Today's the day. First day of baseball for the Orioles for the 2008 season. A season that I'm sure for many is not filled with very much hope or optimism (I am one of those people). I will however look forward to going to the games, and hanging out with good friends while doing so.
The Vegas odds on the Orioles this season is currently set at 64 1/2 games won (thats out of 162 in case you didn't know) which is a rounded winning percentage of 40%. Bugh, thats nuts. Let me make my prediction here. Based on the stats that over the past 10 seasons, the Orioles have won on average 72 games a year, I'm gonna make my prediction for wins. I predict 70 wins for the O's this year. I know...its nothing bold, but hey - its a prediction.
As for the picture, this is Jeremy Guthrie today's starting pitcher against the Devil Rays. The picture was taken by an ESPN photographer during spring training. Enjoy! And Go O's!
So when thinking of a title, I wanted to do the superman thing of "Its a bird, its a plane...", but since this is a bird it didn't quite work out that way. Either way. I took this picture of a bird in the tree in our backyard using the super zoom lens. If you don't see the bird right away, its to the left center. If your curious as to the type of bird, its one that doesn't understand that in April & May when my window is open that it needs to be quiet in the early morning. Enjoy!
HA! Don't you just love that pun in the title. Seriously though...I took this picture this past weekend at my parents house. My dad has all kinds of flowers around the yard outside (which is pretty easy to do on 2 acres of land). I took this close up shot of one of the Daffodil plants (one of many i might say). I'm trying to figure out how to use the new camera for up close shots. I think this one turned out well. Enjoy!
This past Easter at church we had an Easter egg hunt outside for the kids of the church after the service was over. I must say, its pretty amusing watching a dozen little kids run around grabbing every little round egg that they can spot. This year we had a TON of eggs and not necessarily a TON of kids to pick them up. There were so many eggs to 'hide' that I was able to take this shot of a bunch of eggs grouped together. As for the kids, they looked like they had a good time. I hope everyone who reads this also had a good Easter. Enjoy!
Another shot from the other night at the harbor. While this picture is a little blurry, and subsequently I wouldn't usually post a picture that's blurry I still wanted to share this. What I really like about this nighttime harbor shot is all the reflected light on the water. I love how each building gives off its own light. The blue from the aquarium, the red from the hard rock guitar, the yellow from the Best Buy sign. Just neat to look at I thought. Enjoy!
This evening Jenn and I went downtown with some friends of ours to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Science Center. In between dinner and viewing the exhibit, I of course took some pictures of the harbor. Not loosing an opportunity to try for another, hopefully more interesting panoramic (something I think I've officially become obsessed with at this point) I took a few shots of the harbor. What I like thats different is that the sun is setting. I think it looks really cool where the sun is reflecting off the Aquarium glass back onto the water. Really neat effect I thought. Enjoy!
So today is another pictures of one of our nephews. This is Damien bowling. I would have thought that little children, especially ones that are related (i.e. him and his brother) would be a little nicer to one another. But they aren't. Damien won the first game and Holly won the second. Damien did quite a bit of gloating at his brother (which to me was funny, even if it was mean) because I know Brandon would have done the exact same thing. Now with that backstory told, this picture. Its Damien bowling. Enjoy!
So more today of the Capitol. I wasn't to sure what I wanted to post, but i did take quite a few pictures of this that I knew I wanted to share. What makes this different, at least for me, is the angle of the shot. All of the other shots that I've shared from that day are the head on shots, or a panoramic (which by the way I think were also straight on). This shot however, is at an off angle and includes a bit of tree in there to. I think thats about it. Enjoy!
Today I'm going to share a picture that someone else took. A while back, like 6-8 weeks ago Chad and I were talking about cruises, and the boats, and different places to store pictures online. He uses a .mac account to store/share his pictures, while in case you weren't aware I use Google's offering called Picasa. Either way, the real point here is that this is the ship he had on one of his Carribean trips. Its a Carnival ship in the foreground and in the background you can see the Disney cruise lines ship as well.
This picture was taken on a road near Coronado. While I realize that the contrast and visibility of the cars and items in the bottom/foreground of the image aren't very well lit, its more the sky and the silhouetted image of the palm tree that I like. I also like how the palm tree looks kinda like a pineapple hanging out in the sky. Enjoy!
I think the title pretty much says it all for this picture. I wanted to post something related to what today is, so here you have it. This picture is from flickr and if you click on the image you can view the original post. Enjoy!
Last weekend we had our nephews down for another visit. Christine had said last time they visited that she wanted to get together so Holly and them could hang out, or at their age is it just called 'playing'. Either way, this is a shot of the three of them. It seemed to be Damien's thing of the weekend to throw up the peace sign in his pictures. Either way, here they are. Enjoy!
I think the hardest thing about posting this picture was finding out the name of of this bridge. I was sure that it had a name, and I thought it was the "Severn River Bridge", but that is the bridge runs over the water carrying Rt. 50. This bridge is Rt. 2, so after a bit of digging I was able to find the name of the bridge.
