Self Portrait with Bus

The annual field trip to the arboretum was interesting as always-the kids roam around the trees, rocks and river looking for interesting subjects to make pictures of.  My camera is always along but it can be a challenge there-I've been there many times and the morning light has a hard time reaching down into the Listeman since it's on the lower west side of town.  No excuse, I know...there are always subjects even in the most impossible places.  It's all about attitude as we say in Special Olympics!  I shot maybe 30 or 40 frames and as we hunted for one lost student photographer, I grabbed this shot.  Works for me...photographers tend to not like to have their picture taken....so I let the mirror do it.

At the Arb.

SO Bowling

On assignment.  Sort of.  Bowling would not be my sport of choice, but in Special Olympics it is a huge deal for so many athletes.  A photo opportunity is a photo opportunity.  Gregory was just the most fun to make pictures of.  Didn't seem to matter if it was a strike (rare) or gutter ball (many)... he just bubbled with enthusiasm.   He'd contort his body to try and drive that ball down the lane, and then twist maneuver and grin.  I think everyone near that lane loved watching him try and knock down the pins.

Mythical Sunrises

So sometimes I get an idea in my head and finally have to act on it-sleep sure wasn't working.  So photoshop elements was loaded at eleven thirty and I pulled up the recent sunrise images again to work on.  Maybe it was something I'd read about Ansel Adams today...about "post processing" and if that was "real " photography.  We do call this "making a picture," right?  The author stated Adams once said that shooting the photograph was just half the work, and the rest was creating the image in the dark room.  So we're back to our darkroom, the computer.  I do understand in journalistic terms images can't be altered, but in artistic terms, anything goes.  I'm not doing anything original here-other photographers have selected areas, copied, pasted, stretched, tweaked to get their vision of an image.  I had done a technique like this many years ago, but for whatever reason the idea came back when I worked on the sunrises yesterday.
Not knowing which of the images really turned out the best (in my mind) I kept rolling them in front of my eyes.  I still don't know.  They look mythical or dreamlike to me- whatever that really means.  Sometimes it's fun to just really work an image, and this is what sometimes happens....

Sunrises

Cave Point Sunrise

Sunrises and sunsets-I feel obligated to make pictures of them-they do stir the soul.  But...everyone does them.  It's a struggle to decide if I should or let someone else make those images.  In the end, I pressed the shutter because I made the effort to rise early, drive like a maniac to get to this location and manage to get lost.  By god, I was going to shoot this day!  Cave Point is just north west of Whitefish Dunes State Park and a photographers "got-to" location.  There were several other photogrpahers there when I arrived (after getting lost along the way!) who had been there since early morning.  It had looked like the light would be gone, but a distant cloud bank lifted and the morning light poured through.  It's amazing (and maybe shouldn't be) that I can take 50 frames and only have a couple "keepers" or images that I think are interesting.  So here are my sunrise pictures from an October morning in Door County.

First "real" post?

As always, I'm awake early-thinking about the day ahead, the weekend, what needs to be done.   Today in NHS DP we're off to the Listeman Arberatum on the edge of town.  I like to get students out once and a while to shoot together at a similar location.  Sure, the trees are turning color, but I never know what the arb will look like at 8:30 in the morning-it'd be better if it's location were on the east side of town!  We'll see what happens-some of the students have a super eye, so I'll be curious to look at their photos when we return and download.
This is a photo blog-so I better get something up here.

"Cat" tracks on Wedges Creek