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Wing Graffiti

This painted wing graffiti is seen on the outside of the police department in

Coleman, TX.  

The shield says "Quis ut deus", = Who is like God?

WHAT A WINTER!!

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This is the first time in 10 years that I've spent the winter in upstate NY.  What a mistake!  It has been cold and very snowy.  Seems like we've had one storm a week.

One saving grace is that my hiking friends and I have been doing some snow-shoeing.  This is my first experience with it.  I didn't think I'd like it, but it's more fun than I expected it to be.

Sometimes we don't need snowshoes, we can use our spikes instead.  I prefer the spikes if the trail is tamped down by snowmobiles, otherwise it's pretty necessary to use snowshoes.

We've been trying to go out once a week.  One week we had to cancel because the weather was so bad.  One week we went to the local golf-course instead of driving north to a trail. Most of the time we've managed to dodge the bad-weather-bullet: a storm the day before and more snow the day after.

Another storm is forecast for next week (third week in March).  We're all weary of it, but another storm guarantees a few more weeks of snowshoeing.  Another storm guarantees more water in the wells and farm fields. Another storm guarantees a real appreciation of Spring when it finally arrives. So I guess there's an up side to it all.  Sigh.

Some hikers we met along the trail

Hunting Lodge

Honolulu

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I finally got the chance to get into Honolulu to photograph some architecture.  This first photo is of the building that is used for police headquarters on Hawaii Five-O.  It isn't really police headquarters, but it is a court building and it's beautiful both outside and inside.

In the same general area as the above building is a Mission Museum with a small cemetery.  

All three of these images were put through photomatix.

It was a beautiful day and the "icing on the cake" was that there was a hot dog vendor selling Sabrett's hot dogs at lunch time.  Yum!

Waikiki in Black & White

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The other day my friend and I went to Waikiki with the intention of doing some street photography only in black & white.  We both LOVE black & white and I remember back in the day when the only  way to shoot b&w was to insert an entire roll of b&w film into the camera.

If you decided you wanted to switch to color halfway through the roll, you either had to stick it out and finish the roll or remove it which was pretty tricky to do.

Now....with digital, it's just a matter of switching functions. 

But shooting b&w is a different animal than shooting color.  You have to "see" differently and anticipate what will look good and what won't.  Sometimes it's easier to shoot in color and then convert to b&w on the computer.  Part of me thinks that's cheating.  Part of me thinks that's cool.

Shooting in a b&w function forces you to be more discerning--you know that the image has to stand on the merits of composition and contrast without the impact of beautiful color to grab the viewer's attention.  Of course, the digital darkroom can really enhance any image, as did the wet darkroom, so some images can be salvaged.

So we set our cameras on b&w and began shooting.

After we finished at the beach, we headed over to our favorite Starbucks.  We did a little practice with panning and slow shutter speed.  I didn't have my tripod and I was just trying to teach my friend how to do these techniques, so I really didn't anticipate having any keepers.  Most of the images I shot were deleted, but these next three appealed to me.  

(Although the camera was hand-held, I was resting the camera on a newspaper box)