Sony Alpha 100 – Page 30 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Signs of Spring

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Click for larger image

Up until a few months ago I did not know the word “bokeh.”
Then Shari came by and commented on one of my photographs and said “All really nice, but especially lovely bokeh on the first one” which sent me to Google for some research.

Turns out that attractive blurriness has a name! Well what do you know?

I’ve always liked it but never really thought about it as a concept, rather I saw it as a byproduct or artifact.

Now it’s something I like to strive for in certain shots. This one I accomplished with the new 75-300mm lens at the full 300mm focal length and close range. The thumbnail is designed to make the picture fit easily within the blog. You should really click for the full sized version to see the picture as intended.

Photography weekend – Part 2

Sunday was shaping up to be an even better day than Saturday so we decided to slack on the chores and go out shooting pictures again.

I had been hearing a bit about the West 11th Street Park and figured we could go there and at least have a look around. In one of the reports I had heard on NPR they indicated the park had some interesting wildlife.

When we got there, it really didn’t look all that interesting. In fact, we were about to just drive on past it and look for something else when we noticed three ladies coming out of the park toting binoculars. I decided to swing around and ask them if there was any interesting birds in the park. All three exclaimed that yes indeed, there was all manner of Woodpeckers, Hawks and even a Great Horned Owl in that park. They offered to show us the Horned Owl as they had just come from where he was nesting.

The ladies took us down the path and into the woods and we came to the base of a stand of trees. They pointed to the sky and described where in the top of a very tall tree the owl could be seen. Cynthia and I craned our heads skyward and peered into the trees but could see nothing.

After about 5 minutes of explaining which branch off of which tree and so on and so forth Cynthia finally exclaimed that she could see the owl. A minute later I spotted him as well.

Click to see full sized image

Time to see what the new 300mm zoom lens can do.

This was shot a the full 300mm handheld. That is to say, no tripod.

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You gotta love image stabilization.

We admired the owl for awhile and then set off to explore the park.

The next creature we encountered was a hawk.
You could see him flying in circles high above the tops of the trees.

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SUPER TELEPHOTO XPEALADOSSHAS!

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Again, totally handheld. Amazing.

That allowed me to crop this out:

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Even more amazing was the shot Cynthia got with her Pentax with the 320mm telephoto:

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And from that we were able to extract this:

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What a wonderful couple of sightings!

As we were leaving we heard the familiar tak-tak-tak sound, indicating that a woodpecker was nearby.
Looked up and sure enough, there he was!

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We left the park and headed home. But before calling it quits we had one more stop.

Terry Hershey Park

If you get off the main bike trail and onto some of the footpaths you can really have some cool creature moments. I found this Egret hunting fish in a small pond:

Click to see full sized image

It was a great weekend for taking pictures!

Camera duo self portrait

Photography weekend – Part 1

The weather was fantastic this weekend and Cynthia was itching to shoot some pics with her new camera.
On top of that, I had just treated myself to the Sony 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Compact Super Telephoto Zoom Lens and was excited about taking it for a test run.

Cynthia and I headed downtown to poke around. We stopped first at “the boots” near Uptown Park because Cynthia had commented on my earlier post and thought it would be a good opportunity to play with her wide angle lens.

That worked out pretty good because I had been dying to get a shot of this one particular building at Post Oak and 610. I drive this way most every day and have always appreciated the reflection of the high-rise condos in this one silver building.

I had to walk a ways away to line it up and ended up standing in the middle of Post Oak to get the shot.
It’s OK, but seeing it in person is better.

From there we made our way downtown. We wandered around a bit and shot some pics of this and that.

It was an altogether new experience for me having a shooting partner. Cynthia was able to help me when I needed to change lenses and vice-versa. This is great practice for our upcoming trip to Spain.

Nick Gaitan – The Octanes

Camera: Sony Alpha 100
Lens: Sony 50mm 1.4
F/2.0
ISO: 400

These boots were made for viewing

Looking down and across the 610 loop from my building I noticed several oversized boots in Post Oak Park and even though it’s freezing cold, I decided to walk over and take the camera.

I’m sure it’s Rodeo related…

Tijuana Dreams

Guy Fantasy

Buddy Llamas

I made it by the Continental Club a few Fridays back to catch The Small Stars. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you will know they are one of my all time favorite bands.

Featuring my guitar hero, Landis Armstong (aka Richard Steele), they are a must see each and every time they come to Houston.

They were here this time in support of their new album “Tijuana Dreams.”

I’ve always contended that The Small Stars are an act best seen live, and I think that holds true. That being said, I was having a fairly lengthy and rambling conversation with Miles Zuniga (aka “Guy Fantasy”) and he was telling me of his desire to have the band be more than just a memorable stage act. He said their goal with the new album was to have the music stand on it’s own.

I ttook home a copy of “Tijuana Dreams” and I must say, it definitley stands on it’s own as a great listening experience. It’s been in my CD player for a two weeks now and I simply can’t get enough.

If you cruise by their web site there are some audio samples and their calendar. Check it out.

Click here to visit the gallery of pics from that last show.

The Harry Rags – Kinks tribute band

Chase Hamblin

Derek Dunivan

After leaving Notsuoh I headed over to the Continental Club. On the bill for the evening were Von Hindenburg, a Led Zepplin tribute band and another band called The Harry Rags, a Kinks tribute band.

I had seen Von Hindenburg before and was not overly enthused, but I was intrigued by The Harry Rags. As it turns out the two bands have some band members in common, most notably Steve Candaleri who drums for both bands and Derik Dunivan (Willie “punkdaddy” Dunican’s kid) who plays keyboard, guitar and sings for The Harry Rags and is the singer (aka Robert Plant) for Von Hindenburg.

I must say, I was rather impressed by the performance of The Harry Rags. They not only performed all the classics like “Lola” and “You Really Got Me” but they also dug deep into the Kinks repertoire and pulled out some rather obtuse songs like the one that obviously inspired the band name.

It was a great show and only at two points did I experience any distress.

The first twinge was brought on when I was discussing with a friend the fact that the members of this tribute band (with the possible exception of Steve Candelari) were not even born when these songs were written.

The second twinge was brought on when they started playing “Picture Book” and a young woman in the audience declared that they were playing that song from that cool HP commercial…

Best shot of the show is this one of Derek Dunivan:

Click for full size!

Many more in the gallery