July 31, 2013. Toledo.

So I am now in Toledo. Hotel is literally one block from the airport which is fabulous since I have an early flight.

I tried to visit Barnes & Noble but the building has been torn down.  Google location even knew that on the 'locations' screen. But Google maps was happy to direct me to a giant, overgrown, concrete lot.

I decided to be content with filling up my rental car, then heading to the hotel early to read more of Lisa Lutz's new book.

But outside of the hotel were two items I liked enough to photograph:  1) A mysterious sculpture/display outside of some mysterious store and 2) a pretty flower wet from a rain. 

Plus I tried to check out the soil to fill a request to see if it was red dirt. But I could not find any spot with a good view of the dirt and I really didn't want to dig and end up being questioned about what I was doing.(Plus it was raining and so I really did not explore all that long. Sorry Rose. But the dirt I saw looked just like South Dakota dirt).

See on.
Julee

July 30, 2013. Fostoria, OH

Today I traveled to Fostoria, OH for an audit.  The group I audited shared that Fostoria was famous for trains - and that they had the busiest train crossing in the country.

This I believed. On my way to the audit I had to wait for not just one, but two trains. It was more than a 10 minute delay.

Luckily I had planned to arrive 15 minutes early, so I was still on time.

After I finished work for the day, I let Google direct me to the best spot for watching trains.  Huh. I must have showed up during a down time.  No trains.  And I got bored after about five minutes of waiting so moved on.  But I photographed the train tracks to show I was there.

There was, however, a neat train mural downtown, and one awesome old church that made me feel like I was in old England for a second.

See on.
Julee

Post 136. Run for it...

Absolutely GORGEOUS weather right now.  So unexpected for the end of July in South Dakota.  I am totally taking advantage and going on all sorts of walks.

Tonight, as it is a glorious Friday night, my husband and I walked out by Lake Kampeska after dinner.  I took along my camera and found this scene that made me giggle.  Apparently the traffic moves pretty fast and someone wanted to make sure everyone got safely across...

Okay, not really.  There was actually a race called the "5K Dash", and this arrow indicated the route.  But still - Funny!

Then I found this little guy just hanging off someone's mailbox.  Do you see him?  Isn't he cute?

See on,
Julee

Post 135. The Road.

My life took an exciting turn this week in the form of a job offer.  I've been looking for some time, hoping to move into a job that more closely matches the kind of work I have found that I love.  And low and behold, lightening struck and there the job was.

Now to be perfectly honest I am a little nervous.  I am a solid chemist with strong analytical skills and the ability to run any chemical test out there as long as I am allowed a bit of time to practice the method.  I am now veering off the beaten path, into a bit of an unknown. 

I know in my heart I can and will perform spectacularly.  But I also know there will be a lot of quick learning and hard work at the beginning so I can feel that I am contributing my best. 

Plus change is always a bit scary right?  I'm leaving a few people who feel like family.  Although my new office is only three blocks away, so there are always lunch breaks.

So as a tribute to the coming unknown, today I photographed a country road. 

Here is the view of the road behind me.  (There were some moments of dark skies, a little rain, and just a few small bumps.  But much of it was smooth sailing straight ahead using skills I learned in graduate school.)

And next what I hope is the road ahead. A bit of a downhill as I dive into work I am passionate about. Maybe some small bumps as I continue to learn and grow, and probably a continued veering slightly off the traditional chemistry career path.

See on.
Julee

Post 134. Oh my all the flowers!

So I have been a bit stuck in a rut creatively.  I've been working on a scrapbook from my China trip, and that has taken a fair amount of time.  But I still haven't felt particularly excited or compelled to go look for fun or interesting photos.

I've been walking by the community gardens fairly regularly and just convinced myself there were no pretty flowers there this year.  (Was this some new city rule?  Or was our winter so long that it was too late to grow flowers when planting could finally occur so nobody planted flowers?)

Turned out that when I really walked through the gardens that there were a bunch of flowers.  My brain had just apparently not really looked. 

Plus there were these fabulous, dual-colored flowers that I had never seen before.  LOVED THEM!

A whole mix of color and happiness.

 So regal!

Such fun to capture all that color. 

I am trying to get brave enough to attempt photos for the DPChallenge.  I know I don't have the skills to win, or even submit to some of the challenges.  (My photoshop skills are pretty basic, but I suppose even there I could play around and improve.)  But goodness, they have several photo challenges a week, and often they are interesting ideas.  Maybe...

Stop and enjoy the view of your local gardens. 

See on,
Julee

Post 133. Dragonfly crazy.

After my success yesterday at the lake finding the cool, blue dragonfly, I took my walk with my camera today with the hope that I might find other dragonflies around.

And boy did I hit paydirt.  I love these little guys.  They seem to like people, and don't just fly away when people are around.  The dragonflies in my first two photos actually seemed to be posing for me.  They would fly a bit, land on a stalk right near me and just sit as I photographed.  I was photographing around a garden (not mine) so I had limited views in order that I not step on any vegetables.  But these guys were wonderfully still.  After about a minute they would fly around for a few seconds and land again.

Then my mom told me about "The Dragonfly" story.  (You can google it, it's a sweet story.)  I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I did not know baby dragonflies lived in the water.  But it totally explains why I always find them in abundance around areas with water.  The garden where I found the first two today was right next to a swampy area where I find the last silver guy.

