One of the attractions of JFG is the location and the picturesque nature of the surroundings. Someone much better than me could probably find hundreds of things to photograph. Still, on Friday after dinner, we walked around the area and I took pictures of whatever I thought was interesting and ended up with the photo below.

This is also the place where we had photos taken of Lyla and us last year.

Hope you guys enjoy these shots from around Joes!

The sign for Joes

This is an old tin roofed barn-like structure next to The Coffee Shop, right next to JFG.

Here is a picture of The Coffee Shop and one of its walls. I just loved this shot.

A building next to The Coffee Shop used for various things.

I like this shot of an old flatbed wagon next to the barn and sign.

This last one is another HDR photo of The Coffee Shop with a gorgeous sunset going on around it. I really, really love this shot.

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Here are the best four below, the last one being an HDR photo from the park down the street. The skies look extra-creepy in it because of the HDR method, but it’s pretty cool.

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I wanted to put her on the swings and let her have a good time, and of course I dragged along the camera. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I got there, but I saw some boys playing basketball and had an idea.

Right next to the basketball court is an empty slab of concrete where I assume they meant to expand someday. I took Lyla over there and just let her wander around. She took some interest in the boys playing basketball, as you can see below, but also just enjoyed exploring on her own in a new place.

I hope you enjoy these…I am so very proud of all of them, especially the first one and the last one.  I have a long, long ways to go, but I feel like I’m getting the idea when it comes to composing a good photo. That seems easier with kids or people than with inanimate objects right now, but I can truly see some growth in my abilities.

*Innocence* or *Me and My Shadow*

*Dreaming?*

*Newness*

*Look at me!*

*untitled*

*What’s next?*

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She’s right (of course)…I’ve been preoccupied lately with this new hobby of photography and I haven’t been finding the time to just write.

So here I am.

What has been going on with us? Soooo much.

Lyla is turning a year old in just  19 days. It’s seriously incredible all the changes happening to her every week. She’s walking now and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. She picks up stuff, carries it with her and just talks to herself as she walks around the house.

One of the funnier moments (for me) was us sitting on the couch, and Lyla goes walking down the hallway to her bedroom. You hear her talking all the way…then she comes back and looks at us around the corner, smiling.

Heart melting.

She’s gotten very good at feeding herself finger foods. From barely being able to grab a piece of bread to very coordinated efforts, the growth has been great to witness.

There have been so many changes that it’s hard to remember them all. New sounds…new “words”…she also reaches for each of us like she never did before. Jina holds her and she leans over reaching for me and vice versa. She’s waving at people and clapping.

She’s also been a bit bratty lately…she likes to explore and touch things, so when we take stuff away…man the tears flow.

OHHHH, congrats to my brother and his wife Jennifer on the birth of their baby girl, Ava Carly. You can see her pictured to the right yawning a bit, newborn baby yawn. She’s so cute and perfect, it was great to hold her for the first time on Monday.

Ava is my first niece (Jina’s too) and we’re so thrilled to have her in our lives.

Jina has been busy with baby showers and going-away parties the last month or so. She’s also (and she’ll hate me for saying this) gotten WAY into the Twilight book series and has been doing a TON of reading. I’m so glad she’s been doing that, because she used to read a lot and Lyla arriving kind of threw a kink in all that.

She had to put up with me being gone all last week for work, not to mention a 10-day trip coming up in Nov-Dec for me.

For myself…I’ve been busy working and shooting photos. I’m actually going to try and take a break this week from doingany photography, because it’s taken hold of me and become a bit of an obsession, albeit it a good one in my opinion. I feel like my eyes have been opened and I’m starting to get better and better at this hobby.

But I need the break I think. I have been working on a DVD for Lyla’s first birthday for quite awhile now, and with November 22nd only a few weeks away, I REALLY need to finish it. The DVD is a compilation of pictures and videos from the first year of her life. I can’t wait to see it all done.

This Saturday is my official graduation ceremony at the University of Phoenix Stadium @ 10am. Most of my family will be there and it’s going to be a great time. My diploma came in the mail last week, so it feels official now, but I’m looking forward to doing the “walk” and truly making it real.

November/December is going to be busy. I have a project that needs to reach a certain point by November 19th. Lots to do. Then on the 20th, we fly to Texas for Thanksgiving to see Jina’s family and stay at The Hale House Inn for almost a week. We return on the 26th, which leaves me only about 3 days at home before I head off to Toronto for the afore mentioned work trip.

I’m definitely going to be looking forward to a long break around Christmas. I usually line up vacation days so that I end up with a week and a half off during that time, and this year should be the same thing. Can’t wait!

Well, that’s about it for now. I have a little Lyla video for you below, which really shows off her new walking skills. Enjoy!

(By the way, sorry about the lower quality video…Facebook is really compressing photos and videos lately, so I may have to find a different place to host them)

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High Dynamic Range Imaging…or HDR (the “i” gets dropped) Read more here if you want to learn the details.

