Ice Show - Glow Baby Glow

Let’s add one more set. This one is rather unique. They switched off all the lights on the rink and switched on a bunch of black lights. My camera freaked as there was no way it could focus under those conditions so I turned off auto focus and manually focused the camera. Still it was not enough light so I cranked a couple of settings and here you have the results.



These three pictures (I actually had about 12 pictures but...) show something neat they did. They started with all their hands above their head. Then the first person slowly moved their hands to where they were at the 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock positions and the person behind them started to move their hands. And so on, and do on, and on. I really made a nice affect. With how dark the pictures are I am not sure if you will be able to see this on your computer screen. Perhaps if you click to enlarge the pictures.


They actually did a little bit of a routine too but the bad part was you never really got to see them. All you saw was their glowie bodies. They all exited the ice before the lights were switched back on. I think if I were a parent I might have been disappointed that they could not see Ciera or Sarah or Kira or (insert child’s name here) actually perform. I mean what do you do, there she is, the third glowie thing from the back on the right side. No not that glowie thing... the other glowie thing.


Well I hope you were able to see those. It actually is a fun routine to see in person. It just was difficult at best for the camera to capture it.

My Kind of Sky

I thought I would give Sky Watch Friday a try. I think I need to try it on for size before I really get involved. I love the idea of it. Post pictures you have taken that feature the sky. Now I believe it can be a day sky or night. It can feature nothing but sky or only a piece of sky. I look at it as a way of showcasing your photography. I have some pictures I have taken already that I will feature but, I hope to use this to kind of get me inspired to take more interesting photographs again. I have much to learn and I am sure many wonderful surprises in store in the future.

This picture is from a family reunion. I was out on my brothers boat and when I saw the sky and the island I just knew what I wanted to take. I took a small hand full and I think this is the best one. The island just looked so interesting especially since I could fit the entire island in the frame. And the sky, I love it. The only thing that would have made it better to me would have been if I had a polarizing filter to darken the sky a little. Still, none the less, I like this picture.

Laser Tag aka Kill Barman

You didn’t have to tell me twice. I was out of the office on Friday moments after quitting time. I had a trek to go to try and make the Detroit area by 7:00 PM last Friday. You never know what rush hours will be like in Detroit.

It all payed off as I made my nieces basketball game she was cheering at. The boys looked good but where just out classed but not the cheerleaders. With no stunting it was still job well done. Of course my eyes tried to wander a little as the pom pom dance squad was sitting with us. Well that was until I told myself they were in HIGH SCHOOL.

We went home, watched a movie and called it a night to get charged up for Saturday. As is usual the day started out on fire. Another game to cheer, home for a quick bite to eat and do some homework (hers, not mine), and off to a basketball game which they killed them won. No baskets for my niece but she still did well.

Off to the highlight of the night, laser tag. I should have known better. Anyone that watched the original Star Trek knows that it was always the crew that wore the red shirt that would be killed off, never the blue or the gold shirts. Well I wore a dark red shirt. What was I thinking? I should have known that the night was not going to go well.


We showed up at the place to play the games and found something very interesting. The place was the same place that I mentioned below where we played Whirlyball. I guess Whirlyball was out and laser tag was in. Some things never change however. The Whirlyball court did not work very well so it took a lot of the fun out of the night. Well guess what, the laser tag had it’s problems too. My first game my equipment was working well I guess but the second game my gun only worked a little over half the time. Anyway lets get started, shall we?

We were lead into this area where we were handed our life jacket vest. It went on easy enough and had our laser gun clipped to it. During the whole time this was happening our eyes were being allowed to adjust to the dark. They then activated our vest and off we went into the area for our 15 minute game. It was not long before I saw just how bad the night was going to go. I felt my vest vibrate away.



Now vibrating may sound like a good thing but I was hit over 50 times in that 15 minutes. It seemed like my vest never stopped vibrating. I have no idea how I was getting shot half the time. I did find out after the first game that there were some targets that, if they were hit, they act like grenades and kill off everyone on the first floor or second floor depending on which targets you hit. I guess that explains how I kept getting hit when I was least expecting it.

