So my dog isn’t getting much bigger and she sure doesn’t look very tough, but at least I can make her look big and tough… excluding the rubber chicken. J The colors from my new camera are amazing! Some people like warmer photos in regards to white balance, but I like true color and this camera is awesome at delivering it. The lens continues to amaze me too. Note the shallow depth of field. I love it!  

We haven’t got much rain this past week, so the mutt got to fetch outside for the first time in about 5 months. Despite the birds, squirrels, smells, leaves, trees and bees she managed to stay interested for 10 minutes.  

  Greeting all! I have a hodgepodge of photos for your viewing. Basically I have been too busy to get these up over the past few weeks, so I decided to just throw them up and move on. Ashley and I have been in Bend, Breckenridge and Seattle over the past three weekends. It will be nice just to stay home for a while.

Beer:

Hank and I just brewed our second batch of beer. These photos were taken two weeks ago when we bottled it. It should be getting close to being ready to drink; I’m thinking we will probably open one soon to try it out. We are hoping for hoppy pale ale, but I will be happy with anything consumable. Let me rephrase that, anything consumable that won’t put me on the toilet with an IV in my arm.

Breckenridge:

As promised here are a couple of other photos from the trip to Colorado. My brother’s poor dog was subject to animal cruelty when we discovered the dog boots in a dog store downtown. To accurately picture the scene, imagine a rodeo where the bulls were twice as angry and also forced to wear Converse High-tops. Oh, and it was on ice.   I always feel a little guilty because I never just snap photos of the town just to remember it. I guess that’s what postcards are for. Never-the-less, I do have one point and click photo of a little shopping area downtown. The whole town has this feeling to it. You almost expect a family of bears to walk out of one of the shops, baking cinnamon bread and awaiting the arrival of the candy cane train to the North Pole. I’m not talking about an acid trip, it just has a “story book” feel.

Seattle:

Ashley, Elliott and I went to Seattle last weekend for the Microsoft Alumni Conference. My work was one of the sponsors so; I guess you could call it a business trip? It was held at the Pacific Science Center under the Space Needle; which I have come to conclude was designed after a 1970’s lamp. We stayed at the Hotel Monaco, a pet friendly hotel downtown. They were very friendly and even watched the dog for free. I was expecting for them to have a facility to do this in, but to my surprise they just let her roam around behind the front desk. Not everyone can say their dog has peed on the lobby floor of a 5 star hotel. I awoke early the next morning and walked down to Pikes Place market to shoot some photos. This is probably one of the better ones from that morning. I enjoy photos that have one item in focus, but tell a story with the background.
         

This is a quote from Back to the Future for anyone who doesn’t get it. Biff, a character from the move, can never get qotes right. For instance this line is supposed to be. “Why don’t you make like a tree and leave.”  Anyway, long story short fall is here and we took a moment to enjoy it this weekend. Why is it you can live on the slowest road in town, yet when you want to stand in the middle of it and shoot a few photos it turns into the interstate? The color from the trees in front of the house is amazing. We got a sunny day on Saturday, so I could put it into perspective with the blue sky in the background.

I took this while we were spending some time outside between rain showers on Friday. Typically you need a fisheye lens to get a photo like this, but my dog’s head is so abnormally large in comparison to her body I didn’t need one. We are working on potty training. She knows to go outside now; we just need her to learn that she doesn’t have to go as often as she thinks she does. Ash and I read that Boston’s like carrots, so we threw one in her cage this afternoon while we went out for pizza. Apparently they do, because we can’t find it anywhere…

I flew into Kansas City last Wednesday and hung out with my Dad for a couple of days. We spent some time flying in his Cesena and hanging out at his hanger. It was fun, I talked with some nice people and managed to drive around the airport in a golf cart and take photos of just about anything. I would have loved to come back when the sun was setting, but I just didn’t have time. On Friday he flew me to Hutchinson. I took the controls a couple of times as he was checking our flight path. I resisted quoting some of my favorite Airplane quotes (”what’s our vector Victor?”) and managed to keeps us flying straight…. for 30 seconds.

This photo was just a fluke; these were the bottles of wine that I brought back for my Dad from Oregon. Anyway, they were sitting in his kitchen and I was just messing around. I actually like what turned out. Some day I will start lying and tell everyone I carefully compose these shots.

A majority of the rest of my trip was at the Kansas State Fair. I always loved the fair coming into town when I was little. I remember watching all of the rides arrive by truck during recess. My niece Olivia made the trip from Fort Collins, Colorado, so was fun to see her get excited. It was 64 degrees on Saturday and 100 degrees on Sunday, glad I packed my jacket.

This is one of my favorite pictures. She seems to be wondering what Dumbo has in store for her and Dumbo is wondering if he is going to get puked in again.

One of the attractions at the fair this year was an acrobatic dog show. How fun was this to shoot? These dogs were amazing, and the best part was all of them were adopted from the Humane Society. He was throwing the Frisbee right at me and the dogs were launching themselves right at me. I was having a hard time focusing on the dogs in the foreground and not the spectators in the background.
  

And finally… What is a trip back to Kansas without a photo of the sun setting? This is one of the best parts of Kansas. You get some amazing colors as the sunsets. Here in Oregon, the Cascade Mountain Range blocks most of the good colors during sunsets. Don’t get me wrong, most residents in Kansas would love to see a mountain range every day, so I’m not complaining. This was taken in Ellinwood, Ks after my Niece’s birthday party at Grandpa’s house. I have some dust on my image sensor. You can see it on the left side of the photo on the horizon line. Who would have thought, changing lenses every 10 min at the Kansas State Fair with 30 mph winds blowing dust. I guess it was inevitable.