The simple explanation is a merging of multiple images of one scene shot at different lighting levels. Some cameras can take many photos in a row and do something called “bracketing” where it will alternate between lightning levels. You then take those images and combine them using software and tone mapping.

I’ll explain it below by showing first the three images I took in rapid succession, followed up by the completed product.

The key to HDR images is to make sure you scene has enough contrast to really take advantage of what HDR gives you. When I was in Springfield taking sunset photos, I realized that coupled with the clouds, this might be a great HDR photo.

I hit the nail on the head with this one.

So here are the first three images, taken at different levels (+2, 0, -2 EV):

Apart, all three are pretty boring and don’t show much detail. The purpose of taking three shots (or more depending) is to capture all the possible lighting details in a scene or subject. Sometimes there are so many details that one photo wont see, so doing an HDR opens up a whole new world.

The result tends to be a photo that looks other-worldly or almost fantasy-like. Some HDR photos can be very subtle, others can be insane.

So here is the finished product after I combined all three photos using Photomatix and tweaking the look a bit:

Pretty cool huh? I’m so proud of this photo…I can’t even tell you how long I’ve been wanting to create one of these.

If you want to check out more HDR photos, just Google it, or check out the links below.

HDR 1

HDR 2

HDR 3 (this one is pretty friggin’ amazing)

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You know, I was expecting a larger amount of “Brian!” throughout this race, but after their initial discussion about Ericka calling his name out all the time, it tapered off. Bummer. They were pretty fun to watch though…lots of bickering and whining.

Still, Brian wins the “Husband of the Year” award for telling Ericka to take a five minute break during a challenge. That’s some incredible patience right there.

Two things to note right off the bat:

This is the second week in a row that a team has quit. Insanity.

And secondly (this was noted on another Amazing Race recap) but when Meghan and Cheyne left at 1:13pm…it was NOT really 12 hours after they finished the last leg. If you recall, everyone ran to the pit stop along the beach after the water slide, which was clearly in late afternoon sometime.

So…what’s up with that?

This leg was fraught with fun and adventure…kicked off with Sam and Dan coming clean to their competition that they were gay. Gary played up the “revelations” angle by fake announcing that Matt was adopted. Hilarious Gary!

I half expected the poker chicks to come out of the closet too, because there just seems to be a TAD too much “honey” and “babe” between the two.

I liked the challenges on this leg. Finally, stuff was fun and difficult. Counting bells was cool and in an interesting setting, even if it was a bit TOO challenging for Ericka. I knew when she started off with 43 she was in for a long day.

The good ones though were the golf and dancing. While dancing is usually lame, this was ring-a-bell, dance and eat all combined into one. Awesome. Not many chose the dancing, but Flight Time and Big Easy did and it was hilarious.

Poor Maria and Tiffany. Other than fear like Mika had last week, it’s very rare that you find a challenge that is essentially impossible for a team to complete. No matter what they tried, Maria and Tiffany couldn’t ring that bell and couldn’t hit those farmer golf balls far enough. It was physically too much for them to handle.

Which resulted in them going back and forth between challenges and finally earning a visit from Phil to let them off the hook and eliminate the girls from the race.

Contest Standings

Dave continues to lead everyone…not sure if that will change anytime soon!

Dave 62
Adrian 45
Ryann 40
Jina 38
Tracy 38
Josie 36
Mike 36
Nicky 31
Ralph 21
Chris 17

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They did so great…we figured they’d be yanking their little “hats” off, but they just endured and had some fun.

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But sometimes there are blessings when you least expect them, and this was also the case Friday night. While booking my Allegiant ticket, I looked outside the small airport and noticed a glorious sunset going on, so I rushed outside.

Two of the sunset pictures appear below, but first is a rain shot I took on Thursday night during a major downpour. A storm had been soaking the entire Midwest, dumped tons of snow in Colorado and was responsible for my delays on Friday night.

This first photo is black and white and I’m kind of proud of the lighting effect enhancing the rain.

Here are the two sunset photos. This first one is looking at an on-site Doppler radar system.

This is a more zoomed in photo…the sun is glowing so bright and the Doppler radar globe itself it lit up with the same glow. Kind of cool.

This last one is looking at the airport itself, with the clouds rushing overhead. I did a 30-second exposure on a tripod to get the cloud effect.

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I snapped a few photos…nothing amazing here, just bored while I wait on others to get done with their work.

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But like I said, today was a bit boring. Most of the testing on my stuff is done and the rest is more sitting around and supporting anything that comes up. Thankfully, I took advantage of the downtime to leave the warehouse where we were testing to walk down a little road for about 100 feet to snap some shots of some old houses and fall colors.

I totally loved this old little house/shed (whatever it was)…the paint was peeling off and just looked awesome.  As you can see in the photos below, it’s essentially the subject of all four shots.

Here they are below.

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