For the first time in quite a few years, we had the entire family together for Christmas this year. So, right after the traditional eggs benedict breakfast (which is significantly harder to make for this many people), we headed out to take family pictures. 600 of them. WAY too many to post, and way too many to process. but I did. And here’s the top 30 or 40…

For family members: I will be emailing you a link to the entire set of pictures, exported as medium-resolution JPGs without watermarks, that you can download and use at your leisure. If you want me to send you the high resolution original RAW files, or want me to process them for printing (clean up, white-balance, etc) and will even print them to your local Costco for you to pick up.

Tags: Christmas,Family,Hogge,Holden,Parker
Categories: Family Stuff, Photo Albums
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Christmas 2011 with the Parkers, Hogges and Holden families. Just the picture album, no real stories yet…

Tags: 2011,Christmas,Hogge,Holden,Parker
Categories: Family Stuff, Photo Albums
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SB Sunset from Cliff Drive overlook

Since I brought the good camera equipment from home for the Christmas holiday, and had a weekend to hang around Santa Barbara, I decided to do a little photography on the side. For the first day, I drove up to East Camino Cielo, back through Solvang/Buelton to Nojoqui Falls, then back down the 101 into Santa Barbara for the sunset.

I had read about a new technique for “Polar Planets” I wanted to try out. I went and took some pictures of the Santa Barbara Mission and West Beach to see how they’d turn out. You can try out this technique yourself, but I will say that I’ve learned that having the bottom 10-25% of the entire panorama (vertically) be a fairly boring, consistent texture (i.e., grass, sand, concrete, etc) makes for a better picture.

On the second day, I just walked around town. Up to the Mission, down to the Harbor, then back home for some rest and to watch the Patriots smack the Broncos back into reality (which was really needed) while I processed pictures.

I’m also posting a “post-processing” cut at the two polar planet pictures I uploaded earlier. Those were experiments, as are these, but I’m learning fast….

All in all, a nice, relaxing weekend.

The photo gallery is below the break.

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Tags: Camino Cielo,Camino Honda,Nojoqui Falls,Polar Planet,Santa Barbara,Santa Barbara Mission,Sunset,Train
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Santa Barbara Mission - #1

I’m starting to play around with a new technique that maps panorama pictures into polar coordinates. I’m still learning “what” to do in both the original shots and the process to make them look good. I have a GREAT idea for a Christmas picture this year that should be a lot of fun.

Basically I take 12 pictures, then stitch them together. If anybody’s interested in trying this, send me a note and I’ll point you at the links that walked me through doing this.

In the mean time, here’s the “experiments”…

Tags: Polar,Santa Barbara,Santa Barbara Mission,West Beach
Categories: Travel
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The Lowrimore’s, Goering’s, and I went up to Steamboat for our annual vacation. This year’s theme was lack of snow and COLD. Like highs of below 10, and lows around -10 through -15. Decent weather, although it got a little windy on our last night. Add that to the temps, and Brrrrr…

On the first day, we all bought tickets (whatever happened to early season ticket prices??? $80 for an adult??? To ski on brush, pine boughs, and ice? Fun, but not enough fun to do it for two days. So… on the second day…

… it was cold, but not quite cold enough to keep us from taking the kids out sledding. We went to the main hill leading up to the Gondola Base (Werner Circle), and found enough snow on the hill under the parking gondola to let the sleds run. We were sledding through weeds, but it was still a blast. Check out some of the expressions on the kinds faces….
Day three led me to get out of the condo with the cameras, and head over to a barn that I’d found last year (A Barn to Shoot Next Fall).  Not only did I get some great pictures of that barn, I also found a ski-boot graveyard, some horses, and then Gregg and I went back out again around sunset to get better light. The entire gallery is shown below the break.

December 10th, 2011 update: Gregg’s pictures from the barn trip can be found here.

