Time away

Christmas break has finally arrived! I finished my last final on Tuesday, so now I have – quite literally – nothing to do for three and a half weeks. Doubtless I'll fill most of my days with reading, episodes of LOST, Age of Empires III and random acts of tomfoolery. I'll be heading home to Cincinnati for a few days on either side of Christmas. Over the New Year's holiday, Sarah and I are heading to New England to visit Lake Champion, Sarah's brother's family in New York City and my sister's family in Portland, Maine, where we'll hopefully go skiing (Sunday River) and hit up the L.L. Bean Outlet in Freeport.
I'm also going to make a point to photoblog during break – especially during the New England trip. Without schoolwork to do, I'll need something to focus on!

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I decided to start off my Christmas break by taking a personal retreat. After spending some time looking for a location, I settled on St. Meinrad, a Benedictine Monastery and seminary in southern Indiana. The seminary had some interesting history – it was founded in 1852 by Swiss monks who were looking to expand their abbey to the United States as an insurance policy against the anti-Catholic Swiss government of the time. If the Swiss government became too oppressive, the monks planned to pack up and move to America. However, that never happened, and by the 1870s St. Meinrad had become an independent monastery.

I arrived Wednesday afternoon and pretty much spent all of my time in reading and prayer. I took an hour in the afternoon to walk around the grounds and take photos, and also attended the evening Vespers service in the monastery. The most interesting reading I was doing was from Tim Keller's "Counterfeit Gods," an excellent book about modern idolatry. When I'm finished with it I may have to devote a post to it.

Anyway, here's a few pictures. These were all taken with my Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8. I'm digging the superwide.

Wedding photography!

Yesterday I had my first experience as a wedding photographer – I'll be honest, it was a little stressful – but it was also a lot of fun. Especially since I got to shoot photos of and for such good friends.

By far and large I'm saving the photos so that Jeremy and Erica can see them first (especially the ones of them), but I did want to share a few highlights for those of you that were there. Maybe once I've given them all over to J&E and they're back from their honeymoon I'll post more.

((p.s. -- the pics really aren't looking their best through Blogger. Enjoy anyway!))

 

 

 

 

Lake Monroe

Last weekend, I was able to head out to Lake Monroe (Indiana's largest lake) to help teach a Coastal Kayaking Class. We went to the easternmost part of the lake, near Crooked Creek, where few motorboats venture and where the lake, apart from a few channels, is less a lake and more a large, swampy marsh, full of eagles, herons, ducks, geese, fish, snakes and sucking mud.

It was a beautiful weekend, and getting outdoors and on the water was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of grad school. I'll just share a few photos...

We made pizza on the fire – it was amazing.

After beautiful weather on Saturday, storms and low clouds rolled in early Sunday morning. Though it made us wet, the lake was beautiful -- it felt like we were paddling in Alaska or British Columbia. Indiana has its moments. 

This last picture is of the largest caterpillar I've ever seen in my life ("like a pickle," as one person put it -- just much, much hairier. And probably less tasty). I looked it up when I got home -- turns out it's an imperial moth: not overly rare (but large, with about a 5'6" wingspan), but rare to see as a caterpillar.

Welcome back to Blogger

Well, I'm making a return to Blogger for the home of my blog posts. Luckily, I never deleted my old posts from Blogger, so they're all still here! I'm migrating the posts over from Wordpress and they should all be in place in the next week or so.

I'm switching back to Blogger because I'm making my domain an exclusive site for photography -- I might be selling some in the near future! Anyway, personal blog posts don't really belong there, so I'm going to be using blogger again.

I really haven't blogged much in a while, but I have some stuff I want to write about, so I'm happy to have the forum. And, of course, I'll still put up some photography -- I just got the zoom feature javascript working here so you can click on the image below to expand it.



This shot is from my recent backpacking trip to the Appalachian Trail on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. We were in a ton of fog, which spoiled some of the views but made for other beautiful scenery.

Vacation, briefly

I don't have much time to compose a post this morning, but I thought I'd post a couple pictures from the vacation so far. It's amazingly beautiful here. The weather has been great, the travel easy, and we've seen an incredible amount of things in just a few days. We were in Yosemite National Park the last couple days and today are back in San Francisco. We're going to do some things here today (Golden Gate Bridge, etc.). Should be a fun day!

The Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Forest:


The view from our backcountry campsite in Yosemite:


On a random dome in northern Yosemite:

Sunsets + Summer Reading

Ah, summer is finally here. I went camping last night at Yellowwood to kick off the summer properly. Since I changed the blog design the photos show up kind of small, so a reminder that if you click on them they'll expand to full- screen.

More blogging to come now that exams are done!

