28 Apr 12. Those of you growing up in the 40s & 50s will remember well that you frequently didn't buy a particular product for itself, but rather, for what was added inside the box containing that product. For example, you could buy a box of laundry detergent and get a free dish towel, or a box of soap and get a new piece of glassware, or a pack of flat bubble gum and get some baseball or airplane cards, and so on. But the best thing thing of all was breakfast cereal. Boy, what you could get in a box of cereal: secret decoder rings; toy submarines, frogmen; soldiers; little cars and small trucks, miniature games, or even puzzles. Right about NOW I'm betting that many of you are going, oh yeah, and . . . . . . . My favorites were the small aquatic things that would hold baking soda and dive (sink) and then resurface from the gas bubbles being released by the baking soda. It has of course been decades since I got to enjoy those childhood pleasures, so I thought it was time to indulge myself and get me a new toy machine, so I collected as many box tops as I could and got me a new tractor-like toy thing last week. Now, when the grand kids show me their new play things, I can share my new play thing with them. In my excitement of getting my new toy I forgot to check the settings on the camera, so the original was not so good, and to be honest I must admit that I had to do some serious reworking of the original shot to produce an acceptable image, but now it is O.K. ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 6.3.
30 Apr 12. When something is around us on a more or less daily or even permanent basis, I think we all too often begin to either take it for granted, or worse, stop seeing it all together. One of those things I believe may be our evening sunsets. While some are no doubt spectacular, all to often we miss the regular version that has a beauty of its own, and the image for today is just one such occasion. While returning home from another long day working on the property, I decided it would be nice to get out of the vehicle and get some fresh air. As soon as I exited I knew I wanted to share something along this line with you all. So here I have. A bit of cropping to remove the blown out portion where hung the sun, and some slight noise reduction have been employed. ISO 200; 1/1600 (shooting almost into the sun) @ f / 8.