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Tags: Catamount Barn,Horses,Ski Boots,Steamboat,Steamboat Springs,Sunsets
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Taking the Softail out for a Fall Colors trip

This year, I thought I’d try packing the cameras on the back of the Softail and head for Twin Lakes, one of my favorite “local” areas for Fall Colors. Knowing that I’d be on the bike, and would have to avoid gravel roads, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. As I was heading up Highway 70 towards the mountains, though, the heavy rainclouds started coming in from the south-west, and I definitely didn’t want to go on a rain-ride (although i did have rain gear, just in case).

So at Idaho Springs, I decided I’d stay on the front range and headed up towards Mount Evans. And at this point, I discovered that photography by bike isn’t nearly as “easy” as from the truck, since it’s a little more effort to pack away the jacket and gloves, and get out the camera gear. And I really can’t get off the pavement easily. I have a few pictures from the trip, but it turned into more of just a beautiful fall motorcycle ride than a photography trip… From Mount Evans down to Evergreen, to Pine, then Deckers and trying to sneak out to Sedalia, but that’s another 22 miles of gravel, so I backtracked as the storms really kicked up and headed for home.

A little over 200 miles of a BEAUTIFUL day on the bike, on a crisp fall day in full fall color.

It doesn’t get much better than this.

Tags: Fall Colors,Harley,harley softail,mount evans,Softail
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! Along with some other critters too

Colleen, Cindy, Matt, Ryan and I went to the Wild Animal Sanctuary today to see what was out there. This is a place that takes in endangered and captive predators for rehabilitation, and then provides a permanent home for them for the rest of their lives. It’s a large operation with over 700 acres of land, and quite a bit more donated land waiting in the wings. We got there a little too late to see most of the cats (about 11am, since we missed the turnoff from hiway 76). And a heads up to everybody driving up there: Although their address says Keenesburg, they’re much closer to Hudson..

It’s a pretty neat place, but I’d recommend either very first thing in the AM or at dusk. It was a little too hot out there and the big cats were pretty lethargic. I still got a couple decent pix though.

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Tags: bears,lions,tigers,wild animal sanctuary
Categories: Photo Albums
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Different Storm. Different Day. Same raw strength

Courtesy of our monsoon weather flow over the last week or two, Mother Nature treated us to a nice light show tonight. I set up the camera in the garage and fired away for about an hour. I got through about 500 shots (expected in this kind of environment) and found a few decent shots in there.

Check them out below.

And by the way, for those photographers who shoot lightning often, I’m very interested in tips and tricks to do better on the next storm. Feel free to send me an email or just comment below (requires you to sign up, but I use this to stop spammers) or the Facebook posting.

Can you see me, do you know my position how quick is your eye?
I have no home, no reason to roam yet I travel the length of the sky
I stretch my fingers jagged icy white ’till my energy’s all around
My clutch is swift, my force is fearful I convey it without a sound
I live to free the skies from everyone, watch me run – watch me

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Tags: Broomfield,Lightning
Categories: Photo Albums
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About 20 minutes ago, as we were coming back from Amelie’s birthday party in Boulder, we noticed a pretty serious storm to our south west. I got home in time to take a few pix before getting run inside from edge of the storm.

It was all over in about 15 minutes, the temperature dropped 20 degrees, and it’s beautiful outside. Very entertaining!!!

I’ll head outside and check on rainbows in a few minutes…

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Categories: Photo Albums
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We had one of our typical late-spring early-summer thunderstorms out here on Friday. Went from Sunshine to Hail (pea sized) then on to HEAVY rain to a beautiful sunset.

The street out back literally turned into a river, from grass to my fence. It was deep enough that it was running over the curb, over the sidewalk, and into the grass. Ryan, Nick and Daniel ran out to play at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, and Nick said it was up to his knees deep! Did I mention that Nick is about 6′ tall???  All in 20 minutes.

Once it cleared, we went down to where all that water drains. Look at the high-water mark above Kyndel when she’s playing in the little creek. If she would have been out there at peak flow, t would have been over her head!

We got a nice double-rainbow out of it, and a nice, cool night!  Pics below the break…

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Tags: Flood,Rainbow,Thunderstorm
Categories: Photo Albums
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