While I take pictures often, it's normally out in the middle of nowhere.. in a park.. on trails.. rarely around other people. I've yet to be asked to show an ID anywhere.. but then I find using a monopod looks less suspicious than using a tripod, and of course.. I'm white.

Unlike this poor photographer.

At what point will people realize this is making our country into a police state? I hope soon.

I spent some time recently hiking in the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It's a beautiful park, the redwoods are, as expected, majestic and there are enough hiking trails to disperse the visitors for some quiet solitude. How different is the hiking here from Connecticut! The air is dry (hence breathable), the breeze is cool and mosquitos sparse - mainly confined to areas near standing water. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my monopod so pictures in the darker part of the woods are a tad blurry.. but hey, it's all fun regardless.

Redwoods.

Some of these are really beautiful.

My brother has an older Canon SLR camera that he probably used last when Swedes invaded Poland.. or well, it feels that way. His interest in photography never quite sustained as mine did. Today, I paid a visit to his dusty apartment and spotted his 70-300 Sigma lens collecting dust in the same general neighborhood as a couple of ashtrays and distinctly lacking in a lens cap. It tugged at my heart, sitting there all by its lonesome, unused for years.. dusty.

With his enthusiastic permission I took the poor little thing home, cleaned it off best as I could and mounted it on my Rebel. It's dusty, still.. auto focus took some toggling of the switch to work, but it did. Much to my delight, it has quite a decent macro mode! That's something I have yet to play with as, while it's a very interesting technique, it never quite seemed a priority. I like landscapes, see. I'm boring and amateurish that way.

Since my cats were not cooperating, I took it out to the woods to look for signs of spring, Very unsuccessfully, but I did get a shot of pussy willows I liked..

All these changes in my little corner of office space.. decided to take the plunge and clean my desk as well! Since that's such a rare event, I took a picture. It will last longer.

I give it 2 weeks before the desk is back to being covered in piles of papers and magazines.

Most are a bit blurry since it was dark inside the halls and using flash would have given an inaccurate view of the show floor.

Link.

E3 was a lot of fun, look for a more-detailed entry tonight!

Having a nice, new server is great.. all that space just for me, but what's even better is that it's a relative fast machine and can handle php without 3-minute wait times to spit out a simple page. Given all this wondrous power and great possibilities gotta use it for something, right? So why not my useless photograph collection!

To translate the above: Me have new server, me have space, me install gallery, you view pictures!

The weather was foggy and gloomy most of the time so I didn't have many chances for pictures.. I did take some in Monterey and such -- just need to go through them, organize, sort, find ones suitable to be shown publically and then I'll post them.

In the meantime, here's one.. looks like Jeremy needs a hug.

I suppose.. Can't really take a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror using flash, so yellow-tinted-picture it is.. This is after two weeks of being very sick.. can't really see how pale I am now because of the yellow tint, but at least the black circles under my eyes should be pretty noticeable.

Taken today at 7pm, or so..

Connecticut is covered in pretty, white snow.. and spun out SUVs as another crop of drivers learns that a four wheel drive doesn't really help much on ice.

I picked a bad day as my first day back in the office.. had to leave early due to the snow fall. Roads were already pretty bad around 1pm and I was not about to wait and find out what will happen by 5pm. Expected snow fall around 5-10 inches and there is probably 2 on the ground already.

These pictures are actually from last week's snow storm (11/27) which was the first of the season, but better late then never.. (to post them that is).

Three more pictures right here, here and here.

Just two more and these were taken while hiking this last Saturday. I thought the mushrooms were really cool, and this is a view of a bicycle trail from a top of a large rock-thingy.

Previous fall pictures. (10/27/2002)

Nothing makes you feel better on a Sunday than taking a ten mile hike on a sunny day in beautifully colored woods. Except maybe bringing your camera with you and taking some colorful pictures.

Connecticut foliage is in full peak right now, here are some pictures I've taken today.. click on thumbnails to see larger versions.

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Edit: Since someone mentioned wallpaper, I do have all these in 3.1mpx format if someone wants one, just email me.

heatherfirth.com:

Earth Erotica celebrates the inherent beauty, creative power, and spiritual essence of sexuality as expressed in landscape.

