So Where Are We Shooting This Weekend?

So funny that you mentioned this! I have been sitting at my office all afternoon pondering that question....
Thinking of some coastal lighthouses in CT.

Weekends?
I generally plan to stay around the house on weekends. I live where many people vacation and it is far less congested for us "locals" to be out and about during the week. Fortunately, I have my own business and work from home (or wherever I many be) and on whatever schedule I choose.

That may sound like a really good deal and it generally is - as long as I don't abuse the "freedom." If a task doesn't get done that cause me to lose income I have no one to blame but myself. :)

With all that said, I am planning to re-shoot a local lighthouse. The Fenwick Island Light in southern Delaware is a difficult subject. So...if/when the light is right I'll be shooting the light.



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~ Bill
~ US Pictures .com

I believe my kids and I are going up to Charlotte this Saturday, so at least 30 minutes to an hour will be spent shoting and riding the brand new street car line up there

I would have thought this would have been an active thread by now.

I want to go somewhere I have to carry a pistol and bear mace.

I crack me up.

Actually, I was just considering that very question. IF I get paid tomorrow via one of two ways I was thinking about roaming the state of Alabama, spending the night in Birmingham and shooting all over between here and there. I need to increase my Southeast footprint. (Including much to my dismay that other school that shall remain nameless in Tuscaloosa.

OR, I will stay around the Panhandle and kayak someplace I couldn't get to before and shoot there. Really, the options are endless.

I'm not a photographer but am thinking of getting into it, not as deep as you pros but maybe I could develop some advanced amateur skills. I finally found a book that appears to explain this stuff at a level that even this numbskull can understand. The D5200 I bought last fall has been severely underutilized due to my lack of knowledge and the difficulty of finding good beginner information, at least that I can make sense of.

Anyway, tomorrow is a state holiday but I have other things to take care of, but that leaves Saturday and Sunday almost totally free so I might study up on that book some and then take the Nikon out and experiment, probably at a historic farm nearby Saturday and the mountains on Sunday, no major traveling for those.

I don't go anywhere in the summertime because of snakes. But once fall hits, I'll be a little more adventurous. I suppose I could go downtown.

Dave, I thought about it for years, I finally decided to take the plunge and the water feels great! I don't know were I will be going but I will be going somewhere, I have so many places just close to home, even my backyard has produced images I'm happy with.

Snake boots, it is ALL about having good snake boots.

These stay in my truck at all times. (usually worn by my wife or son)

The challenge I see Mario is not letting the photography eat too much into my traditional art time, in fact I I'm not sure it's a good idea for me to take on another medium at all, so I'm only dipping my toes in for now.

I am looking into going to the Vulcan in Birmingham, a place I have yet to go yet. The view of the city and the Vulcan itself should make some good images! We will see if I can get there :)

lol @ JC.

David-There should be a Nikon "Starter" CD that came with your camera that provides basic tips, and don't think of photography as taking away from your painting, but creating an "Idea Book" to draw ideas from for painting. I can actually paint and draw quite well, but being a "Jedi Ninja" Girl Geek as my full time job that keeps be occupied about 60 hours a week, Photography lets me keep my art, and keep my required art time frame.

Lighthouses sound wonderful, but the closest is 2 or so hours away-but I would like to go to Charleston........(wheels turning)

So many good ideas.....

Alicia, I did watch the CD and it was actually too basic, didn't teach me much more than how to turn the thing on a click the shutter. lol I don't need to take pro quality photos for my art, I actually have thousands of reference photos already so getting deeper into photography would definitely take time from my traditional art and I like to work from life with that as much as possible anyway, in fact I'm having second thoughts about doing the photography for that reason, it's not like I'm super productive as it is. It's hard to get really good at one thing when you split your time amongst so many interests.

I generally don't shoot on weekends because there are too many people as Bill says.Actually I don't shoot much at all in the summer. Too hot and rainy and humid here now. I content myself with phone shots of bands I work with. I use them to promote and to build my social network, which will come in handy when I market images. A project i have been ignoring is going through my phone shots. I have a project in mind that will end in a new gallery or maybe even be put on my other account here.

For me it all depends on the "sky/weather"... clouds? I sure hope so, I LOVE clouds!!!! Rain.. this can be okay.. I love the misty rain and mood.... crowds? not so much... heat, I can't stand the heat.... traffic? ugh... I will see if the weather/mood/desire it just right! I just HAVE to be there... whereever it "is" it has to be at sunset... I am not a morning person to get up at dawn... so... need to figure that into the equation too.

