Work and family have kept me from heading out anywhere with the explicit intent of photography for a couple weeks. I’ve been working through processing some older photographs and reprocessing a few that I wanted to apply some new techniques on. Thats kept me busy but the withdrawal symptoms are starting up so I know I’ll have to get my fix soon. Last weekend I attended my second meeting of the Raleigh Outdoor Photography Club, actually their yearly potluck. Everyone got an opportunity to show off their ten favorite shots. THe shot above probably got the most response of all of mine and is the second part of the “Furry Cow” post from a couple weeks back. This shot is actually the other side of the field and was taken about 30 minutes before and I think has a little more eye candy.

I apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I’m slowly working to get more comfortable with my new Macbook Pro and OSX. Surprisingly enough for me it’s not been as big of a leap as I thought it was going to be moving from Windows (at least for my personal computer – I’m a software developer with MS tools so my work laptop will always be Windows). I’m extremely happy with the performance so far and I’m sure OSX is a zippy OS but I think it has more to do with the quad core, 8GB RAM, and the SSD then the OS. I had the stock 5400RPM drive in for a few hours before the SSD came in the mail and I noticed a very big difference before and after. My favorite aspect though is I can actually process my photos without twiddling my fingers for a few minutes every time I try to save or render a shot.

This photo is actually the first I’ve processed in a couple weeks and my first on my Macbook. I’ve adjusted my post processing workflow a bit so once I get it down to a point I like I’ll be sure to share it as I know a lot of folks like to see what other photographers do during post processing. This shot was taken a few weeks back on an unusually cold morning. The fence was annoying me a bit so I decided to try to use it in the shot as opposed to shooting over and around it. The farm is the last local farms around the corner from me that hasn’t been sold, is actively under development, or for sale. I think this will likely be the last season where I’ll catch this shot, at least with the barbed wire and rolled up . Gotta love progress lol.

I seem to be on a sunset & sunrise kick lately but they don’t ever really get old to me. I shot this on Route 70 out in Clayton North Carolina. As the brown death of late fall spreads across the country side I’ve been noticing a very green field that has grown in stark contrast to the surrounding trees and farms. I also noticed some very curious cows, well at least curious to those of use who aren’t cow aficionados. I’m very accustomed to the short haired spotted variety but these beasts remind me more of of buffalo with furry long brown hair covering their bodies. I thought I might catch one of these in the front for a nice foreground to add some depth to a wide landscape shot but unfortunately as much as it appears they liked the green grass it wasn’t enough to stick around as I pulled out my tripod and prepared for the shot. I don’t think I look too much like a predator but as you can see from the shot they all ended up in the back of the field melding into the landscape.

I visited Clemmons Education Forest last week hoping to catch the last of the fall colors and leaves at the park and maybe my last visit there for the year. This is a great local park but unfortunately it’s closed during the winter months (starting in mid November). But between you and me I think I might do some stealth hiking this winter at the park

On a previous post I showed a shot of the inside workings of Yates Mill in Raleigh North Carolina (USA). Yates Mill dates back to the 1700s and is the oldest still functional mill in North Carolina (and I would guess probably one of the oldest in the country). As promised this is an outside shot from the other side of Yates “Pond”. This was a couple weeks before fall colors really took off but there was a hint of change starting. I was going for the water\mirror affect and I was pretty happy with the results although I was hoping to return during the peak of fall colors for an even more dramatic affect but my schedule didn’t work out that way.

As much as I would love to shoot snow topped mountains, vistas overlooking endless views of old growth forests, or thousand year old Inca ruins I have to work with what I have. They say you should shoot what you love but unless you have no kids and an endless travel budget you have to shoot whats around you and I live in central North Carolina, just south of Raleigh, so unfortunately I don’t have any backyard views that belongs on a post card or the cover of National Geographic. What I do have is miles upon miles of farm land surrounding me and on most weekends I head out early in the morning looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, trying to find interesting shots that normally I’d drive right by without a second thought (doesn’t photography have that strange affect where you notice things that you wouldn’t normally notice?). My interest lately has been abandoned farms and in North Carolina you usually don’t have to drive to far to find one. This picture above was taken last weekend. I had scouted it a few weeks before and I was hoping to catch a sunrise breaking through some of the broken boards one morning but once I got there the angles weren’t quite right so I had to settle for some pretty colors in the sky. It rests on some land in front of a new community hospital that is for sale and will likely be the parking lot of some TGIF or related commercial business in the next couple years. For now it’s just an old barn in a field that I didn’t have to jump any fences or fear the wrath of a farmer to spend a sunrise with.

I’ve been spending so much time in Google+ lately stalking all the great photographers out their in the world that I realized I got a bit behind on my blog. I can’t disappoint my 3-5 average daily readers out there

Anyway on weekends I like to try to get up about 45 minutes before sunrise and see if I can catch anything interesting in the North Carolina country side. This weekend was pretty hazy but this tree in a field with the sun poking through caught my eye. I promptly pulled off onto the side of the road into a gully a bit too steep for the family SUV and with camera and tripod in hand jumped the barbed wire fence and promptly landed in a very large cow patty. With the wonderful smell and uncomfortable extra weight sticking to my right shoe I snapped this Fall sunrise shot. My wife seemed to like it so i guess it was worth the shoe dirtying effort.