The black and silver dragonfly below, was one of five that were flying about.  They were not easy to photograph.  They would fly and fly and fly around me, landing only once every five or six minutes, sometimes for just a second.  It took me more about a half hour to capture a picture I was happy with. 

But happy I was. 
See on,
Julee

Post 132. Back at the lake.

I've once again found my photo mojo dwindling.  I have been experimenting with other creative play, and have taken photos, but am struggling to come up with much for posting.  Perhaps I can blame it on the summer heat.  (The bedroom is on the upper level which means it doesn't get great air conditioning, so my sleep suffers even more than usual when the temperatures get above 85.)

But this evening the weather was beautiful.  My husband was disappointed that I wasn't up for loading up the kayaks and heading out to paddle.  But I'm tired after long, hard days at work and don't really enjoy waiting until 9 pm or later for dinner.  However I did perk up after supper and so we headed out to the lake just to sit and read. 

And I spent a bit playing with my camera. 

I love dragonflies.  I seem to have missed the season with the giant dragonflies that come through our area, but these blue guys are great.  Dragonflies seem to like people, these would sit on the branch and let me and my camera get about a foot away.

(A few weeks ago there was the perfect sunset, where the sun went down right at the end of the dock.  But there was someone pulling in their boat the whole time the sun went down.  Tragic.  I tried again today, but the result was not as neat.)

See on,
Julee



Post 131. Happy Fourth of July U.S.A.!

I assume most of you have stopped laughing about my dream that auto mode of my Nikon V1 would capture fireworks.  (It didn't.)  Although in the camera's defense we were about a mile from the fireworks and the telephoto lense for this camera only goes to 110 mm.  So maybe had we been right at the action my results would have been different?

But I did have success with my DSLR (Nikon D5100).  I setup and had full success using all manual settings.  Congratulations to me. 

I was even able to get the manual settings figured out on the fly with my Nikon V1, but we were just too far away for me to capture anything great with that camera. (Plus, I had only one tripod out, and I left my DSLR there.)

These certainly aren't prize winners, but they're winners to me.  I am sure my settings were not perfect, but I captured things that looked like actual fireworks - which I was unable to do last year at this time.  (Although I do owe thanks to Katrina Kennedy and her blog that gave me the bravery and starting manual settings to try it.)  I did tweak the ISO differently that she suggested, and my lens doesn't have an infinity symbol on it so I had to find focus with trial and error.  But still - success.  Since the fireworks show where I live was so short, I did not have time to play with varying the ISO.  Maybe next year. 

This photo-shoot was a great way to end my first 365 day photographic challenge for myself.   I started from complete beginner ending with success at setting manual settings.  (Although I did not start  a full year ago with the blog, and I did not post 365 times - although I did post more than 365 photos.  Also, let's be honest, I'm still not at the point where I can really use manual terribly well, but still it was definite progress.)

What I want to do now is combine photography with some added creativity. My blog will be changing some, although I do not know exactly how quite yet.  I want to focus on capturing stronger photos, photos that I might want to hang on my wall as art.  Photos that speak to me, photos that help me visualize poems that I find meaningful.

(I was reminded that I cannot just post full poems online, so that is the reason why the vision for my blog is struggling a bit.  But I'll figure it out.)  My goal for myself is also only to post once or twice a week, which I know is low for the blogging world.  But an easy way to not have to check repeatedly and be disappointed at the lack of posts is either to 'follow' me by putting your email into the bar on the blog page.  (All that does is send you an email when I post.)  Or you can be part of google +, I send my photos there when I post as well.

I am also going to work on keeping a art journal, where I can have hard copies of my photos and be more creative that way.  (Although if anyone knows of a way to have blog entries printed, send me a comment, I would love to have a printed record of this past year.)

See on,
Julee

Post 130. Learning the Nikon V1.

My book on how to use my Nikon V1 arrived today.  It's pretty fat.  I'll be interested to see the tips the book has since the camera pretty much has 'auto', 'special auto', and 'auto video". Now I know it can be used manually, but the menus are buried deep and not easily adjusted, which I knew before I bought the camera.

I've faced the fact that basically I like shooting primarily auto - and this will be my primary travel camera - I do have my DSLR for working on the hard stuff.

But I also want to be able to get the most of this little(r) guy that I can, so I'll read and read and read.  I know there are a couple of special options for having the camera taking multiple shots then selecting the best.  That could be useful.

But I had to go out and play with my camera a bit more at the start of a long holiday weekend.  (I get to go to Spicer Castle this weekend, so want to have the basics down.  Plus I got a new ultra-wide angle lense from Amazon today, so I played with that too.)

Things I have already learned:

1. The lcd screen doesn't show the photo exactly as it will look on the computer screen.  It's kind of like a rear view mirror where objects are larger than they appear.  I was trying to shoot a nice, large, setting sun but I thought it looked just tiny in the photos.  Then I got home and it looked like it did to my eye in person.  Go figure.
2. The lcd screen also does not show the blur that is occurring with close up shots.  I shot a flower and thought that my close-up was just terrible compared to the DSLR, but at home it didn't look so bad.

And another ultra-wide angle of trees.  (My husband and I went exploring at Memorial Park in Watertown, they have a nice, short hiking trail where I thought I could capture something I liked.)

Enjoy the Fourth of July.  I'm sure hoping the magical 'auto' captures fireworks!

See on,
Julee