With any luck I'll have the first of two 10x10 rooms in the house emptied by the end of the day tomorrow, so Saturday I'll start putting together the first two of four still life sets.

Now that temps are hitting 100 degrees here in the Texas hill country I have little planned. Some early morning walks down to the Llano river take a few pics maybe then jump in cool off and walk home. That can be as short as 20 minutes or until I get too hot.

come on fall!

We are staying close to home this weekend because I'm tearing apart my office and turning it into a non-office. I can't wait to get the old furniture and all the accumulated docs and files gone for good. Sort of an official celebration/recognition of not needing any of it anymore.

I'd kinda like to go hiking up on the mountain soon and shoot some of my favorite places but it's been blasted hot and between that and the drought it isn't a good year for alpine wildflowers and hiking's not fun when it's in the 100s. And there are wildfires somewhere around nearly every day so I don't want to roam too far from home.

I'm shooting in my basement

I'm shooting to complete 25 framed vulture wall pieces

So I then can complete 25 free standing sculptures

All for the up coming show the next weekend

The heat index will be well over 110 here in Houston th next few days, so if I shoot anything it will be tourist fireworks in Kemah.

In the mountains. Taking the 4-wheel drive so we can get places the riff-raff can't.

@JC -
"I want to go somewhere I have to carry a pistol and bear mace... spending the night in Birmingham .."

Wholly bear tracks, Batman! Are there really bears roaming through Birmingham?? LOL

Bill Tomsa

http://billtomsa.blogspot.com/

Not shooting anywhere this weekend because I'll have workers at my house again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed they will get finished this weekend, so I can get back to doing what I want, when I want. :) We will be going back to Shiloh next week to find more fawns to photograph though. But for the weekend, I'm stuck here.

lol. I am lucky, from my house I have many choices within the 100 mile range, beaches, mountains, farms, larger cities, museums, zoos, beaches, the works. Last weekend I did some shots in Camden, SC, which is a really cute, still old fashioned town 20 minutes from me. I will most likely end up going to my "old faithful" Swan lake. I go early in the morning when the riff raf is still asleep, there is a "Swamp side" that normally does not get much traffic, and I discovered some red-headed woodpeckers nesting a few weeks ago. That said I am trying to get off of my bird kick, as there are so many bird photos in the world already, who really needs more?
I would love to go to Charleston, but it will most likely be crowded. Maybe just a random drive in a new direction. There are so many farms and plantations close I could get some landscapes and still retreat to the comfort of my drivers seat.......

I wish we had more wildlife where I am. I see birds, deer, squirrels, gators, and occasional rabbits. I guess I could try out my newest lens at the zoo, but there will be ikky people there......

Bill, not really.

Parker, I will look for ya there if I do the B,Ham thing. That at sunrise and the Alabama Theater are my targets there along with the rhino viper they have in their zoo.



Heat index well over 100 = Sunrise shot or kayak shots.

I will be taking puppy portraits of the latest addition to our family right here in Tucson. I'm babysitting Miss Bunny and my granddaughter while my son takes a much needed vacay in Costa Rica.
Trust me, if she wasn't so cute, she'd be in the doghouse by now!

I was in my backyard

Edward-That is a bit disturbing. I would have taken the picture.....but looking at it all I can think is...omg where is the baby!

Another one from this weekend......

This field is across the road from where my in laws farmstead is. It actually hasn't been harvested because it is extremely weedy, and for whatever reason it didn't fill the heads (no wheat in them), so it would cost more to harvest than to leave, so its been left. I have driven by it probably 40 times since wheat harvest, until this weekend when I noticed a weed free portion of the field I thought I could get a flawless flat horizon on. Didn't think much of it until I was flipping through the images and it caught my eye, turned out pretty good! Moral of the story a second, third, fourth, fortieth look at a place sometimes can finally yield results!

P.S. Click on the preview to view the real deal.....the color shift is icky.

@Alicia - shot for the book cover market.

This was from this weekends shooting.

@Edward-Yes, I looked through your images (I do this every time I see you in a discussion as I like stealing your ideas-oh no...not stealing...um "You give me inspiration" yes that is it). Have you had luck with the book covers? Yours are very cool-and the one with the teacup in the woods is very familiar.

@Thomas-Very Nice Image, What post processing are you doing? I love your color and tones! I also finally "Notice" things to shoot after passing them repeatedly. I also watch different areas throughout the seasons as some scenes are better in winter with foliage died off, and some are better with a little green.

