Recently in Photography Category

For those of you who have scratched me off their list as another Internet casualty (read, lost interest in sharing my little life with the rest of the world), it's not true! And it's not that I've decided to voluntarily take time off and not blog. It's simply that my life has become somewhat complicated lately (read, busy as hell so when I come home, those few hours between catching up on the day with my family, and going to bed, are so precious to me that I don't want to share my time).

Work has become very challenging for me lately. It's not because things are more technically challenging for me. It's just that there are some major upgrade initiatives at work that I'm heading up that are so mentally and time consuming, that I've had little time for anything else. But, in time, a month or so, this too will pass. So, until that time, my posting may be a bit sporadic. For those of you who continue to visit, thank you for thinking of me and for visiting. I'm not going anywhere!

Just some updates of our lives.....
- We are both healthy and doing well

- In a month, we are both going back to Idaho (very quick trip - 2 days there in all), where Kent is being honored with an award from the college that we both went to, and, where we met.

- I'm doing great, but stress is taking it's toll. I do find some comfort in my 18 year old single malt Scotch though, just before going off to bed. :-)

- We are going to New Zealand in December. Kent is going there for a couple of days of meetings. We will spend two or two and a half weeks there touring the two islands. FUN! Can't wait.

- Getting excited to see Mom again. She is coming for a visit in a couple of weeks.

- Getting excited to see friends again in Idaho in early October!

So there you have it. Nothing bad happened to us. Just crazy as hell. And I'm more addicted to iTunes than ever before. It's like heroin, only nicer. Oh, and the person who cuts my hair moved to a new place in West Hartford (pricey), and right next to the hair salon is a Bose store. Not good!!! So, after I got my hair cut, it seemed only natural to buy some new Bose noise reduction headphones for my trip to Idaho. I'm so impulsive about such things.

I'm trying to catch up on some photos I took. Here are a few of them. I just got around to posting them now. It was from a small walk we took yesterday along one of Coventry's many rivers.

Oh!! And by the way, for those of you who post comments to my blog, I now have THREADED COMMENTS!! You can now reply to a specific comment that someone made, and it shows it as a reply -- something that I've wanted for quite some time.

There's too much happening in my life right now. Between work, family, photography, it's hard to take time out for myself. That's been my life lately, and why I haven't posted more to this blog. It's not that I don't have anything to say. I just haven't had time.

We went to Boston yesterday. It was nice to get away and see a couple of friends. We went to a nice restaurant last night and had a great time. But I'll write more about that later.

Last weekend we went to the McLean Game Refuge in Granby, Connecticut. We try to do something every weekend that's just about us. That's either a drive, a hike, or a photo shoot somewhere. We had a great time. We took a few photos. Hope you enjoy.

Yesterday was a busy day for me. Today, I'm just taking it easy, and maybe taking in a movie or something at the mall. I'm on my own for a bit. Kent left yesterday morning very early for Vancouver, B.C. and won't be home until Thursday very late. He called last night to let me know he got in ok, as we always do.

So what to do with myself on a beautiful Saturday when I'm by myself? I decided to plan a photo trip, since it was nice and sunny out, to Kent Falls State Park, in Kent, Connecticut (map). It's a fair haul from my home to Kent, CT, but I was making the whole day of it. So I loaded up the gear, and headed off.

I have no idea how to get to Kent, CT. In fact, I can't find my way out of a paper bag without directions. Luckily, my car knows everything - how to get there, plots several possible courses, and how long it will take to get to our destination. Of course, I went the more direct way, which it said was to avoid freeways. That took me up through the north-end of Hartford. And as I was driving through this neighborhood, watching the junkies shooting themselves up with their morning fix of heroin, I realized just how different life can be if you make the wrong choices. I suppose, just maybe, if I had made different choices, I could have been one of them?

But along the way, since I was kind of going by it anyway, I decided to stop by Elizabeth Park. After a short distance, I leave this area, and ascend into the north Hartford area of Prospect Avenue, filled with huge mansions where the upper crust of the "other half" live. It is here that Elizabeth Park resides. And here are are few of the photos I took from Elizabeth Park.

View the entire set here.

View the entire set here.

After spending an hour or so there, I proceeded to Kent Falls State Park, about an hour away from Elizabeth Park. It was a very scenic drive - country side with farms of various sorts along the way. Very rural Connecticut, and a part of Connecticut that I don't often get to, the north western part of the state.

I spent about three hours at Kent Falls State Park. Here are a few photos from that stay.

View entire set here.

View entire set here.

After my stay at Kent Falls State Park, I decided to go to Toshi Japanese Restaurant in Avon, Connecticut. It was on my way home, and it has quite a reputation for being a top notch sushi restaurant. I programmed my car to find it, and I left for Toshi.

I come into the restaurant, and I'm seated. They put a menu on the table, and came back no more than one minute later to ask me if I'm ready to order. I said, "Well, no. I just sat down." The waiter told me, "Well, we are closing the sushi bar in five minutes so you really do have to get your order in now." I should have walked out, but after hiking all over Kent Falls State Park all afternoon, I was really hungry. So, as he stood there watching over me, I picked out a few things that sounded good to me. He put the order in.

The food came, and the beverages came later (not good!). The sushi looked like it had been put together by an amateur. I could have done better. I didn't complain. I had lunch. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon. I thought that they were closing the sushi bar to prepare for dinner. They were after all clearing off the paper napkins that they gave to me, and placing blue cloth napkins on the tables.

I paid my bill, and wanted to go wash my hands. The restaurant was still open for business, yet, they weren't serving. On my way to the restroom to wash my hands, the entire staff were gathered around a large table playing poker. It's good to know that my lunch was hurried and that absolutely no thought was put behind my first (and only!) visit to Toshi, because they had something more important to attend too... a poker game.