My favourite.

I was playing around with my camera's light settings trying to learn more about using it..

Here's a medley of a result.. Interesting how different the results are. Wasn't going to post this publically but a friend thought it interesting.. bleah.. move along now.. nothing to see here..

It's been raining, raining and raining some more.. but I finally couldn't stand it and went out for a small hike in the rain.. Took my camera along, of course.. and took a couple of fall pictures.. The foliage in CT isn't quite there yet... but I managed to find some other interesting objects to photograph.

Taking pictures in bad lighting, in rain with no tripod and an unsteady hand isn't easy.. so forgive me the crummy quality.

Click on the thumbnails to see the (much bigger) versions.

It's a love story.

I do clean it before I cook on it!

The peak of technology at my house.. my laptop now has a laptop.. or should that be my desktop has a laptop?

This time it's my car and my bike all in one lovely shot.
That sticker on the back window says übergeek.

Was posting this elsewhere.. might as well share it here.
My work space. It's an office I share with two co-workers, divided by a cube wall for some privacy..

Edit: added the view from my window. This was taken last fall.. but it hasn't changed at all.. other than the coloring on trees.

Some daisies I photographed back in June..

Bigger..
Huge and not-cropped..

.. above the calendar is of my favourite single-track in West Hartford Reservoir where I go biking nearly every weekend. I took it June 22nd this year.. Bigger version can be seen here and in case someone has a huge monitor, the original 3.1mpixel version is here.

I'll be changing that picture (above the calender) every now and then..

Stood in front of a mirror in a badly lit bathroom and said to yourself "hm, I look horribly tired, time to take a picture!". No? Well, I have.

Some poor soul went and brightened this picture.

I think this is me at 16. Could be 17, but not likely. The little kid is my cousin who is now a senior in college..

hah, found my old driver's license. I'm enjoying this old-file hunting waaay too much..

I've been cleaning up my hard drive and in some obscure directory that contained backups from my old 486 (yes, that old) I found a picture of myself at the age of 5.

Wasn't I a cutie?

Now that I look closer at the picture.. I see I had the same great fashion sense at 5 that I do these days :)

Brought to you by a log in the woods on which I sat for a few minutes scaring off other bikers.. "What's that weird chick with a camera doing there??"

It was a nice log. The surface was a tad chewed up and there was a cute hole in it. Unfortunately nothing came out of it.. I was hoping for something interesting, a chipmunk maybe.. So instead I took pictures of a little bush that was growing next to it and some branches.

I only fell off the bike once today! Should have a nice crop of new bruises ready for tomorrow. Maybe I'll take a picture of them.

I usually take my camera with me when I go biking, actually I pretty much take it wherever I go. You never know when you'll get a chance to shoot that Pulitzer picture, right? (Yah, right).

Today's story..

I went on one of the steepier trails and managed to tumble down a bit.. and since I was already off the bike (and being eaten alive by mosquitos) and it was a rather nice area next to a little stream, I took a couple of pictures.. I briefly considered taking a picture of the freshly developing bruises on my legs, but thought better of it..

• This is the trail down which I tumbled.


• I saw a bush of these pretty up-close and personal.


• The nice stream I almost fell into.


• Dead tree in the stream.. I suppose this could have been me (if I was dead and looked like a tree) but I always wear my helmet.

I'm still working on this whole amateur photography thing.. Took some pictures while riding my bike at my usual park.

Lessons from today...

1. I really need a portable tripod I can just take bike riding with me.. out of all the pictures I took, maybe two were sharp.


2. I need to learn how to take better light readings before shooting a picture.

Here are the couple pictures I thought were Interesting.. rest are really crap.. Click on the thumbnails to see the full (pretty big) pictures.

- Mushroom, self explanatory.
- Not a great picture.. just my bicycle in my favourite resting place on the trail. It's essentially a big rock on top of a hill with a great view.
- This is along my favourite singletrack that leads between a couple of dikes through a great meadow.. These flowers looked like a soft carpet.
- Not a great picture.. but a nice view at the same place as my bicycle picture above.

One of these days I'll organize the thousands of pictures sitting on my hard drive and post them in the same directory.. for now that's all that's in there.

(Also need to either write or find a good image index generating script.. )