Alicia each image is different, most of them using HDR techniques of one kind or another. I use about 3 different pieces of software depending on the image, as well as LR, and luminosity masks, and always do final finishing in Photoshop.

I have had the Creative Cloud Suite for a while, but am really only starting to use it for editing, I had been using it mostly for organizing and converting raw to jpg. I get so confused in photoshop! Odd since I am a computer geek jedi ninja as my full time pay the bills job.

I was at Rifle Falls State Park this past weekend. Will be somewhere in Wyoming this coming weekend.

./cry I wanna go................

@Alicia, conservative estimate I have about 5000 hours invested in the use of photoshop and my HDR programs over the past 6 years.....and I think that is very conservative, you get pretty good at it after awhile!

Good point Thomas. It takes just as much time and effort to learn processing as it does to learn shooting--maybe more. Me, I'm still learning both. I took a community college class a few years ago to learn my way around Photoshop.

Yes....there are so many techniques to be applied, so many different things you can do. Post processing is quite the rabbit hole!

"...Post processing is quite the rabbit hole!"


Ditto on that. Was just talking about (PS) processing in another thread.

Lol. I just figured out how to use the brushes in Lightroom.......Once I figured it out it was on like donkey kong- started looking through shots I had tossed because of minor background distractions, sunspots, etc......stayed up way too late.....had to do my 8am meeting via telephone.....oh well.

:) Know what you mean about the Adjustment Brush in LR (I'm on LR3). I use the brush quite a bit for selective contrast stuff.

Well the weekend continues well into the week, my wife and I took a short drive down Fort Island trail as I heard it's the most spectacular place to capture sunsets. The sky has been party clouded and we have been having lots of rain. It's not a long drive maybe 5 mile to the beach on a beautiful trail with all kinds of wildlife and scenery on the way. The weather was perfect, part of the sky looked like storm and the other part the sun was quite visible. We Went to the end down to the farthest boat ramp and dock. Across the gulf's channel maybe 1/2 mile is the Crystal River nuclear power plant.

I started with that massive structure shooting the stacks and dome. Then my attention focused to a colony of small crabs that were overflowing the shoreline. Still waiting for the sun to go down some to start focusing on it I decided to walk over to the pier. There were interesting landscape shots and tall grasses and tree trunks all with great light falling on them. But the most memorable photo is going to end up being a "snapshot" I took on the pier.

I have never witnessed anything like this before, soon as we get to the pier a family of four approaches us and the husband says to me look at my hair, at first I thought he had to much to drink and then he says it's time to go? He then pointed at my wife and her hair was standing up at ends, it was the funniest strangest thing I ever saw, static electricity in the air, the weather took a turn for the worst and looked like we were going to be in the middle of a serious electrical storm.

When I finally composed my self from the laughter I took the snap shot of my wife's hair standing straight up, and then quickly left the pier as did everyone there.

Finally after taking some 200 shots I captured my sunset and I think it might be a keeper, but the hair sticking straight up stole the day!

Uh, hair sticking straight up is a danger sign if there is lightening in the area. Please be careful out there.





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~ Bill
~ US Pictures .com

I just loaded Lightroom 6 (the DVD, not CC). Never used it before. Haven't a clue. Still not sure why I thought I wanted it. Have no time to figure it out now.

Yes, Bill after we had our good laugh, you should have seen how quick everyone hightailed off the pier, including us.

Alina gave me permission to post the photo as long as I didn't post here entire face, like I said it's a snap shot but if you look carefully you can see the hair standing straight up, I have been in Florida since 1974 and been all over on piers and boating up and the down the Florida water ways and this is my first time experiencing anything like this, really a scary moment after the laugh as we went to our vehicle for shelter and safety.

@Kathleen-I have had it for about 6 months and just started figuring it out.

Static and all I manged to get my sunset image, just before the rain started.

Finally got to go to the Vulcan! Still going through and editing the shots. Looks like I am going to have a lot for FAA!

Going back into NYC to hit some "roof top bars" at dusk overlooking Times Square and Midtown areas! Can't wait!

Awesome Parker!

Cool Diana-I wanna go, lol. I will probably be doing more hummingbirds, it is almost time for them to migrate and I will miss them a lot.

Since I'm looking for those interesting macro shots, not to far from home, I've been working this local park at the edge of of Kings Bay just a few minutes from home and there seems to be endless possibilities there considering the amount of real estate one has available looking thru a macro lens. Plenty of spiders, lizards,ants,birds,plants,dragonflies,damsel flies, and more.