A Portion Of My Trip Back To The States

In that my free time in the States was limited, so too was the frequency of my posting.  Here is a portion of that trip.  I will do another post after this one goes live.

While back in the states, we didn't limit ourselves to Pennsylvania.  We made our way up to New York and did some spelunking on the 29th.  There was an awesome underwater stream that drained into a large body of water as well as huge empty areas and extremely tight passages.  

We stayed in a farm house for a few days.  The 30th found us waking up to goats and chickens.  We also had a chance to get some hiking in.  Kaaterskill Falls was one of our destinations.  Absolutely gorgeous!

I used one of my Christmas presents to help me make quick work of my daily photo on the 31st.  A beautiful Kodak Brownie.

Bald Eagles seem like a good subject for the first day of 2012.  Or at least as good as any.  These are juveniles. 

January 2nd's sky wasn't so cloudy that the sun couldn't peek though, but it was cloudy enough that a few snowflakes were able to fall.

I was only out of my bed for a few minutes on the third (I felt rather under the weather) luckily I was able to get a good enough shot in those few minutes.

At The Farm

A friend, my wife, and myself went to a coworker's farm today.  The farm and the land it is located on is massive...and then, on top of that, her house is insanely nice.  There were many animals to see, all of which were quite willing to provide me with many photo opportunities.  Here are just a few of those animals...

Dog

For fear of getting it wrong, I'm not going to attempt the types of animals...there were too many types of each animal, making it difficult to remember.  This is a dog.

Dog

This is another dog.

Alapaca

This is an alpaca.

 Donkey

This is a donkey.

Horse

This is a horse.

Parrot

 This is a parrot.

Parrot

This is another parrot...as well as my favorite shot from the farm.

Parrot

I think this is a parrot.  I think.

Black Raspberries

My sister's husband's grandparents (if you can follow that, well done) have a few acres of land.  Apparently they used to have quite the garden, covering much of that land.  Now, though, they don't have the time to really keep up with all that produce maintenance.  They do still grow some things, just not as much as they once did.  They also have other family members, capable of doing some of the work.  Enter my wife, myself, my mother, my sister, and of course her husband (the necessary connection).  My sister and her husband were told that if the black raspberry bushes weren't picked, the berries would all go bad.  So my sister gathered all of us together and we went and picked away.  My wife and I came home with a basket filled with delicious berries.

The Bushes

They only have one row of berries, but the plants are pretty big.  Even after other people had picked through them, we were able to find many big juicy berries.

The Berries

Here is one of those big juicy berries, ready to be plucked.

The Bounty

Surprisingly, we took a good amount home.  Eating 50% straight from the bushes and still filling a basket is rather impressive. 

Sooner or Later

Sooner or later I'll find a good subject for some wide angle photography.  Not only will I find an awesome subject, but when I stumble across it, the sky behind it will be bold and beautiful.  That is not what happened today.  Today I found a tolerable subject and an ok sky.  I have been looking into different techniques for "aging" photos in post production, and today, since I wasn't perfectly pleased with the straight outta the camera picture, I applied some of those techniques to the photo.

A Hybrid

Part barn and part garage, this structure helped me with today's photo of the day.  We will say today's photo was more an exercise in post production, not so much in actually taking a picture.  The scratchy look is a "texture" from a free archive and are easily found online.  I have some good ideas for my own, so look for some similarly textured photos in the future.