Battle of Bentonville

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Battle of Bentonville

“The Battle of Bentonville, fought March 19-21, 1865, was the last full-scale action of the Civil War in which a Confederate army was able to mount a tactical offensive. This major battle, the largest ever fought in North Carolina, was the only significant attempt to defeat the large Union army of Gen. William T. Sherman during its march through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865″  (http://www.nchistoricsites.org/bentonvi/bentonvi.htm)

Last year held a very large reenactment of the battle with hundreds of volunteers (and horses!) reprsenting the North and South in one of the lesser known but epic battles of the Civil War.  I was really really far back and on my tip toes trying to look over the people in front of me but I managed to get a few interesting shot that day. The high point was the look on my son’s face when the canons next to us all fired off!

Mount Baker Washington – Heliotrope Ridge Trail

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Back in July I made a trip out to Washington State to see some family. While i was out there I did a few day hikes, one of which was on Heliotrope Ridge Trail on Mount Baker. Now being from the east coast I’m just not use to the scale of things in the West so I really enjoyed Mt. Baker. I went during the week so the trail was practically abandoned. I only ran into a couple hikers the whole day. Although grass was coming through in many spots I was still surprised on how much snow was still on the upper parts of the trail for late July. I was really hoping for the wild flowers that were supposed to open up at the end of July but they were barely starting to poke through the snow and new grass. After about 2 hours huffing and puffing it up the last difficult part of the trail I made it to the ridge looking out towards Mt. Baker in the distance which was unfortunately completely blocked by clouds (actually behind me in this photograph below). I did a little more post-processing on this image then I usually do but as i was playing it started to remind me of some old National Geographic pictures in my grandfather’s basement that had that slightly washed out look so I decided to roll with it.

Switched over to WordPress

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Just a quick notice for the few of you who may have visited my new blog recently. I decided to move my blogging engine to WordPress. Still the same site\url, I just decided to install WordPress on my server. I was using Umbraco (a .Net CMS) and although it has a lot of potential the blogging engine was still very primitive and unstable. I just didn’t want to deal with it. As much as I loath PHP the WordPress platform has so much functionality, maturity, and plugins it became a no brainier. Moving my theme over was pretty straight forward. I still need a few tweaks but I’m back up and running. If you subscribed to my RSS feed you ‘ll need to update it. Otherwise not much as changed.

Broken Red Ring on My Canon 24-105

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I was swapping out a lens the other day and I saw to my horror that my 24-105 was naked! It had lost it’s identity! The infamous Canon “L” series red ring identifier had broken off! I was almost sure that this was the root cause of some IQ issues I’ve been having in the last few days. Ok – well I probably can’t attribute my lack of photography skills to the broken red ring but i was still a little bit bummed. I found 90% of the ring but a small part has been lost forever.  Although rare I found some other poor souls with a similar issue, I’m considering starting a support group or something, but in the meantime I’m wondering whether I should let my lens embrace its new found freedom or should I attempt to superglue the remainder of the red ring back on the lens very carefully facing the “broken” section to the bottom where it’s less likely to be seen. In all seriousness I’m actually more concerned about resale value down the line as folks may think that this lens was being mistreated which led to the broken red ring. I take VERY good care of my lenses so I’m actually a bit surprised. My lens is almost a year old so it’s beyond the warranty period and from what I understand it’s a couple hundred dollars to fix since they have to remove and replace part of the end of the lens. I love my red ring but not that much! What’s the verdict folks? Leave it off or glue the sucker back on?

Fall Is Here

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I took a trip to Eno River State Park in Durham North Carolina yesterday with the family. My wife actually suggested it so I could get some pictures. I was mildly surprised , as is the case with many spouses of photographers, they are known to get annoyed with always having a camera in tow and mine is no exception. I wasn’t about to argue so I grabbed my bag and tripod and we were off!  After a quick visit to a local farm for traditional hay rides with the kids and such we got there in the early afternoon.  I started scouting out some spots for the return hike which would hit perfect “golden time” for picture taking. This unfortunately corresponded with high traffic visitor time for a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Lots of kids having a good time splashing around in the water – my son one of them. He fell in the river up to his waste half way through the hike! However I’ll have to return another day for my prime spot. I hung out for a little while waiting for folks to clear out of my shot but I guess I guy in the middle of a stream with a tripod in the water and rocks is a kid magnet. “Look dad I bet he’s taking a picture of something neat lets go look!”. You have to laugh a bit but i was still hoping to get the shot. Just means I’ll have to return again this week :)

Santa Monica Pier

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My recent trip to California was mostly a photographic bust. My available free time was spent either on cloud covered mountain tops or walking around at high noon. Neither very conducive towards great pictures.  I was trying to burn some time driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway before my flight back to the east coast.  I’d heard of the Santa Monica Pier so I figured I’d check it out. There was quite a bit of opportunity for some interesting “street photography” at the pier and the beach nearby and although I considered it I didn’t bother packing my 50mm. I don’t like to lug around a lot of gear but at the same time I still have a hard time getting up close to strangers with my 50mm, I feel like I’m getting into their personal space.  Great for kids not so much for strangers. I’m thinking of investing in an 85mm which seems to be a staple on the portrait \ people side.  In the end I just walked around a bit to see if anything caught my eye. Although this picture of the Ferris Wheel and roller coaster is practically high noon I thought the overlapping colors and lines were still interesting, kind of like Titan came out of the ocean and puked up a roller coaster after eating too much colored cotton candy! Although this is HDR I really toned down the saturation on it because the colors were already vibrant enough, practically neon in the daylight.

Little Girls and Flowers

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This picture was taken on the coast of Puget Sound in Everett Washington just north of Seattle. In the distance behind me several destroyers could clearly be seen docked at Everett Navel Station. Although it would seem she is smelling the delicate yellow flower you would be mistaken. Shortly after this picture she promptly attempted to eat the flower. At least she washed it in the water first!

A Cloudy Day On Mount Baldy

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This shot was taken from around 9200 feet while hiking up Mt Baldy (Mt San Antonio) in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of LA. I was really looking forward to the hike but unfortunately Mother Nature, as it typically does, had other plans in mind for me. I was completely walled in most of the hike by clouds. This shot was the first time I saw any kind of view more than 15 feet in front of me. I was hopeful that things were clearing up for my last 1000 feet to the top, but the view would turn out to be just a tease. Shortly after taking this picture I paused to change my GPS batteries and was immediately hit by sudden high winds, snow, and hail. My tripod took a tumble, luckily without my camera attached. I have a pretty stable tripod (Manfrotto 055CXPRO4) but it would be the last time I pulled it out for the day. I put on my soft shell and hunkered down for a bit deciding whether i should push to the top or not. In the end I decided to go with my gut feeling and turn around. I was glad I did as the hail was causing a frightening slippery surface on some of the narrow ledges heading back down. I had a late start on the trail and I shivered at the thought of making the same trip down in the dark alone with a head lamp. To add insult to injury I rented a very nice Canon 14mm wide angle from lensrentals.com just for the trip, and of the couple dozen shots I managed to take, only a handful made it past the first pass in LightRoom.