My backyard

One of the reasons I moved into my current apartment was because I liked the fact that it had a nice, wooded backyard that – complete with a fire pit – that was dark at night.
Well, my landlord really hasn't turned out to be such a great guy. The place isn't so hot either. For the last couple weeks they've been doing some kind of mysterious work to the apartment downstairs (the one that always has bass coming from it, regardless of the hour) – and so this is what the backyard looks like.
This picture was inspired by the fact that the guy that my landlord hires to do stuff decided to mow today, so he just literally mowed over and around all this crap. Classic.


And here's the challenge. Can you all of these things in the photo? If you can, you win!
- Snow shovel
- (4) half-cinder blocks
- One FULL cinder block
- Croquet set
- Taco bell cup
- McDonald's cup
- Coffee mug (with coffee still in it)
- Tire
- Bag of cypress mulch
- Mysterious cable
- Empty bottle of mountain dew.

A bit more spring break stuff....

I'm on a real blogging kick here this past week... anyway, just wanted to post a couple more of my favorite photos from Florida:
This is the sandbar off of an island we stopped at for lunch one day. It was totally bird-infested. Or at least it was until we went running into their midst.


More of the birds.


There were a ton of Osprey. I thought this one was going to attack me for getting too close to its nest (the sign says "Manatee Zone, No Wake").


Plenty of sting rays, too. This was the biggest one I saw:


And lastly, might as well put one in of us actually kayaking, huh?

THA NK YOU FOR ISITIN GTHE GV SSOM AEROPLE X

I'm currently up near Kokomo, Indiana at a training session put on by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. The session is "Introduction to Emergency Management," and covers a lot of the basics of emergency management, including the various functions and phases. I don't know how I fit in to all of this exactly (career-wise), but I know it's good to be here learning and making these connections. Most of the people here are much older than I am – of the 40 people here, 33 are probably white men in their 50 – and all of them have more things on their belt and flashing lights on their SUVs and trucks than me.

The class is at the dilapidated, somewhat-melancholy Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base (named for Gus Grissom). A few decades ago, the base must have had a thriving little community. It was originally a training and testing base, and has been greatly downsized in the last decade. One of the guys at the training is a local – "grew up just on the other side of that fence there," as he says – and talks about how he used to come onto the base to play with the military kids. It feels a lot more like a ghost town. Really, this picture says it all.

The base isn't entirely inoperative – there's still a squadron of KC-135 refueling planes that operates out of the base, and it's also been opened to civic use. The base might have been closed were it not for an accident that occured in 1964, when a B-58 (a supersonic bomber) skidded off the runway with five nuclear devices.

"On December 8, 1964, during a routine Operational Readiness Inspection, a B-58 strategic bomber skidded off the runway) at Bunker Hill AFB, IN (later named Grissom Air Force Base). The consequence of the accident was a fire and destruction of five nuclear weapons on the aircraft. The high explosives in the weapons did not detonate, but melted and burned, leaving some residual radioactive contamination in soils adjacent to the runway. The contaminated area was excavated and buried along with the aircraft wreckage at a different location on base. In June 1996, the Air Force Safety Center conducted a review of both classified and unclassified documents in its possession and concluded that sufficient data did not exist to support closure of the site. Since that time, the State of Indiana and this organization performed small- scale scoping surveys that identified a small area with elevated gamma radiation exposure levels. Soil samples collected from the area indicated the presence of depleted uranium."

Oops. Anyway, I guess that's a good reason to not close the base. Back in Bloomington tomorrow!

Quinzee!

No, Quinzee isn't a new take on Yahtzee. A quinzee is a type of snow survival shelter – something you could make if you were stranded in the snowy tundra of ... say, Dunn Meadow for a few days.

Basically, you make a huge pile of snow – the bigger, the better – let it sit and sinter for a few hours and then dig out the middle, making a sort of igloo/sow cave combination shelter. It was actually quite warm inside, and you probably could have slept three people in the shelter we built. As it was, we had five of us sitting inside fairly comfortably at once.

Anyway, pictures:

To summer.

Well, a lot's been happening in my life lately, and I've not blogged much about it. I'm sure I'm going to have lots of adventures this summer in New York I want to write about though, so I've decided to get right back on the blogging horse – so to speak.

I had a wonderful, busy last week in the Midwest before departing for New York. I went to three baseball games with wonderful people, all of which the home team won (the Indy Indians won two, the Reds won one. Oh, and Doug – I swear all baseball games aren't militant.) It always feels like summer hasn't really started until I've been to a baseball game – three in one week means the season can really start.


