No, I didn't abandon the blog...

But the last few weeks have been super busy. 

And I'm not updating to post any pictures.  I haven't taken any. 

Which is kind of a lie - I took a few pictures one weekend during the football game (not with my own camera though).  I had plans to stylize a few of them and post them...  But when I finally had some time to go back and look at them, I couldn't decide what I wanted to do and I didn't like the tweaks I did try...  So I abandoned that.

I'm really hoping for a photo trip in the near future though!  I have a couple of destinations in mind...  Mostly waiting for some cooler weather though. 

My camera probably thinks that I've abandoned it; I have not! 

I really need to motivate myself to back up all my pictures and organize them better...  But I spend as little time on the computer as possible.  Which translates to: very little time!  Hopefully I will get a mini-vacation sometime and I can get some of my own personal things done.

In the meantime, enjoy what's here and feel free to offer suggestions, comments, or idle thoughts!  :)

Has it been a while?

I'm not sure when my last blog last - two or so weeks ago?  It feels like much longer...

I'm so thankful that July is over.  What a horrible month. 

First things first though...  I finally edited some new-ish pictures!  These were taken around the neighborhood in July:

I like this one, even though this was not the effect I was going for...  This is what happens when you go for a walk on a Louisiana morning and pull your camera from a cold place into a humid one and snap a picture without noticing that your lens has fogged over...  But hey, it looks cool!

I really like the sharpness, clarity, simplicity of these images...  Minimal editing, believe it or not!  I mostly just increased the clarity and added slight vignetting...

I tried editing some of my duck photos from last month...  Alas, even if I increase the clarity 100%, it doesn't make the pictures much better...  So I'm not going to bother editing them...  But I still have pictures of cute ducklings!  I'll just have to save real wildlife photography for when/if I get a better camera.

In the meantime I've been knitting like a knitting demon...  I think said in a previous post that I was "knitting to save my life"...  It's certainly helped to keep me pretty calm... 

I suppose some explanation is in order.  I know that my last post or two had pretty negative undertones and I even mentioned quitting photography at one point.  I've decided not to quit.  But I have decided that I need to enjoy my environment more and put down the camera every once in a while...  And as I said previously, July was an exceptionally hard month for me.  Literally every aspect of my life fell apart in a spectacular way.  Because this is not meant to be a personal blog I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that family, friends etc., and job were all at a rock bottom there...  My way of coping was to close up... 

I'm not going to pretend that things are fan-freaking-tastic now, because they aren't...  But I am coping with everything better.  I thought to myself a couple of weeks ago that this would probably be a slow climb out of rock bottom and I think that is very true.  So I'm slowly climbing...  Trying to stay positive and have fun.

Anyway, here are some knitting photos.  I'm planning on giving most of this stuff away because really all I'm doing is getting rid of yarn, and the best way to do that seems to be by knitting skinny scarves. 

Bumbling Bee scarf

Obviously not a scarf...  Baby socks!

And I'm keeping this one for myself...

Happy school year to those going ahead: part of me wishes I was with you!  And a great week to the rest!

New Design

Hello...  Obviously, I've decided to spruce up the blog a bit.  I'm much happier with the way it looks now.

Also, I wanted to address some stuff from the previous post: I'm slowly but surely feeling better.

I had intentions of putting the previously posted pictures into Lightroom and then showing the results, but frankly I've been a bit lazy and haven't felt like editing pictures.  All I wanted to do was increase the clarity and sharpness a bit.

I've also decided to forgo my self-portrait collage project, for the time being at least.  I've taken quite a few pictures for it, but again, I haven't edited them and I just don't see the motivation appearing soon.

I've been working on non-photography projects in the meantime.

Melancholy Walkabout

Took a walk around City Park and the golf course today because I was a bit upset...  Almost didn't bring my camera with me, but I just knew that if I didn't I would see something great.  The other part of me, though, said - if you do bring your camera, you won't see anything and you'll feel uncomfortable carrying the darn thing.
Well, I brought it, and somehow lucked out.  Came across ducklings.  If you are a person who looks at ducklings and can't feel slightly better - you aren't someone I want to know.
I happily snapped several shots, which I haven't really gone through yet because I'm lazy.  I also saw an egret - a skilled hunter, he waited for me to make my way down the pond to him before he started showing off, slowly picking through the water and posing elegantly until he caught a fish.  Yup, got to see him catch a fish.  That was pretty awesome.  Unfortunately, I also got to see him play with his food.  Meh on that part.
I'm sure I'll have a few favorite picture whenever I get the time to really go through them and clean them up a bit - for most of them I had the zoom to the max, which makes the photos a bit grainy.  I didn't want to interfere with "wildlife" though and disturb them, so grainy images were a necessary inconvenience.

