Taken in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was an interesting town full of some amazing, old architecture. Also, prisons and military bases.
Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
PotD: Common Merganser
Female common merganser. This is the first one of these I have ever seen. Really pretty bird that posed a lot. It was tough choosing this one from four others.
PotD: Kingfisher with Breakfast
I watched this guy bash the poor crawdad over and over on the cable he was sitting on, trying to kill it so he could eat it. I’ve never got a photo of a kingfisher with food in its bill, so I was really excited to take this.
Kingfisher Drying Off
I have an even better picture of this guy for Monday.
PotD: Ducks
Some fun ducks hanging out.
PotD: Nervous
I’m not sure what this is, but I believe it’s a brown-headed cowbird. I had some trouble with the bird identification guide online. Very tiny, easily startled bird. Very hard to get close enough for a shot, usually.
PotD: Kestrel
Beautiful birds, and some of my favorite to photograph. Narrowly missed this one taking flight. Still pretty darn rusty.
Photo: Bison With Calf
All my spare brain power right now is going into working on the outline for a novel. I wish I had more to say—I probably will in a few days. To tide you over (and keep you coming back for more), here’s a b-side photo from my Yellowstone expedition earlier this year.
Compositionally, this photo is okay. What it really lacks is any kind of dynamic lighting. There’s a single light source in this photo—an overcast sky, which just hits everything with an equal light. No shadows anywhere, which makes for a pretty flat photo. I have a ton of photos like these where I’m happy with the composition, but I was just there at the wrong time of day. Once again—the secret to good photography is taking a lot of pictures and throwing away the bad ones.
The Joys and Hilarities of Small Town Church Signs
I could spend all week walking around photographing and rating these signs for effectiveness. Here’s the first one that caught my eye:
I can’t help but argue with ol Pastor Larry. My immediate reaction was “well… just the ones that matter.” But that was snotty of me. So I decided to check and see if he’s right with the kind of questions I suppose one would have for church:
Your move, Pastor Larry.
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And then we have some good old fashioned Halloween word play. Bonus points to this one for invoking Satan:
Still, it has some problems for me. First of all, worship doesn’t start until 10:30? Seems kinda late to me, but it’s been 20 years since I went to a church that wasn’t Unitarian. I bet they’re out of the pews before Chiefs kickoff time though! But I don’t penalize them for this.
Mostly, I have to take away points for the poor formatting. The word spacing is crazy, and that giant jesus is just throwing off everything else. the kerning could be better too. Frankly, they’re lucky I could puzzle out it out. The first time I read it, I thought it said ‘Satan tricks you, Jesus.”
Which I thought was a rather bold statement for First Christian Church. Probably blasphemous that Satan could ever pull one over on J-boy. Hell, I’d consider showing up for that sermon, just in case the pastor has lost his marbles and delivers the sermon wearing nothing but his underwear.
Announcing JT365
Today is my 32nd birthday.
I can’t say that I’m happy about it. But I’m coming to terms with it.
At this point in my life, birthdays for me are a reminder of my mortality. They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens. For a while in my college years, I thought my birthday was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birthday, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s. I’m past that nonsense, but I still grow melancholy.
I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have. It feels as if I have squandered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so. I have some wonderful things to show for my time. Nothing of serious consequence in the greater world, but… I am content with this.
It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other people and draw attention to myself out of some misguided sense that it would be a way of achieving a kind of immortality, I have instead determined that I will attempt to dedicate my remaining time towards living a life that I can look back on without regret. As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squandered them on things that I will not remember when my time comes to pass.
So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to connect more with the passage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launching my 365 day photography project. I am taking and selecting one photograph each day for the next year. There’s nothing original about it. Many people have done these before, but I have not. I At times, I will experiment with new techniques. Sometimes, I will probably not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some interesting way of capturing the ceiling of my bedroom.
If you all, the audience, serves a purpose in this project, it is to keep me honest. I find that when you do something like this out in the open, you feel more dedicated to the task. I let myself down often enough, but it’s a motivator to avoid letting others down. Ultimately, however, this is a project I do for myself. You’re welcome to take pleasure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more reasons than usual.
The 365 project can be found here. You can follow it on twitter here.
So that’s my primary goal right now, on the road to turning 33. We’ll see how it goes.
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