Never the Same River

Andree also considered these other two pictures:

Andree followed his “I pick so and so” paragraph with a lengthy dissertation on MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus. Can you guess why we are friends?

Never the Same River

These pictures were taken on a floody night back in June after Sara and I ate at a Lebanese restaurant nearby. I need to thank her for her assistance on this night even though I definitely burned out all of her patience… and then some.

I will need to revisit this bridge in the near future, now that the water has gone down on the Des Moines River.

Drenched in Loneliness

f-stop: f/5.6
Exposure: 269 seconds
ISO: 200

The Glow that Illumines

I took this series of pictures after Todd and Peggy’s wedding with Sara insisting I don’t do anything dangerous or illegal. Here are more pictures that aren’t dangerous or illegal:

I will have to revisit this concept with somebody that cares less about my safety and laws in the future.

Not Sent for Slumber

I took the Not Sent for Slumber photos on a very beautiful Spring night after eating at Jeff’s Pizza with Shannon. It was also the same night Teresa and I found out the lineup for Stephens’ 2010-11 season. The lineup ended up being mostly disappointing, with the obvious exception of David Sedaris, but Jeff’s Pizza never disappoints.

CyRide

I hope people like this style of picture because I have a few more of these in the hopper. 1 has been taken and the rest still only exist in my brain.

Here are a handful of pictures that were considered for the last two weeks’ RWPE submissions, but were passed over for various reasons.

First, Painting with Light:

Second, Strong:

I should start thinking about COLORFUL pretty soon.

“I have never known birds of different species to flock together. The very concept is unimaginable. Why, if that happened, we wouldn’t stand a chance! How could we possibly hope to fight them? ”
- The Birds

I spent a good portion of my first day of vacation working on a couple of different photo projects, but I also had time to head over to Teresa’s house to take pictures of the nest that a robin has built on the wreath on her front door.

Part of my day took me to Ledges where I startled a turkey vulture. I got this shot of it flying away.

I also photographed the two nests that are in my backyard and the nest that is on my neighbor’s house near my driveway.

Grackle Nest


Pigeon Nest


Robin Nest

Later in the day I went to Pella with my Mom. After a brief rainy stop in their town square to photograph their tulips we went to Des Moines for supper.

We ate at Smitty’s Tenderloin Shop. Their tenderloin was a little bit disappointing. It didn’t quite live up to the hype, but it was still pretty good.

When I get to Vacation Day 5, what I’m about to write will sound hypocritical, but hopefully your memory won’t last that long.

The people that were sitting in the booth next to ours were extremely snotty to the waittress. They also spent sometime mocking the fact that the restaurant was featured in Gourmet magazine.

They were the type of annoying customer that caused us to leave a larger than ordinary tip because I got the sense that the snotty people were going to stiff the waittress.

After supper we met up with Sara and hit up Snookie’s for the first time this year.

It was a pretty wonderful Day 1 of vacation.

Here are a few extra, bonus images from the Lone Wolf photo shoot with Sara.

Sara was full of creative ideas on this night and she helped improvise when I realized that I had left a key part of my tripod at home, making the tripod essentially useless and making the image I wanted to capture impossible.

Oh well, there will be other nights at Gray’s Lake. After all, The Summer of Fun will be kicking off very soon. Perhaps as early as May 8!

This pictures were never in the running for RWPE #2 – Soothing, but I took them at the same time and keep forgetting to post them.

I love fog.

The Eternal Seductiveness of Life

Because the calendar is a landscape medium, this picture actually appears in the calendar in landscape form with not much of the alium showing but the flower. I thought I would represent it here in the pictures original portrait format.