After finally leaving the ducks, I noticed that quite some time had passed, much more than I had thought.  And unfortunately the second I left the ducks and the egret I went back to being upset and melancholy.

Something I've been thinking about, since May actually - I may quit this blog.  And I may quit the "photography" thing.  I mean, who cares?  Really?

Here are a few of today's pics.

I think that this is Papa Duck.

There were actually two sets of ducklings.  These two were a bit older than the rest (there were also two mommies).

The other, younger set.

This little guy was brave and stealing the show.  He'd look over and see me, and start to waddle quickly over to me, but about halfway between his mom and me he would realize that he was in a no man's land, freak out, and go back to mom.

He alone kept going to the water, like saying, "ma ma, look at me!  look at me!"

This one is funny to me because it looks like a family portrait.

Another funny one - these are the older ducklings with their mom.

And this is regal Mr. Egret.

Right before he ducked his head under.

And his prize...

I was kinda proud of this shot.  Happened so fast I didn't really have time to think about it, just shoot.  Too bad I couldn't get any clouds in the shot.

And I include this one only because Rupert (I think that's his name) scared the hell out of me as I was walking back to the apartment.  He literally charged me from the bushes and was at my legs.  Thankfully, he wanted pettings and not blood.

Black and White Desert Photography

LightStalking has another great article here providing examples of black and white desert photography - definitely something on my bucket list.

Wine Photos

A while back I tried my hand at taking photos of wine bottles and glasses...  Here is a recent post on LightStalking with some excellent examples of wine photography, incorporating bottles, glasses, and even barrels.  I'll definitely use them for inspiration next time I try my hand at wine photography.  Enjoy!

Weekend in New Orleans

The trip to New Orleans this past weekend was absolutely AWESOME.  The best photo trip I've been on so far - and also the best mini-vacation I've been on in a very long time.  It was so great to go out with friends and just hang out in new places chattin' and relaxin'.

It would take me a long time to recount the entire weekend, but I'll try ;).

Saturday we drove down to New Orleans and ate at Guy's Poboys - which was delicious.  There I told Harper about some pictures I'd found online from Jazzland/Six Flags New Orleans and how cool they looked...  So to make a short story slighter shorter, we went to Jazzland!

We were able to get in pretty easily.  At first Nate and Dave stayed by the car because Nate didn't feel comfortable with going in.  Harper (Harper Levy Photography) tried telling him that the city owns the park now and they already said that they wouldn't prosecute anyone who trespassed, but he had to google it for himself...  And Dave helped convince him to venture inside (yay!).  I was very glad for that because I know Dave really wanted to go in (and he said later that Jazzland was his favorite part of the trip).  Again, so much fun!  Harper and I got grrrrreat pictures, though it was hotter than Hades and I think all of us wanted to drop dead soon after going in.  I easily have over 100 great pictures from Jazzland, so I'll only post a few of my favorites:

And by a few, I meant a lot ;).

After Jazzland, we were super sweaty, exhausted from the heat, and very thirsty, so Dave directed us to Cooter Brown's (heehee).  It was a great sports bar - we got to watch Rugby from the 70s and the U-17 World Cup...  And after we had a couple of beers Dave directed us to two cemeteries in Uptown, both of which were very interesting and beautiful.  I got a lot of pictures of some of the statuary and the more interesting graves.  And here are a few of those(!):

An observation in both of these cemeteries: lots of fake flowers.  That intrigued me for some reason.

Another Woodsmen of the World Memorial marker!  See post below when Dave and I went to the St. Gabriel Catholic Church cemetery and saw a ton of these markers there...  

This is the second cemetery we visited...

Sun beam!

Again, so many beautiful statues and graves...  I don't know why I'm so fond of cemeteries...  It's not for "goth" reasons, but I do think they are beautiful and peaceful...  Also, I like comparing the dates and names...

We decided to get dinner after the cemeteries.  Harp voted for Superior Grill so that's where we went!  And it was awesome.  An hour wait, but we all got to talk and drink while we waited.  Then we quickly ate through two baskets of chips and salsa.  Our main courses were absolutely delicious (or mine was at least)...  Then we called it quits for the night and finally checked into our hotel!

The Cotton Exchange Hotel - well, all I can say is that it was only one night and I wasn't expecting 4-star exceptionalism.  The pillows sucked as Dave reiterated to me just a few times...  And we didn't have any towels...  And even when we called down for some they never arrived because "housekeeping doesn't have any ready and we'll send them up as soon as they come out of the dryer."  :\      So... yeah...

