I took another dive into dad’s chess sets, and decided to pull these kings out. This onyx set has huge pieces, with the kings being easily three inches tall. The bevels make for some nice shadows and highlights, and I thought they made for a nice image.
Once again, I’m playing with my father’s chess sets. This image is of a king from a Japanese set I believe my uncle gave my father when I was very young. This was one of those sets that we didn’t get to play on very often.
I lit this with a simple LED-based reading lamp, placed off to the side to create some nice shadows. I did all the finishing work in Lightroom.
While Becky and I travelled in the UK almost twelve years ago, we drove from London to Cardiff for a little exploring. We visited all kinds of shops, and in one of them, found these cats. They’re carved from Welsh coal, and we fell in love with ’em. To us, they epitomized us, comfortable with each other, relaxing in each other’s arms.
Two of the folks I work with also have Jeep Wranglers. Over the weekend, one of them invited us all over to help install a lift kit on his Jeep. I’m not much of a wrench monkey, so I handed folks tools, and took photos.
As work began on the rear of the Jeep, Rich had to get in the wheel well in order to loosen a bolt. I couldn’t resist grabbing a shot of him turning the wrench.
The family piled up into the Big Green Jeep, and took off for Shaw Nature Reserve today. This is the fourth trip I’d made there in the last few weeks, and I’m thoroughly enjoying watching spring spring forth from the ground.
Among all the new growth, I found this dandelion, and couldn’t resist photographing it. To me, the structure and detail of this little weeds are beautiful. There is so much going on in those little balls of fluff, and so much to see… as long as they’re not in my yard. 🙂
A few years ago, I lost my wedding band at the office. I’d taken a walk through the snow on campus, fell, and with my fingers slightly shrunken from the cold, my ring flew off somewhere in the snow.
We looked for weeks, and never found the thing. We’d already checked with the insurance folks, and were within days of picking out a replacement. A replacement for something that was to have lasted a lifetime. I was more than a little distressed about the loss.
One morning, I was in the cafeteria at work, and noticed the cashier had a familiar looking ring on her thumb. I asked her about it, and she said it was just a cheap ring, but I knew that it looked an awful lot like my platinum band.
I called Becky, and had her come down to look at it — I’d hate to call someone out mistakenly. She knew it was mine, and talked to cashier, retrieving my ring.
One of the things that was an eye-opener was that there were no real distinguishing marks on the ring. So she decided to make sure that was taken care of, engraving my ring with the very phrase I’d been describing her with for years: "My Moon and Stars."
I returned to Shaw Nature Reserve today, this time taking Becky with me. We wandered around the Whitmire Wildflower Garden for a while, before walking up on this little pond. I really liked the way the gazebo reflected in the still waters, all being framed by the explosion of spring plants.
Casey, Rick and I wandered around Shaw Nature Reserve again this weekend. Along the way, I found this great pond with the most brilliant green scum atop it. While photographing something on the other end of the pond, I noticed that my shadow was creating a great-opportunity for a unique self-portrait in the early morning sun. A click later, I’d captured my shadow atop the green pondscum.
I was doing some photography of the laser assembly from an old laserdisc player, and thought I’d try using some smoke to show off the beam a bit. Unfortunately, that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. The incense I was using to generate the smoke looked great though, so I make this image of the glowing stick, with its smoke swirling upwards.
After last night’s foray into beer photography, tonight I returned to my father-in-law’s Minolta camera. I’ve been looking for a nice way to capture it. Most of the images I’ve made of it have been rather flat, and not very exciting. After all, it is “just” an old camera.
While I was setting up, though, I happened to walk around the camera, and finally saw the image I’d been looking for. The angle-on view, as well as elevating my Canon above the Minolta, really spoke to me, and I snapped a few images.