaker County Park. I'll work on the visit to the park next, but for now... the beach! Unfortunately it was a chilly, cloudy, drab day. And extremely windy. We got a late start, so when we got to Sullivan's Island we grabbed lunch first. We went to Taco Mamacita, which we discovered in Chattanooga. I really like their take on fusion tacos. We definitely recommend it if you get a chance to try it.

After lunch, we headed to the beach and then the sandblasting began. It was a good day to go to the beach if you needed exfoliation. On our walk to the beach we passed this beautiful house.

Beachfront property. I'm sure they have an ocean view from the upstairs deck

 Next is the lighthouse, one of the two major attractions on Sullivan's Island. The other is Fort Moultrie, which we went to a few years ago.

Sullivan's Island Lighthouse

A closer view

Laughing gull (and here began a strong interest in bird photography...)

 We did walk in the water a little, but it was too chilly to do much more than dip our toes in.

It was drab and windy, but it's still the beach!

And finally I couldn't resist making an animated gif to demonstrate just how windy it was. These 2 shots were about 1/4 second apart.

Spring Break (part 1)

Spring Break (part 2)

Spring Break (part 3)
Spring Break (part 4)
Spring Break (part 5)

Erin and I took a week long vacation at the beginning of April. It was Erin's spring break (Spring Break! WOOOO!), so we decided to take a trip to Charleston, SC to see my dad and some of the rest of my family. We also decided to take a side trip to Jekyll Island, GA for 2 days. We managed to fit in a fair amount of activities during our trip, (and way too many photographs) so I'm going to split this into a few entries.

Day 1 was a trip to Summerville, SC to see my cousin pitch for her high school softball team. It was a tournament, and we missed the first 2 or 3 games they played, including the one she started, so it was looking like we weren't going to actually get to see her pitch. But she got in for the last few innings of the game we did see. And her team won, so I guess Erin and I were good luck. Yay! Anyway, I took some pictures, but didn't feel like she particularly loved them so I won't post any.

After the softball game, we headed over to Azalea Park, which turned out to be a great decision. The azaleas were in full bloom, and we got there just in time for some great light.

Photobombed by a spider!

I love the dark background on this one. Almost like I did it on purpose...

Shootout!

Clichéd walkway picture

Beautiful!

The golden light I wish I always had

The more pictures I take, the more I realize I'm really interested in texture. That makes me want to get a macro lens. :sigh: Photography is turning out to be a very costly hobby!

Photo Scanning

Who needs Instagram?

I recently decided to undertake a long-term project of digitally archiving some old family photos. First up on the list are pictures from my parents' wedding and honeymoon. This all came about because my dad was trying to clear out some clutter, and he was showing me some old photographs asking if I wanted any of them. There were several that were very interesting to me, and I decided it would be a good idea to try to get them digitized since some are showing signs of their age. I'm hoping to get everything scanned eventually, though it's a large undertaking.

To get started I did some research on scanners. The Canon 9000F Mark II seemed to have pretty good reviews, so I settled on it. It can scan both prints and negatives. I haven't gotten a chance to try any negatives yet, but so far I'm quite pleased with the results of print scans. It's also fast compared to the all in one scanners I'm used to.

So my plan is to post here periodically with updates, some before/after postprocessing comparisons and maybe eventually I'll post some pictures from the vacation to South Carolina and Georgia Erin and I took a couple weeks ago.

Star Trails!

My first attempt at a star trail picture

I'm very pleased with this end product. It wasn't terribly difficult to produce either.

Erin sent me the guide here a while back: http://www.jamesvernacotola.com/Resources/How-To-Photograph-Star-Trails. It's a great introduction to what it takes to shoot a star trail. I've had it in the back of my mind that this is something I'd like to try and tonight presented a decent opportunity. I had originally set out to photograph the (waxing) crescent moon. I failed miserably there, but the star trails are a nice consolation I think.

Equipment used:

• Canon EOS 6d camera
• Canon 24-105 f4 lens
• Cheap tripod
• Vello Wireless ShutterBoss

Here's what I did:

1. Setup the camera on the tripod
2. Framed my shot
3. Fired off a few test shots to try to get the exposure reasonable. I had to balance a pretty bright neighborhood with still trying to get a significant number of stars showing up. Luckily I managed to hide the worst offender (a street light) behind the tree. I finally settled on 24mm, f5.6, 30s, ISO 400.
4. Set the camera to bulb mode, with the settings I settled on above dialed in.
5. Set the intervalometer to continuously fire off 30s frames. I ended up with 120 frames, exactly 1 hour's worth.
6. Load all the frames into Lightroom. I adjusted the white balance, cropped out the little bit of my house that I had in the top right corner (oops) and darkened the overall scene by 1 stop of exposure (the houses and tree were much too bright. I then synced those to all of the frames.
7. Exported the frames and loaded them into Startrails.
8. Made the star trails image using Lighten-Screen-Blend mode.
9. Then made a time lapse video. I tried to set the resolution higher, but it just caused Startrails to crash, so I settled on 480 pixels wide. The default setting was for 15 frames per second, but I think that's a bit too fast for just 120 frames. I ended up using 5fps for the video below.

Around the 8 second mark, you can see where Erin and I were playing with the green laser pointer.

Peninsula Park

It's been a while since I posted. I've got the pictures for the next photography class post, but they're really boring so I haven't been particularly motivated to post them. So instead I'm posting some pictures from a visit Erin and I made to Peninsula Park in Georgetown yesterday. There's a short walking trail that makes a loop, running along the backside of a neighborhood and the Elkhorn Creek. I'm quite pleased with a few of the pictures I took.

Turf Wars

Two male robins that we think were fighting over territory ahead of mating season.