Next day we checked out of the hotel and went to the Riverwalk for some ben-YAYS (thank you, Storyville) and then walked around for a bit.  I got a few pictures of the neighborhoods, Lee Circle, and Lafayette Square.   Interestingly, Lafayette Square has a several statues - none of which are depictions of Lafayette.  The first we came across was some dude who founded schools or orphanages (my love of history failed me on this dude).  In the CENTER of the square?  Henry Clay.  Henry Clay.  Henry Clay!?  Uh huh.  Finally, the last statue was of Benjamin Franklin.  There were also some abstract statues there, one of which looked like a rotted apple with legs...

Dave and I wandered back to the hotel and then hopped in the car to take a driving tour of Uptown and his old haunts.  New Orleans street trivia: there is no fifth street.  There's First, Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth...  But no Fifth...  Also, Calhoun and Clay streets are parallel to each other, yet the two hated each other in real life.  

We drove past some of Dave's old apartments, Loyola and Tulane, and down some of his favorite streets.  Then we hit River Road.

I think that we left New Orleans about 1:30 and we got back to Baton Rouge, via River Road the whole way, at 6:30.  Minus an hour or so for stops.  We saw Destrehan, Godchaux House, San Francisco, Laura, Oak Alley, St. Emma, and Nottoway.  East and west banks.  Dave hadn't seen many of the plantations before, despite living in New Orleans for several years, so I felt he needed and education ;).  For me, San Francisco was the most impressive.  It also has a fascinating history behind it.  San Francisco's history, from its official website: 

The year was 1827. Just 40 miles downriver, New Orleans was celebrating its first Mardi Gras. Elisée Rillieux, a free man of color and a smart visionary, began buying tracts of land and slaves to establish a sugar plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish. But Elisée never intended to be a planter himself. Like his brother Francois, who in 1822 created an estate that later became Godchaux Plantation, he was more of a speculator and a good one at that. Only three years later Elisée sold the plantation to Edmond Bozonier Marmillion and his partner Eugène Lartigue for the enormous sum of $100,000 dollars, collecting an estimated $50,000 dollar profit.

To provide his surviving sons Valsin and Charles with a prestigious residence, Edmond began building the plantation home that exists today. In 1853 he hired expert builders and purchased twelve highly skilled slaves to convert his extravagant vision into reality. When main construction was finished two years later, Edmond appointed accomplished artists to carry out an ambitious decoration project. It featured five artistically hand painted ceilings, painted door panels, faux marbling, and faux wood graining throughout. The house became so distinctive that it inspired novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes to write "Steamboat Gothic", a story about the family she imagined lived there. Viewed from some angles, the house closely resembles the ornate and yet graceful superstructure of a Mississippi riverboat.

Edmond passed away in 1856, less than one year after the home was completed. The day after Edmond’s death, his oldest son Valsin returned from Europe and was forced to take over the plantation. Valsin Bozonier Marmillion was married to Louise von Seybold of Munich, Germany, and had three daughters. Together they lived at the home and ran the sugar plantation for the next fifteen years. The unusual name “San Francisco” is believed to be derived from Valsin’s comment about the extraordinary debt he was confronted with when taking over the estate. He declared he was sans fruscins or “without a penny in my pocket.” The name evolved into St. Frusquin and, in 1879, was changed into “San Francisco” by the next owner, Achille D. Bougère.

As a result of the Great Flood of 1927, the Army Corps of Engineers began building the
Mississippi River levee system and completed the project in 1932. The new levee unfortunately sacrificed the luscious front yard and gardens. The project would have also claimed the home, but local residents lobbied the Louisiana legislature to pass a measure that would save as many plantations along the River Road as possible. Fortunately, the Corps was able to curve the levee around San Francisco. 

It wasn't the grandest house (I think Nottoway gets that distinction), but I think it was most beautiful.

During our travels, we accidentally took a detour away from River Road and made it to Paincourtville before realizing the mistake.  We both refused to completely blame the other though ;).  But that was how we saw St. Emma Plantation, which I found intriguing.  I still need to find more history about it though.

Here are a few pictures from New Orleans Sunday and then the River Road Plantations:

Lee Circle

St. Charles

Henry Clay

Benjamin Franklin

Godchaux House

San Francisco

The Mighty Mississippi

Oak Alley

St. Amico Chapel

St. Emma

Nottoway

All around, the trip was a huge success!  Got some great pictures out of it, and more importantly, had a fantastic time.  We'll have to do it again soon.  Thanks to Nate and Harp for great conversation and good fun, and of course thanks to Dave to putting up with my photographic needs ;) and showing me the best time I've had in NOLA.  :)