Bald River Falls, Near the Cherahola Skyway, TN

During the Big Mtn Run last weekend we went for a ride to check out these falls. I got some pretty cool pics and I'll post them over the next few days. I love being in the mountains, and I especially love being near mtn. streams. My Mom started a tradition with us when I was a kid. Any time we went to the Smokies we had to go to a stream and at least put our feet in. I still enjoy this tradition today.

Taken from the bridge above.

From the road right before the bridge.

Taken from below the bridge. This is a beautiful location and I truly enjoyed my time there. I'll post more pics soon.

Some Flowers I've Seen Lately

Since I got the new camera I've been taking pics of anything that catches my eye. Sometimes that something is a flower. Here's a few that I've found around my yard and in my Mother In Law's yard.

From my yard.

My Mother In Law Jane is unbelievable at growing flowers and other plants. This is one of the ones I saw on Easter while we were out in the yard.

Another from my yard.

Another of Jane's

And one more from her yard.

Some Architectural Fun!

A while back we went to New Orleans for a visit. While there Allison and I wandered around the Quarter and took some interesting pictures of buildings. Now it's time to share some of those with you....

The granite entrance to a building. I wish my old camera had been capable of getting more of this entryway into the shot. It was a very interesting building and I don't think this picture does it justice but I do think it makes a nice picture.

LOTS of cool balconies around the Quarter. I liked the look of this one and snapped the pic. I did zoom in for this one.

Even better was that the whole building looked cool. When you can have that much interesting detail on the corner of a building you know you've done good.

Just a cool looking window in a building that was being remodeled.

Something about the symmetry and squareness of this building caught my eye. I ended up taking 3 or 4 shots before I caught what my naked eye was seeing. I like how the stairs look like they could be raised up and fit right into the balcony going around the building.

We Had A Little Rain Last Week.

This is my yard during last weeks storms. I took advantage of the rain to do some more experimenting with the camera.

Not sure what setting I used in this one, but it worked. as you'll see in the others auto was not a good setting to choose.

In this one I set the camera to "aperture priority" which is basically where I pick the f/stop, but the camera picks the shutter speed. It seemed to work good for this.

This picture was taken on auto, as you can see the camera tried to focus on the rain drops and didn't take too good of a picture. Kinda neat, but not good.

Same thing with this one, but it's so bad you can barely see the road. All in all this was a pretty good session because I was able to try some of the things I've been reading about and at the same time learning that auto just doesn't cut it sometimes.

Stay tuned, I'll try to get some more interesting pictures over the next few days.

A Cabin In The Woods...

A picture I took of the Walker Sister's Cabin in the Smokey Mountains Nat. Park. Lotta history around that cabin. It seems my Grandfather stayed there when he was a kid and that we are related to them by marriage. Whatever the connection my Mom loved this place and I must have inherited it because I get a very peaceful feeling whenever I'm there.

I got Allison to sit on the porch in the same pose as one of the Walker Sisters in an old picture I saw years ago. Too bad I didn't have the book with me when I took the pic so that I could have gotten it a little closer to the original. It's close, but I'd prefer it to be closer.

.The old picture was in one of my books so I scanned it for you. The photo credit says 1936 by E.E. Exline

Airplane Pictures

One thing I love almost as much as motorcycles is old planes. Especially WWII planes. I've posted most of my pics on the other blog, but thought I'd share these here.

This is the bombsite that crushed Nazi Germany. The Norden bombsite was the most sophisticated device of its kind during WWII. The standing orders were that if the plane was crash landed you were to destroy the sight at ALL costs. Now of course we can see them and see just what all the fuss was about. This one is in the nose of the B-17 Liberty Belle. We're actually pretty close to my house here so maybe I was planning on quieting those damn kids that always run around <grin>.  Nothing fancy to this shot, I just like it.

This is the cockpit of a B-25 that crashed in Lake Murray SC back in 1943. It was recovered a few years ago by a crew from the Southern Museum of Flight were I was a volunteer at the time. This was taken after the 3 feet of mud had been flushed from the cockpit area. A lot of this corrosion was caused by chemicals the Corp of Engineers used in the lake to control the algae. It was a mess to clean up, but you can still see this aircraft at the Museum of Flight in Birmingham. More info can be found here and here.

I took this photo with my old VERY cheap ebay camera so it is not that great, but I thought y'all might appreciate the shot.

Spenser Welding and Color Correcting Photos.

I took this picture of Spenser doing some welding on Saturday. I had the camera on auto and this is what it took. I really like this pic and even the way the weld flash messed with the camera's sensors. I think it's a really cool look. Then I decided to see if I could make it look more like what the room really looked like when I took the shot. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop I was able to do that. Just remember if a picture doesn't look quite right, but is still a good shot you can take advantage of the file being digital and make it the way you want. I adjusted the levels just a little and then shifted the color balance on the shadows and highlight levels. Play around with the controls and just remember that if you don't like it, just undo it. You'll be amazed at what you can come up with.

The original shot with the room given a yellowish look.

Color adjusted and looking more like real life.

I REALLY do like to get pictures of stuff being created. We need to get our hands dirty more often.