Life on Snow Hill

I thought I’d post a few of my favorite scenery photos from the Colorado trip. Click each one, or click one and click through the larger versions.

Let me know what you think!

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Hey, everybody! A little while back, I bought myself a Macintosh. I’ve been wanting one for a long, long time, and I was finally able to get one. One of the things included on every Mac is iLife.

I’ve been playing around with iPhoto for the last few days, and it is actually fun to use rather than tedious like other photo management apps I’ve used. You can geotag photos and display a map with all of the places you’ve taken your photos. You can also use iPhoto’s built-in facial recognition and tag people’s faces in photos, sort of like Facebook’s photo tagging, but better. It recognizes the same faces in other photos and tags them appropriately.

The feature I want to talk about here, though, is iPhoto’s Flickr integration. As I understand it, it’s been an included feature in iPhoto for a while. But since this is the first Mac I’ve ever owned, it’s new to me.

I’ve played around with Flickr before, but never really gotten into it for different reasons at different times. I used to host my own gallery using Coppermine Photo Gallery, but didn’t keep up with it very well. It has great features, but it was another place I had to keep up with photos.

With iPhoto’s flickr integration, you can publish an album or set right from iPhoto. All in one place. Nice.

And others have said I needed more photos on my blog. Well, I’ve killed two birds with, well, 1 1/2 stones anyway. I added a Flickr widget to my sidebar over there on the right. So as I take more photos and import them into iPhoto for organization, I’ll publish them to Flickr as well for your viewing pleasure – they’ll show right up in my sidebar. Spring’s arrival has inspired me to get the camera out a little more than I have in the past, so I’ve added a few photos in the past few days.

Clicking on one of the thumbnails in my sidebar will open it up on my Flickr page. There you’ll be able to browse all of my uploaded photos.

As some of you know, Becky and I have been in Gatlinburg since Sunday.  We haven’t really done a whole lot – her mom was with us for Sunday and Monday.  We went to the Dixie Stampede on Sunday night, then on Monday we walked around downtown Gatlinburg for a few hours.  In the snow.

Yes, snow.  I’ve been glad to see it honestly, although I’m over it now.  It started snowing a little bit on Sunday night, but snowed fairly hard all day on Monday and part of Tuesday morning.  In all, we probably had about 5 inches – at least that’s what I eye-balled on the handrail outside the front window of our room.

I’m usually one to say that I’m good with one or two good snows in the Winter, then I’m ready for Spring.  Well, I’ve had my good snow – I’m ready for Spring.  I’m ready to do a garden and mow the yard.  I’m ready to cut down some more trees for next Winter’s firewood.  I’m ready to be outside without freezing.

The snow is still beautiful though.  Here’s a pic to prove it – stay tuned, I’ll try to add more pics to this gallery later on rather than keeping it at just the one.

Although I only got one response yesterday, I went ahead and set up a brand spankin’ new photoblog called jsnowphotos.com.  Yesterday it forced me to get outside after a big rain shower and snap a few photos of the sunflowers out in the garden.  I forgot how much fun it is just to take pictures just for the fun of it.  Hopefully this new site will keep me going with it, and at the same time help me to get better.

I’ve put a link over on the right side of my page to make it easy to find.  This new site also allows for comments on the photos, so please let me know what you think of them – good or bad!

Thanks for visiting!

I’ve decided that lately I’ve been severely lacking in furthering my photography skills.  In other words, I have been really lazy and don’t take my camera out of its bag nearly as much as I used to.  So I’ve come up with an idea, and hopefully you, my loyal readers, will help me out with it.

I think that buying a new domain (Only $9.99/year at GoDaddy.com) and setting up a dedicated photoblog will force me to take more photos.

I’m doing some research today on the best way to set up the site itself, and I may even get it installed and running today.  But I wanted to try to get some feedback from you guys to see if it might be a good idea.  (I might go ahead with it even if you don’t respond..but some encouragement would be nice. )

I went outside this morning to do a couple of things and I noticed these clouds in the sky (click on the image for a bigger photo).

Did you ever play that game as a kid where you tried to find shapes in the clouds?  You could find dolphins, rabbits, and even houses if you used your imagination.

These clouds just look wicked though.  I don’t know what it is about them, but if you look closely you can see different fiery creatures in them.  Maybe my mind was just bent that way at that moment for some reason.  Now those images will always be found in this photo.

Over the past several weeks, my dad has gotten into honeybees. He’s bought a few books, built a few hives and learned as much as he can about them. They’re actually very amazing creatures! From how they pick a queen and take care of her, to how they do a dance to show the worker bees where the flowers are, and how far away they are, they’re truly something.

Dad found a swarm in a tree where they’ve been making honey. He cut the tree above where most of their comb is, and put a hive on top of that. He also bought another hive with a swarm already in it.

I’ve tasted some of the honey myself, and it is really sweet and tasty. I know, honey is honey. But this was as fresh as it comes.

I spent a few minutes yesterday taking some pictures of the hive, and Dad started playing with the bees while I was down there, so you’ll see a picture with one of them getting honey off his finger. Enjoy!

…but it’s only because I’ve been so busy! Last Friday, Becky and I took the day and spent some time together. We did a little work in the garden, then cleaned up and took off for the zoo. They’ve made a few improvements since we were there last – the new Red Panda Village is finished now. They also had a butterfly exhibit where you walked into a big screen ‘tent’ where you were surrounded by butterflies.

Saturday was busy as well. We went to my cousin’s daughters’ birthday party. She wanted a few photos taken, so Becky and I took care of that. Afterwards we did our grocery shopping.

Sunday was like a normal Sunday. We went to church and had two good services, and in between we went to my parents’ to have our traditional Sunday dinner. I always eat too much and later wish I hadn’t.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty busy for both Becky and me. She has been helping her aunt move, and I’ve been pretty busy at work. When we both got home, we mowed the yard on Monday, and worked in the garden on Tuesday.

So anyway, although it has been busy, no more excuses! Expect some interesting, thought-provoking posts in the very near future. Thanks for sticking with me!

Joy & Jamin made a trip down to Tennessee to visit for a week, so we took advantage of our little studio setup to get some photos of baby Jackson yesterday evening.  He’s about a month and a week old right now.

Overall the session went well – Jackson wasn’t in the mood to pose, but we still got some good shots.  I was afraid the flashes would make him angry, but they actually calmed him down.  He loved looking at them!

We were all surprised at how well he could hold his head up for some of the photos.  As much as he was crying, he was a real sport for the whole shoot.  Click on each of the photos for a larger version if you like.

Something I’ve always loved since I was a kid is the night sky.  I bought a telescope with my own money when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old so that I could stare at the moon up close and hunt for planets and all that fun stuff.  Well, I found the moon, but not much else.  Either way, I still love to just stop and look up at the sky on a clear, crisp night.

I can’t remember what year it was, but I once witnessed a full solar eclipse.  For those who get it a little backwards, the solar eclipse is when the sun disappears behind the moon.  It was a spectacular sight!  I know I wasn’t supposed to actually look at the sun during the eclipse, but I couldn’t help it.  I got my sunglasses and looked anyway.  It was amazing to watch.

Something I’ve never stayed awake to watch is a lunar eclipse.  There is one coming up in February.  The night of the 20th to be exact.  Lots of information from NASA, including the exact times of the various stages of the eclipse, can be found here.  I haven’t gotten permission to post it yet, but a member of a forum I frequent wrote up a guide on how to photograph a lunar eclipse.  I plan to get outside that night and try to get some good shots of it.  Depending on how successful I am, I’ll post the results here when I finish putting it all together.