Toshi, truly a second class restaurant that's honestly not worth the trouble to go to. I was very disappointed. I grade them a "D-".

Other than that, it was really a spectacular day. I got home around 4:30, and by 9:00, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went to bed and had good dreams about the day.

The photo below is my first attempt at making a composite photo. The composite consists of eight distinct and separate photos. The photos are then merged and aligned into one complete composite. The final file size was 756 megabytes. This was reduced considerably, even on the Flickr site. Not bad for my first try. Click on the photo to view it in Flickr, to see it in larger sizes.

I've taken some time away to reflect a bit about some things. It's all good. Some of the things I've been up to...

I'm still looking at different ways to merge large photos. My interest in photography at this point is in taking a large canvas (many photos) and merging them into one single photo. The end product will be a more encompassing photo then just broken up into different photos with different views. It's coming together pretty well, but it's making me think more about the settings I have on the camera. It's not as flexible as taking individual photos because the settings must be uniform, without different exposure settings or different focal points. It's more difficult to pull off. In the end, you want to end up with one large photo and, if you are really successful, you will never be able to tell where the photos merge together. If I get good enough with it, I'll post some of the photos on Flickr, as well as post them here.

My trip to Idaho to visit with family and friends was very nice. Generally speaking, I had a good time. It was nice to see old friends, as well as visit with family members, who would meet with me. Not all of them talk to me, but I'm not losing any sleep over that. The downside is, it left me drained both emotionally and physically.

When I was in Idaho, I was a fish out of water. I realized how surreal it was. I drove by a place just off campus from the College of Idaho on Dearborne Street. It looks just exactly like it did when we stayed there over a summer in the late 1970's. It's as if time has no effect on it. I looked at the apartment, and had images of our life then, and this very nice lady named Viola Springer bringing her two boys chocolate cake that she made for us. Such a treat! People don't do that any more. Well, I do, but in today's world, you are looked at as being a bit "off" if you do that.

I also realized by going back there just how much I've changed. I'd like to tell you that now that a lot of time has passed, my family accepts my "gayness", if you want to call it that. I took some photos of my life back with me so they could see my life the way it is now, with photos of my family. And yet, I found myself skipping over the photo of us -- Kent and myself, as a couple -- because I knew they would not like it. And I was on their turf. What to do? Some would say I wussed out. I guess I just didn't think it was worth the aggravation of having to process the looks I would get. And I was never like that when I was younger. So what they saw were photos of our home, our cats, places we like, stuff like that. But not us.

It's not all that bad. My eighty-four year old Aunt openly told me, "You have quite a man in your life." That was pretty awesome because she didn't used to feel that way. Perhaps with time, she's realized that Kent is part of my life. That kind of cancels out the other negatives with the family.

The other thing that is worth mentioning is that I've been with Kent for 33 years. They all know this. At family gatherings, not one of them asked about Kent, or my personal life. Pretty damn lame. That's all I can say.

One friend who I've known since childhood keeps saying online and in email (for the past year) that he wanted to get together with me while I was there. I called him several times. When I saw him online again after getting home, he said, "I tried to call you and it said your phone wasn't available." Strange. It's available for everyone else, but him. Oh well.

Another friend from childhood did meet with me, and we have a good visit, although it was only three hours long. We will keep in tough I believe.

Mostly, I enjoyed my Boise friends. I had a great time visiting with them. And, my cousin, Kim, who I stayed with, is one of my best friends in the world. She is the only one in my family, other than my brother, who acknowledges Kent as my spouse.

So it's been a mixed bag of stuff. I'm still here and still around. I've just been trying to get my motivation back to blog. We've been taking weekend trips here and there. I'm so happy I'm back in New England again. Next to Idaho, Connecticut is like a rain forest.

Finally, I posted some of Kent's photos from South Africa if you want to view them.

In celebration of... nothing really, we took a short trip down to Mystic Connecticut last night. We stayed at a local motel, and had dinner at the Floodtide Restaurant. I guess we go often enough for them to know us. They actually remembered us. We had a Caesar's Salad made right at our table. It was pretty cool.

But before that, we wondered around Mystic a bit, after taking a walk out to Bluff Point State Park. Here are a few photos of the trip.

One of the cool things about my visit to Idaho is that a few of my relatives want to take the time to establish a relationship with me. One of my nephews is one of them. Anyway, the trip just wouldn't be complete if I didn't post this very photogenic goat that belongs to that nephew. It's not often that you get a subject that loves to be photographed.

I took the day off from work. So, I'm taking time to rest, work on yet another photo book, and to take the time to wonder around my yard and garden to see the results of all the rain we've been having. I love flowers. To me, they make everything brighter. I even buy cut flowers that I have around my home.

Tonight I'm going to Hot Tomatoes to see my friend Donovan. Tomorrow morning, I'm off to Boston. I'll stay the day, see a friend or two, and come home Sunday afternoon. Monday is all mine. Kent is in South Africa still, so it will be quiet. I may go for a hike on Monday if the weather is good.

Kent emailed me a few photos he took while exploring around the Cape Town area. This is what he sent.

And a few more...

This maps out the hike drive they took today, along with the photos along the way...

I usually take a two mile walk around Founders Plaza, in East Hartford where I work. I do this around noon. But today, when I got to work around 7 a.m., the air was so fresh and clean, that I decided to put on my head phones, grab my camera, and take my walk then (I also took one at noon). These are just a few of the things I came across.

The first is simply the path I took this morning, followed by a flowering dogwood tree, and some leaves.

I love Spring!