With the name part out of the way, let me explain this picture. This is 2 pictures put together to make the panorama. I love the sunset light on the bottom supports of the bridge. To take this picture I went to a marina just before you get on the bridge headed north. I wandered out on the pier to the outermost point to get this picture. Also, just a note, you can click on the picture to see a larger version if you'd like to see more details. Enjoy!
As a follow-up to yesterday's picture I present a very similar image that was taken about 30 minutes after the first picture. What I like here is that the colors of the sunset sky are so vivid here. I also like the contrast of the scene after such a short period of time. Tomorrow I'll be sure to show the bridge. Enjoy!
So this evening I stopped at the South River bridge on my way home from practice. I wanted to try and get some cool shots of the bridge (which of course I'll be sure to share soon), and I also got some neat sunset pics. But what I want to share first, is the picture below.
What I like about the picture is the bright yellow light in the back thats falling in the sky. I also like how the sun is kinda washing out the bottom right and the top left of the image. I hope everyone else likes it to. Enjoy!
Today I have another panoramic to share. This is actually number 2 of 3, but I'm not to sure I'll ever post the third one here. This is a series of shots stitched together to make the panorama. It was taken around the center of the ground in front of the capitol, hence all of the grass in the foreground of the shot.
I have posted before how the panoramic pictures are made up of a collection of shots (maybe 6 or in this case 12 shots) combined together. What that means is that I took a series of pictures spanning a horizontal range and then put all the pictures together. There is overlap of course, that ensures that the pictures can be properly put together. The reason the picture doesn't look overly long and thin is because I have been taking 'tall' pictures, i.e. portrait oriented ones, and then stitching them together. Thats why there are more pictures in 1 image, and why they are still able to be a good height and width. Enjoy!
This is another shot from the Concord Point waterfront. What I liked about this shot was how you get a feeling of the water moving in this picture. I love the soft rolling waves that you can see as the water is coming into the shore. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago when we had our nephews down to visit and we went to D.C. we also went into the Air & Space Museum. This is a picture of one of the old planes hanging up that they had. I liked it because it was an old style propeller plane, which I think look pretty cool. I think thats really all I have to say...Enjoy!
These rocks are down on the beach of the promenade at Concord Point. I really like how the rocks are laid out in the curve pattern that they are in. I took a couple of shots of this from different heights to try and get the picture I was going for but had some issue with the lighting as I would playing around with it. This is one of the better light images. Enjoy!
This past weekend Jenn and I took the time to repaint our kitchen cabinets. We have been wanting to do something more "classy" in the kitchen, and we decided that you can't get much classier than black and white. So since the countertop & stove are black, and we have a white dishwasher and refrigerator, we decided to paint the cabinet doors black.
I know that I certainly had quite a bit of hesitation about painting the cabinet doors black because I was afraid that it would suck all of the light out of the room and into the black cabinets. But surprisingly, I suppose because of the semi-gloss paint, the light reflects pretty well off the doors, and the room doesn't feel any darker or smaller with the new black doors.
I really like how it turned out, as does Jenn. If you don't remember, or haven't seen it before, the kitchen cabinets used to be a royal blue (Pillsbury blue to be exact) because that was the theme we were going for originally. So now they are black. About 2 1/2 days of work and it feels like we have a new kitchen. Not bad! Enjoy!
So Brett Farve has announced his retirement from the NFL. I'm personally sad to see him go. I like his work ethic. If you want to make comparisons (and I will), he's kinda like the Cal Ripken of the NFL. Including the playoffs Farve started in 275 consecutive games. Thats crazy given the physical nature of football.
For as long as I've been a big fan of football Farve has been playing the game, so its kinda sad to see him go. I believe him to be one of the best quarterbacks to have played, a claim much easier to backup with this last years record breaking events. The picture below was taken from ESPN who has a gallery of shots of Farve from his career. Enjoy!
So the trick here is that I'm trying to engage some interaction here. Can anyone guess what this is a photo of? I will tell you what is in the background, its a tv. It made for a really good black backdrop in order to take this picture. Take you're shot at a guess, and check back here Monday for the answer. I'll change the post to title to reflect what it really is as well as give a short description of how it came about. Enjoy!
UPDATE:
Thanks to those who took a stab at guessing, and for the rest that looked and wondered, here's an explanation. Those cans of compressed air, when held upside down and used will spray out the liquid inside. Now for the record, I have been reading out of curiosity to find out whats inside those cans and it isn't air. But by using that terms I'm sure everyone will know what I'm talking about.
Anyway, the how. Jenn held the can upside down and in front of the tv, like I said before. Somehow in some freak chance of luck, in the first attempt to take a picture this is what I got. I thought it was pretty neat looking and wanted to share. And now you know!
|
|
|