So round and round we went in the rat maze arena. There were ramps to the second floor, grids that allowed you to look up, or down, at the other people passing by and shoot at them, dead ends, lots and lots of glowie things that were lit up with black lights, very, very dim lights, more dead ends, more ramps and lots of open space to take long range shots at the other people. My niece and my cousins were dead meet. I shot ... wait a minute, I shot how few people? Oh man, I suck! I did so bad that when we were given the tally at the end of the game I had a score of zero. For every hit on another played I had, four people hit me. Not good, not good at all.

Between games we had some pizza, something to drink and played some arcade games. There were not a ton of games but it was not to bad. I focused on getting as many tickets as I could so my niece could buy some over priced trinkets. So did most everyone else. I found this one game that if I timed it right I would hit the jackpot which was sitting at 150 tickets. I kept hitting it to soon until this one time ... bingo, JACKPOT. No sirens, bells or lights, DARN.


It was time to hand off the tickets to my niece and I had a plan. I took the other tickets I won and handed them to her but hid the jackpot from here. She spent a while getting the tickets all tucked away in the cup she had and she was happy to receive them. They I said “oh, and I hit this thing called JACKPOT” and haded her those tickets only to see her eye go all wide. In the end she bought some cheep trinkets and a stuffed turtle who immediately was names Sherman. Just what she needs is another stuffed animal.



Back in for another round of laser tag. This time my gun did not work well at all so not only was I bad, my gun sucked too. Oh well, red shirt proved to much to overcome. Try as I might I could not get any of the grenade like things to work. And my vest was again vibrating like crazy. So much so that when I took the vest off I felt like something was vibrating for the next several hours. I managed to shoot my cousins daughter many times (I know, tough guy), and several others and I was hit a few less times but I still managed to get a score of 0 (see below top row third column), zip, nodda, nothing, goose eggs, big fat zero. I blame the equipment but you know, I think it is just not my game.



Well that is my experience with laser tag. Would I do it again? You bet but just not at that place. Would I be in dead last again (or at least do very poorly) most likely. But that is OK, that way everyone else feels good about how they did. I can handle that. Just once I would like to score a few points.

Sunday was some more basketball and off I was back home. The only bad part of the weekend??? I managed to catch a cold or something. Rats.

P.S. Sorry about the picture. Between my camera phone not taking the pest picture, the fact that it can not take low light pictures (no flash), and me trying my best to spiff up the pictures with photoshop ... that is the best I could do.

Blue Moon

Wow, did you see that ... or rather not see that. The moon, she just up and dried up, vanished, disappeared, left without even saying goodbye. Of course I caught here and here is how.

First I hear it is best to start with a full moon for some reason. I guess it is a little bit like diving into a pool. As far as I am concerned, any dive you survive is a GREAT dive. Of course if you really want a lot of points you need to point your toes and go in without a splash. The full moon is something like that, the perfect dive.



Next you need to find you a camera.


And since this will take some time you need something to steady the camera on. Well unless you are real steady... I elected to find something to steady the camera on.



Next, and this is important ... no flash if you can. I didn’t and I was blind forever.


Now somehow you have to get the earth to come between the sun and the moon. Now there is no one correct way to do it. Personally I do not understand why you need to do it. I mean the sun went to bed hours ago. As a matter of fact it is just about to wake up anyway.

Anyway I decided on a plan. I went outside and started to jump up and down real hard. The more I did it the more the earth moved and got in the way. Of course you need to do what ever works for you.

Now find the moon and zing away, shot after shot and see what you got.




Did I forget to mention you need to point the camera first? OK, lets try that again.



Oh gee wiz, I new I forgot something. Did I mention you need to focus the camera.

*looks up at the blog entry*

Yep, didn't mention it. Duh!


And there you have it. The moon, she just disappeared. If you find her somewhere, would you please send her home.

What About Bob?

This one is for Bob. The beginning of the year I decided to play with the depth of field just a little. First here is a picture of the toothpicks I set up for this.


