AaronSpruit

We’re heading back in three weeks to the windy city. I’ve also been going through a lot of various images as I’ve been cleaning up my Lightroom catalog. I had totally forgotten I had taken these 7 pictures to create a panorama.

Actually, I think I tried to create this panorama using photoshop back in the day, but wasn’t ever able to make something worth keeping.  Oh well, I’m glad I still have them!  This is the complement to the long-ago posted Chicago Daytime.

*Update*  As per the usual, you can view the large image.  However, I’ve made a site-wide change to enable this on all images.  Simply click on the image above, and you’ll get the full-sized image in a lightbox pop-up.  However, you can then do what you will with it, provided you follow the copyright on each of them.

As a pre-caution, most of the images are  quite large in nature.  While I have plenty of bandwidth for the site, you have been warned for the client-side costs 🙂

Shocker, it’s been awhile since I last updated…again. I’ve got tons of photos to go through, there are just a few network issues with the new place, oh and time.

Within the last month we went and saw some incredibly exciting semi-final Australian Open tennis action, along with visiting both the Great Ocean Road and Tasmania. All of which you should start to see trickle on to the site.

Today’s image is from Tasmania, and specifically along the 9-mile beach. The day we arrived there had been a storm and the bay was incredibly turbulent. That lead to many strange and colorful sea creatures being washed up on shore. This is the underside of a sea star and is currently my new desktop wallpaper.

I still can’t get over how incredibly gorgeous the water and landscapes are there. Can’t wait to get back!

In other news, the D4 and the D800/800E were announced. Based on the type of photography I am into, I’m definitely looking at picking up a D800/800E (probably the E, just because). I’m not sure how I’m going to transition from a 6MP camera to a 36MP camera, but I’m sure it’ll be yet another challenge.

With the launch of the new family food blog, I’m hoping there will be additional food shots moving forward.  I really like the colors and clarity of this photograph.  Plus it’s been awhile since I’ve actually used my DSLR (and I love me some food!).

Speaking of DSLR, man, the D800 is sounding like a sexy beast.  However, I think I need to replace my normal kit zoom lens as it has a lot of dust inside.  It’s quite frustrating.  Plus, having something at f2.8 would be nice, but I’d also love to get my hands on some wide-angle stuff.

Not a whole lot else going on right now.  Our stuff has arrived into port in Melbourne today, but we won’t see it for awhile.  We’re hoping to see it before Christmas.  As of right now, that would be the best Christmas ever: opening all the presents of stuff we’ve already bought!  Yay!

Look at that, a new picture! I’ve been going back over some of my images (as promised) and realized how many awesome shots I have from NZ.  I think we’re going back to the nature theme for a bit, as I had flagged a lot of really good ones, and they don’t need a lot of work either.

Here is one of the better panoramas I was able to get while descending on the Kepler trail.  I highly recommend taking a look at the full sized version (careful, it is a 2MB file), because this image is composed of 11 other images.  There is a lot of detail in there, that you simply won’t get from the image above.  For example a few points of interest in the panorama (from left to right):

• The far left of the image, you can see the path and stairs we took to get down to where I took the pictures.
• To the right of that, there is a saddle, and you can see the path heading up the arete.
• You can see Lake Te Anau, and the town of Te Anau on the shore.
• The big slide is visible, which is a large landslide that happened in 1984.
• Lots of rugged scenery and mountain names I probably should’ve paid attention to.
• All the way on the left is the Hanging Valley emergency shelter

I think the image encompasses around 350 degrees of view, as my left and right don’t quite meet, but are very close.

I know it is difficult to tell on the site, but I have dilligently been updating various things on the site to make it “just right”.

• Utilizing the Featured Image functionality of WordPress.  Now that SSP has released a nice Director plugin for WordPress, I can finally start utilizing the Featured Image functionality of both WordPress and the AutoFocus Pro theme.  This way I’m not hiding pictures with CSS on the page, and things should load faster as all the images are hosted in the WP directory (instead of pulling from Director on page load).  I’m about 75% done with this, as I’m having to touch pretty much every post.
• Updating all the categories.  As I touch every post for the above, I’m also fixing the category mess this quickly degraded to.

As for the picture, with Yow-Yow and I getting married (there should be pictures up of her soon too) in Hawaii, I thought I’d wet some appetites with a picture of a hidden beach along Kalalau Trail.  We’ll be taking a boat ride along the coast for our rehearsal dinner, and I can only hope it will be as gorgeous as this picture is!

Not to be confused with the other Torch Flower, this was the one from Barbados.  It’s amazing how waxy and thick the petals of this flower was.  They were all over the place at the Flower Forest.

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated here (as per the usual). Yow-Yow and I just got back from Barbados, WI. Awesome time. This is one of the many (something like over 500) shots I took down there.

This is essentially right out of the camera. Just a simple S-curve and crop. I couldn’t believe it actually. We were leaving the aviary and this Toucan, who was high in the trees the whole time, flew down. We walked back in, and he just hung out there on the rope fence for a good 10 minutes. All the while I was taking shots of him. He actually seemed to enjoy it, posing in various different ways.

It’s been awhile again.  I know it’s getting old, but I’ve been busy, and lazy.  Hopefully I’ll have a few more pics up this week.  I really love the clouds in this one.

More fun from the trip.  I stayed out two nights ago a little late, and that’s why there was no update.  Oops.  This one has be done with a new technique I’m trying with curves.  I really like how it turned out.  You can hit up the bulk section under waterton to see the original.  Quite a bit different.

Not sure what flower this used to be, but now only the shell of the seeds is left.  Another shot from my Mom’s garden taken over the fourth.