Just like this pic. Was out whale watching and saw this old looking ship. Really liked it as a B/W and vignette.

Last week Beverly and I visited Laguna Beach. While there we did a ton of cool things, but one of our favorites was going out and whale watching. We went out on a boat with about 20 other tourists. Spent about an hour and a half looking for whales. Saw plenty of dolphins and sea lions. When our time was up the captain said it was time to head in. We all rode back in, disappointed that we didn’t see the whales. Just as we were about to reach harbor though up came a water spout. The Captain was able to get us within 30 yard or so. It is amazing how huge these animals are. He/she would go under for 5 minutes and then come up take a breath and go back under. I tried to get a picture of him cleaning his air hole but it was just too unpredictable.

Went over to my mother’s house for a garage sale. Brought my camera and new lens to play with, when things got slow.
We got up pretty early and it was overcast so I thought it was a good time for some pictures. I took this picture of my mom’s neighbor’s old VW bus. Don’t know much about it, except that he has been working on restoring it for quite some time.
Since it is an older vehicle and a little rough I though it would be a neat picture to do in B/W. I took the picture in color and then converted it to B/W in Lightroom 3. Really like the lens that the Bokeh the lens allows, when I want it to. I have also recently been trying to go full Manuel with the camera. Previously I was just using Aperture Priority mode. With this lens I am trying to make sure I do a better job of composing in the camera, instead of cropping it in Lightroom.

Went down to Fredericksburg, TX again this past weekend to spend time with her family. On our drive out Sunday we planned on driving over to an outlook were there are some Bald Eagles. It is on private property so access is limited, but you can view it from the road. In preparation for this I rented a lens (Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 ED AF VR) from http://www.lensrentals.com, since I knew getting close to the Eagle was not an option. I was wanting to play around with a lens like this anyway so figured this was as good an opportunity as any.

We arrived late Friday night, but the next day I had quite a bit of free time to go explore some land that is adjacent to her parents house. I was able to get some pictures of deer, buzzards, hawks, birds and this butterfly. It was really helpful to be able to get far enough away to the animals that they didn’t focus their attention on me. I found this butter fly in a brushy area. I stood waiting for it to land for a good fifteen minutes.

On Sunday we drove out and headed to the Bald Eagle viewing area. As we were driving up the Eagle was in flight and heading out. We waited around for a 30 minutes or so but it never returned. Disappointed a didn’t get any pictures of her, but still had a great time using the lens for other stuff.

While at the museum saw these cool boxes on the wall. Caught my eye because of the orange that projected across the whole room.

Went to Kansas City again for a friends wedding. Had a good time. Had some free time so went and checked out a couple Museums. One was the Nelson-Atkins Museum which had art from all regions of the world. this Buddha statue was in the Asian art collection. This statue was probably 15 feet tall and on a 5 foot pedestal.

Our Bradford Pear in front of our house just started flowering. I took a few flowers and wanted to try photographing them. Just set them down on a white shelf. Had fun playing.

Palms and Icicles, originally uploaded by jgray1975.

These metal palm trees are at a local restaurant we frequent. Always wanted to take pictures of them but just never got around. During the “Snowpocolypse” that we just went through I decided it might be a cool time to take some pictures. I did make a rookie mistake though. I later realized that I had been playing with my ISO settings and had never set them back once I was done. Oh well some stuff you just learn the hard way.

Went to eat the other night across the street from this McDonald’s. Thought the lighting and was great. Like the way it just illuminated the flag which was at half mass due to the shootings in AZ.