Portland's roses and such

After escaping from Mt. Rainier with our lives we made it down to Portland. The city of Portland proved interesting with lots of parks and many individuals that exuded the city motto of "Keep Portland Weird". Homeless folks liked to stash stuff all over, especially in the parks. Sadly some of their luggage seemed nicer than mine. You know in hindsight I should have swapped luggage with them. Oh well, next time.

I hope it doesn't pop it's top

I went out west for a bit of a vacation from the ordinary and by all accounts had a good time. I'll share some shots that are not as touristy. Fun fact, if the volcano would have erupted while I was there I would have most likely died.

Star Gazing

Last night I felt like taking a trip out into the mountains to try and capture the Milky Way. Let's start with my vision. My vision is fairly terrible as I have a cataract in my left eye. This eye also has the condition known as "lazy eye". I'm under the impression I was not meant to well from the left side at all, not to mention my right eye is around 20/200 uncorrected.

Moving on, I found a nice little spot in an open field and set my gear up. I find manual focusing the best bet. So you can image me using my superhero like vision to see if I have proper focus on the tiny LCD of my Nikon 5200. About half the shots were a little off focus but became a little more dialed in towards the end of the session. Anyway, I hope you find some enjoyment from these images.

Rolling deep in my hood

Two posts in one month? I'm really starting to tear up this blog. Last weekend I figured I'd do a small photo walk around my neighborhood. I live in a a small place called Middletown, VA. One stoplight and one main street that pass thorough the town. You might wonder what is in this little town? Well no worries I think I've captured some of it's magnificence.

The best piece of yard art I've even encountered

The joys of dog ownership

A true rebel that laughs in the face of your silly laws

This lion was over the door to the Wayside Little Theater. Sadly, this might have scared away the customers as it is no longer open.

An old hitching post for horses. Now all that is next to it are cars and they are not hitched.

Merica

What's more American than watching Chinese made fireworks go off? Not a lot. This year I thought I'd try my hand at firework photography. I landed one keeper out of 50 plus shots. This made me think back to my days on the dating scene, one success out of 50. After the fireworks my wife wanted to play with some sparklers. She wanted to spell out the cat's name but had quite a bit of difficulty trying to spell it's name backwards. English majors, go figure.

Post Overload

I know what everyone is thinking, "Stop posting so frequently on this extensive blog!". I hear you and I'll try to tone it down a notch moving forward. Last weekend my wife and I paid a little trip to Shenandoah Caverns in Quicksburg, VA. This was a nice little adventure. The caverns have an elevator, apparently the only one in the country. Our tour guide was a 16 year old kid who as corny as the items in the gift shop. There are some impressive formations and few tight spaces. I managed a few decent pictures with a new lens I was trying, a Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 EX DC OS. I will provide another post to discuss this lens. Anyway, here are some of the better shots.

So I have a fancy camera......

About a year an a half ago my wife bought me a Nikon D5200 as an early Christmas present. Since then I've attempted to try and learn the features of this camera and the general principles of photography. Let's just say that you can learn a lot from the internet but a fancy camera and a few youtube videos do not a photographer make. I'll post pictures here periodically. Let me know if you want prints (highly unlikely) or feel free to criticize. like I mentioned, I'm married, I can take the criticism.  Here is a shot from Pensacola, Florida from November of 2014 with a 35mm prime lens. I was down there to move my mother from Virginia. My mother almost killed us several times driving around Pensacola and gawking at things. I'm thankful I made it out alive and she has life insurance.