Hennepin Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis Minnesota
I don’t usually get too excited about software, but the most recent update to Lightroom has me pretty intrigued. Most of the changes were cosmetic in nature, related to the layout of certain menu items. But Adobe has introduced some new and improved Develop profiles that I really like. I’ve never been able to come up with black & white conversions that I was consistently happy with, but some of the new profiles are pretty sweet. I might even give Monte a run for his black & white money! The color profiles are pretty nice too. I’m still working and fiddling with them, but I think I may have found some new tools!
I just published a gallery on my website of photos from our trip to Scotland last year . Check them out, and feel free to explore the rest of my website too! I’ve been trying to keep things fairly fresh and plan to do more in the near future, including more vacation photo galleries.
Views of uptown Charlotte from the Seventh Street Station parking garage, Charlotte, North Carolina
Nothing to say today, important or otherwise. I just processed a few more photos from the same folder as the last post and thought I would share. Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. Staying warm where it’s cold and dry where it’s wet. 😉
Views of uptown Charlotte from the Seventh Street Station parking garage, Charlotte, North CarolinaViews of uptown Charlotte from the Seventh Street Station parking garage, Charlotte, North CarolinaViews of uptown Charlotte from the Seventh Street Station parking garage, Charlotte, North CarolinaViews of uptown Charlotte from the Seventh Street Station parking garage, Charlotte, North CarolinaViews of uptown Charlotte around the Imaginon Children’s Library in Charlotte, North Carolina
Beach at Sunset, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – Canon 5D
As part of my project to recover drive space by deleting photos that didn’t make the cut, I get to go through those folders again, looking for photos that made the cut but that I had never processed. The year I’ve been looking at most recently is 2012. These photos were from a trip to Hilton Head Island that year. It’s interesting to see that I used three different cameras at that time.
Beach at Sunset, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – Canon 5D
Beach at Sunset, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – Fuji X10Beach at Sunset, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – Canon G12
If someone put a motor on an ofo, would that make it a mofo?
A recent Charlotte phenomenon is the proliferation of something called “dockless bike-sharing programs.” By using an app on your phone (of course) you can pick up one of these bikes, ride it wherever you want, and leave it there. It unlocks automagically using the app, then presumably locks itself when you are finished.
It’s kind of an interesting concept, and I kind of hope it catches on, but I have to wonder just how many people are actually going to ride these things. A recent news article indicated the city council had authorized four different companies to have up to 2,000 bikes in town. That seems like a lot.
Maybe on the first 70 degree day we should have a Bike-In, and everyone head out at lunch time, ride a bike to some central location and leave them all in one place. Seems like a lot of trouble but what the heck.
There’s an office on the floor where I work that gets nice night in the afternoon. This past Friday the office was unoccupied and was getting nice light, so I took this photo with my phone. I posted it on Instagram but not too many people see it there, so I decided it might make a nice blog post.
As a bonus, here is a detail shot I made of the shadow from the blind cords.
Eilean Donan Castle, Dornie, Kyle of Lochalsh, Scotland
I haven’t typically jumped on the “Best of….” bandwagon, but as my buddy Paul says, “My blog, my rules!” Or something to that effect. 😉
I picked these photos as much for the quality of the memory as for the quality of the photograph, but criterias is criterias, right? Many if not most have been posted previously, but again…. Your money back if not completely satisfied!
We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves for 2018, so stay tuned! 🙂
Shoreline near the Tarbat Ness Lighthouse on the Dornock Firth near Wilkhaven, ScotlandThe Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle
View from the A87 on the Trotternish Peninsula, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Royal Cottage on the shore of Loch Katrine, ScotlandView across the Cromartie Firth on the A9 north of InvernessView from the A87 on the Trotternish Peninsula, Isle of Skye, ScotlandNature cruise around the harbor in St. Augustine FloridaWaynesville, North CarolinaThe Hotel 1829 in St Thomas, USVIMorning on Pantego Creek, Belhaven North CarolinaNot a bad view to wake up to. View from our villa at Half Moon Resort, Montego Bay, JamaicaSunset at the Sunset Gazebo. Half Moon Resort, Montego Bay, JamaicaOgon’ki Ensemble from Russia performing at the Mountain Street Dance in downtown Waynesville NCRandom street scene in downtown Minneapolis, MinnesotaNicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, MinnesotaAboard Norwegian Epic on our cruise from Tortola back to Port Canaveral
Nickel & Nickel Winery in Rutherford, near Napa, California
Back in February 2016 I wrote this post titled Storage and Clutter, about my quest to delete files and free up space on my hard drives. At that point I was through 2008 and had deleted 23,000 files worth 236GB. I’ve working slowly but steadily on that project and today I finished 2012. At this point I have jettisoned 56,000 files and reclaimed about 478 GB. Not a bad effort so far, and the farther I go the more confident I become in my previous editing. I’ll need to go a little further with my more recent years because I’m not sure I’ve been doing as good a job lately. We’ll see!
Fisher Vineyards near Santa Rosa, California
These photos are from our 2012 cruise to Alaska from San Francisco, hence the diverse geography. 🙂 They are previously unprocessed files that I discovered while I was reviewing photos, but are not ones that had been scheduled for deletion. 😉
The Golden Gate Bridge viewed from our harbor tour aboard Blue & Gold FleetA visit to the town of Napa, CaliforniaKetchikan, AlaskaAboard the White Pass & Yukon Railway in Skagway, AlaskaWhale watching cruise in Auke Bay near Juneau Alaska with Harv & Marv’s Outback Alaska aboard the M/V “Alaskan” with Captain ShawnWhale watching cruise in Auke Bay near Juneau Alaska with Harv & Marv’s Outback Alaska aboard the M/V “Alaskan” with Captain Shawn
As much as Kathy & I love to travel, we often talk about the fact that there are a lot of interesting things to do right here in Charlotte. Things that people come from all over the country – and even the world – to experience, and we have never been. So a few weeks ago we decided to try something new – to be tourists in our own town and start checking out some of the things we take for granted.
Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NCBechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NCBechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NC
After a nice breakfast we headed to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art for an exhibit of photography that includes work by Paul Strand and of contemporary Mexican photographers. The office where I work is directly across the street from the Bechtler, and our bank gives us free admission once a month, but we had never been!
Hilton Hotel in Charlotte, NCRental bikes in Charlotte, NC
Next we rode the light rail out to visit Doc Porter’s Distillery, where we took a tour and sampled their products. This little distillery is cranking out bourbon, rye whisky, rum, gin, vodka and soon, malt whisky. Nice people and a good story, and well worth the effort to get there.
Doc Porter’s Distillery in Charlotte, NCDoc Porter’s Distillery in Charlotte, NC
So a day of photography and booze – how hard is that?!
I don’t usually go looking for Christmas-themed photos, but sometimes they just manage to find me. 😉 This was shot in Belhaven, NC last year. And when I shot it I commented that it would be my Christmas wallpaper for this year. And so it is!
We’re headed for Belhaven again this coming weekend. There’s no telling what photographs might find me while we’re there. Might even be another Christmas scene. 😉