I also had the chance to finish up a freelance project shooting a bald eagle nest – it was really incredible how close I was able to get to such amazing birds. The chicks were a captive audience, but the mother was very wary of me, and any time I'd get close she'd fly off. Luckily I arrived one day while she was away, and when she returned she didn't spot me right away. I had about five minutes in which to capture some cool images, including this one. The full gallery can be found on my Flickr site here.


After packing up, cleaning, finding a place to live next year and finishing up everything I had to do in Bloomington, I was ready to drive to New York. After spending 12.5 quality hours in my car on Sunday, I finally arrived at Lake Champion. It was great arriving and seeing a place that I really do love, and more importantly, seeing people that I really care about. I was also greeted by a midnight soccer game in the gym, which I somewhat regretted participating in after spending so much time in the car.

So now I've had a few days to get settled here. I've been thrust immediately into a really busy work situation, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love the people I'm working with and I love the cause I'm working for. I really could make a life out of this property staff thing.

The highlight of yesterday was seeing the rather large bat pictured below. It was the biggest bat I've ever seen not in a zoo, and after some Internet research, I'm pretty sure it was the Hoary Bat – which has an average wingspan of 15.7 inches (thanks, Wikipedia). I thought it was pretty cool to see.

"O" my!

So my co-worker Jessica and I just went to the Women's Little 500, and as we were walking in, Barack Obama's motorcade pulled up. No one was sure if Obama was going to make an appearance, but it was widely rumored that he'd show. The rumors were right.

Jess and I had perfect timing to get a spot along the railing near the bus and wait for Obama to emerge from his bus. After 10 or 15 minutes of waiting, he emerged to cheers and walked along the crowd shaking hands, and yes, even kissing babies (see below).


Luckily he walked in my direction, and I was able to shake his hand! It was pretty cool. I'm still not sure if I'm going to vote for him, but I can certainly understand the power of personal appearance after today. It makes sense that politicians tour around doing these things – it really does get people excited about them.

Anyway, Obama hung around inside the track before the race began, shaking the hands of the women's riders before getting back on his bus to head for (presumably) Terre Haute.

The women's race was fun, too, and the weather was fantastic. What a great start to the weekend.


Right after shaking my hand.

More pictures... from France!

Another little update since it's been a couple of days.

Tuesday we traveled from London to Caen in an exhausting all-day excursion. It was bus to Dover, then ferry to Calais, then bus to Caen. It took us about 12 hours total to get to our destination – partially because of problems with the ferry (bad weather combined with a strike of French ferry workers). Anyway, we arrived in Caen last night.

These pictures are mostly from today, apart from the first one from the back of the ferry (the coast of France is just visible on the left).

1. On the ferry.
2. Omaha Beach.
3. The American Cemetery near Omaha Beach.
4. German gun emplacements near Longues Sur Mer.
5. The town of Aromanches, where the allies built their artificial harbor on D-Day +2. An engineering marvel of the time, most of the parts of the artificial harbor can still be seen just 2km off the coast.
6. In Bayeux, in front of the Bayeux Cathedral with several of the students on the trip. We ducked inside (it was beautiful) and then went to see the Bayeux Tapestry, a famous 11th-century depiction of the battle between the Normans and Saxons (involving "William the Bastard," later known as "William the Conquerer."

All in all, very cool stuff. I'm exhausted and hoping to catch up on some sleep tonight. I'll certainly post full sets of photos later on Flickr or something... so far I think I've taken 487 photos on the days we've been here. Yipes.

I love London.

A few images from my day in London today. The internet isn't so good, so I'll have to post my full set later. In order:

1. At the new home of football. I watched an Arsenal game at the "Gunners Pub" in Islington then went and saw Highbury and Emirates. Happy day.
2. Phone booths on Fleet Street.
3. Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross!
4. Random bikes.
5. At the Arsenal tube stop.
6. At the newly-remodeled and refurbished St. Pancras train station.
7. There are flowers here. It's green. It's (sort of) warm.

In short, I LOVE it here. I could live here.

Joshua Tree

Well, if you didn't know, I'm in San Diego on business. My friend Mark got a gig covering a biotech company's annual sales conference and needed a hand, so he and I are out here doing audio/video coverage of the conference. It's not a terrible amount of work – in fact we have quite a good amount of free time.

Today we had the most amount of free time we'll have all week, so we rented a car from the hotel and drove to Joshua Tree National Park – a place I've wanted to visit for a long time. Mark and I had a U2 moment in front of one of the Joshua Trees (also, the middle picture is Mark's, you can find more of his here) and really enjoyed the awesome views. The weather was great, too – not too hot or cold.

The only downer today was finding out Arsenal lost to Manchester United 4-0. Blech. That's okay, though... we'll beat 'em in the league!

My full set of pictures can be found on Flickr here.