Next we have a couple of close up pictures that show how shallow the depth of field actually can be. I was surprised that in the space of the length of a toothpick it could already start to blur and blur so much. Amazing what happens with a good size zoom lens.




Here looking almost straight on you can see it is focused up front and oh so blurred in the back and a toothpick is what, 2 to 3 inches long? You can not even make out the toothpicks in the back.


Moving on, over the weekend I decided to do a little yard work. One of the things I did was cut my lawn, or I mean weeds. It had been probably a month since I cut it. I decided to bag the "grass" so that I would allow the least amount of weeds to mix back into the lawn. I ended up with a bunch of weeds, some grass and some dirt. It is amazing that I would get dirt but it was that dry. Now for the fun. When I went inside I ended up clearing my lungs a little and I brought up black stuff. My gosh, I was breathing in the dirt and look at what happened. Now I am thinking of wearing a mask as long as it so dry. That just has to be bad to breath in.

Oh also while cutting the lawn (and it was in the morning) I took a break. I sat down and just cooled off a little. I looked over the next few yards and I could not believe what I saw. I saw heat lines, you know where things are all squiggly kind of like they are going into a dream sequence. Actually you usually see this over blacktop or the road ahead of you while you are driving. Usually it is very hot out but I swear it was not much more than 80. I had no idea the earth would do that and do it so soon. I think our backyards got turned into blacktop when I was not looking.

I decided to take a break at one point over the weekend and went to see Hairspray. I kind of had no choice as I usually go to a little home town movie house that only shows one show a week (hey the town only has about 6,000 people, it is amazing they have a movie house).

Anyway the first time I saw Edna I thought hey, something is not right. The face did not move right at all. I mean a heavy persons face is different but not that different. And the eyes just somehow did not look like a woman.

I kept watching thinking I knew who it was then it hit me, John Travolta. Then I was amused as they tossed in little things like his dance move from, was it Pulp Fiction? And a few things he said. Over all I love musicals but I was not really planning on seeing it. In the end I enjoyed it, maybe more for what the movie stood for rather than the musical nature of it. Either way I was entertained for a couple of hours and enjoyed it. But then I can find something good in almost any movie so I would never make a good film critic.

Oh one more thing. Could I be changing? I went to a CiCi's Pizza buffet. I had a piece of several different pizzas and the one that I liked the most was a vegetable lovers pizza. Me, a vegi lover? I like my vegetables but I have always been a meet person. Especially in pizza. Often times I go with supreme. If not then how about pepperoni and mushroom or hamburger and white onion. Oops, there are vegi's sneaking in there. Well at least the other next one was a chicken, cheese, and spices type of pizza and that was pretty tasty too. I still can not bring myself to try the mac and cheese pizza however.

Family Reunion - Part Tress

And now the conclusion. There were probably only about 18 or so people there. People have scattered to different states and one family that is the largest part were not there. Still we had a nice time sitting in the shade right next to the nice size Kent Lake.

Everyone brought a dish to pass (thank you Sign) and some food for themselves. I brought 5 gallons of water because I thought what would be better then to have a bottomless supply of ice water? I thought I was the only one drinking it but, to my surprise others were too. Good for them.

I met a couple of people I have never met before and promptly forgot their name, figures. I gave my uncle some sh*t because he has it coming. We talked some more. Did boat trips, visited a nature center in the park, went biking and hiking, had some more food. A very pleasant day over all. Sure nothing like the reunions gone by. We used to do volleyball and maybe boccie ball and played cards and ... but most everyone is in their 40s or even older and you can just see it. Last time I brought a net and set it up only a few kids played with it. Well lets geter done and bring on the last of the photos.


I have always thought kayaking looked cool although I can not help but thinking of flipping over and being trapped in the kayak upside down.




While I was out on the boat I saw more than a few sailboats. This lake was made for fishing and sailboats although motor boats were allowed on it. I was so torn. Do I put the sail boat right in the middle of the island and in the center of the picture or not. Eni, meni, minie, mo... It was almost to late when I decided not to center it. The second picture was a little nicer as it is closer up but the sky was not that good. Oh well, I just liked that sail boat I guess.




