From monkeys to stormy nights....

These are some of the photos I have taken on my journey around the world.  The photo above is of a mother Rhesus Monkey and her baby.  Africa you say?  No!  Right here in California at the Sierra West Wildlife Sanctuary near Santa Rosa.  There are so many sanctuaries here in California that you really don't have to go to foreign lands to see these beautiful animals in a natural environment. 

This pair was less than 30 feet away from me and I was shooting with a Sigma DG 50-500mm lens (actual mm was at 410mm) at F6.3 with an exposure time of 1/125 second.  No flash needed as the day was bright and slightly overcast. 

 

It was a dark and stormy... well; you know the rest of that story.  This photo is of the Elmore, Minnesota main water tower which sits on the only hill in this quiet little Southern Minnesota town located about 10 miles East of Blue Earth right along the Iowa state boarder.  Being the Mid-West there are days where you can go from bright sunny and no breeze to the most severe weather that is so often reported on in the news.  My mother-in-law lives in this farming community and we go back as often as we can to visit.  On this particular day the clouds rolled in like a vengeance.  Wind sheers, lighting, and rain so heavy that within a few minutes of taking this photo I could not see this water tower.  I titled this photo "The Best Place to Live Next to During a Lightning Storm"...  the title is what most people would expect... however, the people who actually live right next to the tower lost all their power when a lightning bold hit the tower and part of the strike hit their home and knocked out all their kitchen appliances... Yes... FRIED them!

 

On this photo I used a Sigma DC 18-50mm lens (actual shot take at 33mm approximately 150 feet from the water tower).  I shot the tower at F3.5 with the setting at 1/50 of a second. I was lucky that there was a light coming from a very small break in the clouds and it hit the tower just as I was taking this shot.  I guess time is everything... yes it is!

Recently I spent a few hours at 'PAWS' in San Andreas, California (Performing Animal Welfare Society - wild animal refuge). I managed to capture this male African Lion.  He was about 300 feet away up on a hill.  In the past it would have been very difficult (let's be honest.... IMPOSSIBLE) for me to take a photo like this because of the distance and fact I shoot with a Pentax DSLR.   With the new K mount lenses that are available that fit the Pentax cameras, the updated DSLR sensors, shake reduction features, and improved auto focus (I usually shoot manual - but at that distance I tried the auto focus feature) it came out better than I could have done shooting manually and hoping my eye would be able to get the fine features.  As I have stated on many of my postings, it's a good idea to try several different settings when taking photos.  Shoot until you find what is best for you and for the conditions.  Because it was impossible to get any closer to this beautiful lion it was important that I use/have a lens that will compensate for the distance.  Even if you don't, take the photo anyway and see what you come up with...  you can always enlarge the object and crop it. 

These are some photos that are in the Modesto Camera Clubs End of the Year Competition Program that I have submitted.  The Camera Club is a great place to learn how to take better photos.  If you're ever in the area, you should stop by...   check out the meeting information: 

http://www.modestocameraclub.net

Lady passing by while coat changes color

Another example....  Woman passing by and her coat changes color.  By taking the same

photo over several times and having the object move just a little in each photo, you can

stitch the photos together into a movie format and make the movie look like an old style 

film.  Photos don't have to be stagnant... having them move within one photo frame makes

the photo just a bit more interesting.  Try it...  be creative and don't forget to share your

photos with others.  

First you don't see it... then you do

First you don't see it, then you do, and then you don't.
Experimenting with photos is fun.  Taking the exact same photo
and adding a feature, then taking it away can make for an
interesting short for a photo.  It gives the viewer something
to compare and it distracts from a long still photo without
shifting the viewer away from the photo.  Just something to
do to change things up.  

To view older photos on another one of my posts... go to:     http://bmoore3photos.blogspot.com

Just some recent submissions -

 The Grand Finale.... 

 Can You See My Little Face?  (on the lower left corner of my photo of the moon shot  you can see a small face in the middle of a crater)....

 African Cape Buffalo (shot at Safari West near Santa Rosa, Calif. - Great place to visit and photograph wildlife).....

 This is titled "Ring Tail Lemur"....   (Lemur Catta)....   again photographed at Safari West.)

 
"Psychedelic Bodie Grill and Hood"....  This photo was shot at Bodie State Park, Bodie, California...  This is why I love photography (and all the things that you can do once you are back with your computer ... the creative part of photography).   The photo was originally of an old rusted out car in Bodie.  Fenders, grill, hood, headlights, windshield.... all twisting and turning to create something different.  I enjoy playing with images. 

 "Two Points of View... Mr. Rushmore".  Most of the time when visitors go to Mt. Rushmore they just go to the observation platform and take their photos; and to me, that is missing the entire adventure of Rushmore.  Step away from the norm and peek around corners, boulders, tree trunks an you will see a different Mt. Rushmore.   This one I call "Two Points of View" because of the directions the four Presidents are looking.  Two to their right and two off slightly to their left.  Yes, nothing seems to change in politics... not even in granite. 



It's been a crazy month here at "Looking Through My Eyes"...  Had one of those “opps” days a few weeks ago when my computer crashed and I had to replace my hard drive...  Like any PC user I had backups (even to my backups).  So, rather than being able to do what I enjoy the most (going out and taking photos) I was working on getting my PC back up and running, reloading all my photo tools, and searching high and low for many of the photos I had taken and still not "saved" to external hard drives.  Now that I'm back to the point where I can again get back out and shoot... I thought I'd post some photos that I have been submitting these past months for competition at the Modesto Camera Club (I stopped selling photos because that was taking up too much time and the "business" part of photography became too much like "work"...  After all, in real life I'm really "retired"...)  Hope you enjoy these photos.  I'll be posting more often over the next month or so (it's the slow season)......

PS... just as a reminder... all my photographs are  "©"....   Thank you for respecting my photography by not copying photos without permission (you can seek permission by contacting me at my posted hotmail Email address).  No commercial use of these photos is permitted without permission.  Again, thank you.   ...