Dew

I really want to get some good macro pictures of the raindrops on plants after a storm (I know that this is not technically dew) but I think I have to blame the focal length of my lens for not being able to get good close ups.  I'm still okay with how this one turned out though.

Drip

I feel like I'm recycling a lot of these names now.  I took several pictures framed this way with different shutter speeds to see how they all changed how it looked.  I like the way that the water smoothed out in this one, but still has some definition toward the top.

Kids

This is a treehouse that my brother and I collaborated on as kids.  It evolved to become mostly his project as I went off to build my own, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable project that I still like to look back on.

1984

I really don't know what inspired it, but on this day I had been thinking a lot about different predictions of dystopias and what makes them interesting.  I kept looking things up and seeing things like "The Hunger Games" listed as the best dystopian fiction novels.  Don't get me wrong, they're interesting books, but this one is still the best, so I decided to make it a subject.

Canopy

Editing this kind of picture is always hard.  You lose a lot of detail in the moon by increasing the exposure enough to see the foreground, but I'm still happy with the framing here.

Flash

This was a bit of accidental self-portraiture.  I'm not wild about how it came out, but the framing of my face was a complete accident.  I was really looking to see if I could get any interesting images of my camera's flash going off in the dark.

Stump

The editing on this didn't really do justice to all of the colors of the lichen on the stump, but the angle of the lighting when I took it brought out some of the relief in the wood that I enjoyed.

Bottlecaps

I collected these as a kid.  I'm not entirely sure where my collection is now, but this goes almost all the way across the garage door in my house now.  I'm pretty sure my dad is responsible.

Blast

I heard that there was a lightning strike very near my house on Saturday.  On Sunday I walked by this tree.  This was the best picture I got, but the crack spirals all the way to the top of the tree and there were some splinters--maybe 20 foot long splinters--that had been blown off about 30 feet.  It was pretty impressive.

Reception

This is the reception party from the wedding of one of my classmates in high school.  Again, it was taken with my phone, which doesn't seem to like to focus well.

Dam

This was taken with my phone, which is why I'll say it's bad.  I'm standing in the middle of a dam on the Rio de Flag.  The out of focus blobs are my feet and the out of focus bright spot of light is the flash on my phone.

Sky

the Canyon is deliberately underexposed and very narrowly shown in this picture.  I was trying to focus attention on the clouds, which I had been enjoying watching the lighting on, although I was watching them for so long that by the time I got around to taking the picture it wasn't quite so impressive.

Tank

I have to admit that this was a last-minute shot.  But I'd imagine you would have guessed that by looking at it.

Illumination

I had to run out to the back yard to take this picture in time for the lighting to be right.  The lens flare was a happy mistake, but I lost a lot of the interest in it once I cropped the picture down to focus on the plant, which was really what I was looking for- the way it is lit up when the ground around it mostly isn't.

Towering

Whenever I take the time to look at them, I'm always very impressed by how tall the thunderheads that move in during the monsoon are.  Today I just felt like taking a picture of one.

Pieces

I'm not sure if all the broken glass out behind my house is a historical site or an indication that the last person who lived there really liked beer, but there is a big field of broken glass about 100 feet out my back door.  I was trying to get sharp colors and bright reflections in this picture, but it doesn't seem like I came very close on either count.

Clearing

I went for a walk in the rain today and took this once I got to the rim.  I'm glad I got the exposure well enough to still see the rain, and I like how the clouds are starting to break so that you can see the sun reflecting off of the still wet rocks.

Key

Old school technology is a bit of an area of interest with me; I work with computers and modern technology all day, but I still own this telegrapher's key and two manual typewriters.  I guess I just think old technology should be photographed in black and white.  This sits on my desk and I tap on it periodically, but I unfortunately don't know Morse Code to use it correctly.

Clipped

Too bad about this picture.  I am permanently indebted to the subject matter though, enough para cord and carabieners might solve as many problems as a roll of duct tape.

Ripples

Monsoon season has officially started in Grand Canyon, AZ.  I was looking for ripples in the water that had collected in this lid, and I can see a few, but they aren't as defined as I was hoping for.

Power

I would have liked if the definition of the clouds was a little better on this one, really I was going for the effect of dark, lightning-bringing clouds over a power pole, but the exposure I chose didn't really get the clouds very well.

Wayfinding

This was the finishing touch to my truck's crash kit, just in case I can't find my way out of somewhere and my phone battery is dead.

Drops

This was taken from the inside of a car window while driving through a monsoon.  I set my aperture to f/3.5 to get a narrow depth of field and I like the way that some of the landscape is blurred by the speed of the car while the drops are still clear.

Cowboys

If Wyatt Earp had said "Peace and Love," this could be a statue of his.  As it is, it was just some creative decorating by my aunt and me.

Passtime

This is in the caldera in the mountains above Los Alamos, NM.  I went for a hike here with my uncle and my brother and these fishers were right at the trailhead.  Those dark clouds were letting loose by the end of our hike and these people didn't seem to mind, but I'm glad I took the picture while the landscape was still visible.

Base

This trip was my first chance to test out a tent that I bought a few months ago.  It held up remarkably well to New Mexico's summer monsoons and I was so happy with it I had to include a picture, even though this particular one was taken late at night.

Escape

All of the people in the Santa Fe Opera look so civilized...until it comes time to get out of the parking lot.  I had meant to take my phone into the opera house to get some pictures of the architecture, but unfortunately I left my phone in the car and this was about the only picture still available to me for the night.

Acoma

Acoma is probably the best pueblo for tourism in Northern New Mexico.  I took a tour with my family up to the mesa where their main settlement is.  Photography requires a permit and several special regulations, including that you can't take pictures of people without their permission.  I finally got this picture of the main street in the pueblo without someone walking down the street.

Chaco

Today was spent in Chaco Canyon, which was probably the largest settlement in North America several hundred years ago.  This is a window in Pueblo Bonito, which appears to be the largest and most impressive structure in Chaco.

Camp

The second night of the trip was in Bluewater Lake Campground in New Mexico.  In the interest of taking some pictures of things that show what was going on rather than just what I saw, I took this picture of camp.