I thought the virgin looking shore line looked good. It so reminds me of typical Michigan.



I love this picture. I played and played and played with it and just could not get it. I wanted the sky to be just a little darker (why don't I have a polarizing filter, why) and I would like the island a little lighter. I played with it a ton in photoshop and went back to the original. This was one of my favorite pictures for the day. The sky is awesome.



Can you say paparazzi? I kind of got that feeling being of shore, using a big lens, shooting a beach volleyball game. Could that be Justin Timberlake or who ever it is that is all hot these days. Sorry ladies, no clue whose name I should have dropped. You know, I have not idea what Timberlake looks like anyway. Off to the right you see a fun looking water slide and at the bottom, what you can not see is it empties into a nice pool.


Again, man I need to get a polarizing filter so bad. This was a classic picture for the day I think. We have to guys in their super cool fishing boat just doing what feels good. I do not see the beer but I bet they got a cooler full somewhere. If only the water was not giving me so much glare. I got to get me a filter. A good one costs almost $200 ... bummer.


Here we have a couple of kids paddling through. Oh wait a minute, I think the lady in the back would love that I just called her a kid. Oh well, time for new reading glasses I guess.



And finally we have woodland creatures. They seem to have found an isolated spot. They are sitting back and watching the wild life go by. Be careful however, we would not want to spook them. I bet they would scamper back into the woods in seconds flat and not some out until dusk.




Well that was a little window into the family reunion. Sorry I posted so may pictures. I really tried to cut down on how many I had, honest.

Family Reunion - Part Uno

The family reunion was held at a park this year off of a good size lake. So hows about we start out with Captain Jason, my brother. He brought his boat with him and the following are a few pictures of it. Of course we had to have the captain picture. I was up in the nose of the boat, on display, looking pretty. OK, that is a lie. No one wanted to see that.


He spent the day taking people out for a tour of the lake and returning them safe and sound. On one such trip they stopped for a for some fishing. Key word fishing, not catching but that is OK.


This is about the best picture I got of his boat. He picked it and a trailer up the beginning of this year for under $1,000. Now it is a 30 plus year old boat (Chrysler) but in this area you really can only use a boat 4 to 6 months out of the year if that so it is not all that old and looks in good shape.


A picture out the back of the boat. I thought the wake was rather nice.



And now one for Strumpet and G-Man. My brothers flag on the back of his boat.


Lets move on to the wildlife. There was much more than I captured here but that is OK. How about some swans. How many was it in that song? Seven Swans a Swimming? Well this only shows 5 but there were 10 in this little group if I was not so zoomed in.


I thought this picture turned out nice.


You can not see how nice this was but this swan was stretched all out and then shook off big time. I think it was it's version of the Saturday night bath.


And finally Mr Squirrel. He had a fascination with us for about a half hour. I thought he was going to join us at the tables a few time. But then he retreated to the tree.


Part Duo later on Wednesday.

MIS NASCAR pictures - Part 2

And now the concolusion ... Here you see the cars all lined up ready to get the race underway. I believe the next time around the pace track came in and the race was underway.


Here is one of the better pictures of the topless men running around there. Enjoy ladies, enjoy.


Here we have a picture of one of the trucks. It turns out this will be the winning truck later in the afternoon.


Here you can see the pole in the background. This lists the order of the top 10 drivers to finish the race.


Here is the other leader board. NOTE that this board has the average speed recorded to. I saw speeds up to 184 something at points.

Here is the winner in the middle of a burnout.


Look at the smoke. Look at the crazy people just standing there. What if he slipped of the break? How could they do that. In saying that, I wish I were them.


Believe it or not the truck is inside all that smoke.



And here we have the aftermath of burning out.

And there you have it. A quick couple of sets of pictures. I think I covered what I mentioned below. We have the drunk, the bomber, the shirtless guy, the porta pits. Yep, I think I have it all.