Finally went and visited the miniature version of the real Holland including Tulips, Klompen, Stroopwafels, and Lighthouse. Even the beach kind of resembled a dutch beach with sand dunes. Also the first time I saw the flags of all twelve provinces together. I would still prefer the real deal though… Interestingly, we met a musician, Drew Nelson, who told me about the appreciation that people in the Netherlands and other parts of western Europe have for his Americana music. We heard him perform and you should check him out on his website. Thanks for the cd Drew!
The Morton Arboretum (named after the salt giant who founded it) is a park in Lisle Illinois which is dedicated to conservation of trees from all parts of the world. Nice place to walk/drive around during fall (click on picture for more photos).
I took this photo in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Clearwater Florida.
She’s checking out what’s for breakfast on the kitchen table, This was saturday, I thought spring was definitely here with birds and all. The second picture is sunday morning, yep, another 3 inches of…..
Just took this picture through my livingroom window, pretty cool lightning show this evening!
(10 sec exposure and aperture decreased by 5 F stops).
Happy New Year all! We got a bunch of snow overnight to wake up to on the first of January. So we went back to the Blackwell Forest Preserve and took some real wintery pictures, they are kind of dark but hey that’s the weather….. A great day for cross country skiing, ice fishing, and snow tubing as you can see on these pics. For more pics click here.
I took my mom and dad out to the Blackwell and McDowell Grove Forest Preserves out in the western suburbs, armed with my 300 mm lens (35 mm equivalent, 150 mm in Olympus 4/3 system) and an infrared remote control. After having a day with a realfeel of -25C the weather was gorgeous, just above freezing and sunny! Click on any of the pics to get to the main picture page.
First great test of the long focal length, Mr. Squirrel enjoying his christmas lunch. He did not have very good table manners, you could hear him chew all throught the forest. He was nice enough though to sit there long enough to have about 34 pictures taken.
Next I tried my IR remote, here you see me about 5 yards away from the camera trying to see if the remote steers the focus properly, those buttons are sensitive, I suddenly saw the aperture snap and this was the result……
Although the aperture effects are not so obvious when viewing long distance, you can still see the effect. First pic below has f/3.6 (short depth of focus) and second one f/22 (large depth of focus).
You can see a similar effect when you keep the camera low to the ground and have the leaves in the center in focus while the background and foreground are out of focus.
Alright, enough play for one day, let’s wrap it up with a freaky tree picture, a leave that got stuck in a crack in the road, and a white tree in blue sky. Happy Holidays!!
just a little picture of a candle. Took me a good half hour to get the lights, shutter and aperture set to make the crystal look blue in the raw image. Merry Christmas!!
I recently had the chance to make a quick visit to Quito, Ecuador. The old town center was one of the two first Unesco world heritage sites. It is the best preserved historic city center in Latin America, a beautiful city with a lot of great atmosphere (apart from the exhaust fumes from buses and trucks).
The equator runs about 20 km outside the city center, this is the place to be in the northern and southern hemisphere at the same time.
Outside the city center, there is plenty of mountain around to do a lot of hiking and biking. I would take some time to acclimatize though before doing any strenuous exercise, the air is thin at 2500 to 4100 meters altitude. We did one mostly downhill ride descending 1600 meters on a mountain bike on one of the rocky and muddy slopes of the Pinchincha. Easy to do with a bike rental of 5 dollars a day, the guy who invented double suspension mountain bikes deserves a medal. Further away from the city, towards Papallacta, there is great hiking areas with lots of volcanic hot springs to relax in afterwards. The views over the mountains and especially the peak of the Antisana at 5700 meters are really breathtaking.
This are just a couple of the photos, for the rest go the main Quito picture page.
Posted on October 28th, 2007 in Hiking | 1 Comment »
Starved Rock is a great State Park in Utica Illinois. It has a lot of hiking trails and beautiful views over the Illinois River. At this time of the year, there is lot of nice autumn forest colors, but the waterfalls were not much more than my dripping kitchen faucet The falls should be very nice in winter when they freeze into a icefalls, I will go check that out for you later this year… For more pictures, click the photo below.
