Appy-polly-loggies. I had something of a pain in the gulliver so had to sleep. I was not awakened when I gave orders for wakening.

'Ello. I am feeling more fit today. So I got out for a bit of a stretch of the old legs. I have also had quotes from that movie (the one in the title of this post) running through my head all day. That may require speaking to someone in the mental health field. :) . But seriously,  I got to snap off a few pics before I gave in to the need to return home. There was a bit of a snow squall and my camera is not weather proof. Oh someday I will have a 5D Mk II or a 1D.
Anyway here they are. The first shot kind of showed up on my card mysteriously. I have no memory of firing it off. I think I may have clicked the button whilst raising the camera to my eye. The others are of some clouds from my backyard.
Hope you like them. They are not my most creative works. I am also spending a lot of my time learning the ins and outs of off camera flash. Have any of you seen the stobist blog? It's pretty cool. I like how he lays things out. Here is the link, I don't think he will mind me putting it up : http://www.strobist.blogspot.com .

and a self portrait. Still learning the ins and outs of flash. 

 

As always, leave a comment below - if it suits ya. - Thanks for stopping by and have a good one.

apologies

So I haven't posted in a week or so. I apologize, but I have been very ill with the norovirus. I hope you can forgive me. I took this photo a day or two before I got sick, and it was the only one i even got a chance to look at. I know it's not much, but more will be coming soon. It pretty much sums up how I feel, so I guess what this post lacks in content, it makes up for in representation... or some such nonsense. I removed the catch lights from my eyes to give it a ghost-like quality. Again forgive me. I hope to be back, and clicking away, very soon.

Stephen

Thursdays in February.

So, It has been an exceptionally un-wintry winter here (yes, I know un-wintry makes all of the English majors out there cringe). It hasn't really rained. It barely snowed. My friend and I were talking about concerns of drought. 

So it is Thursday here, but it doesn't feel like it. I don't know why. It was another drab, dull - grey day. Which lead to more black and white photos. Both of these shots were taken with a Tamron 70-300 mm zoom lens.

I have been studying flash photography lately. Specifically Strobist style (ie getting your flash off-camera). If you are into photography and want to check out a good bit of info on it, you should go explore: http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ . The lighting 101 and 102 pages are full of information.

The first is a shot near Fenway park.

I went for a soft focus on this. I am not really sure if I got the effect I was looking for or not. 

It was shot at ISO 200, 148 mm, f/11,  at 1/160sec.

I cropped it down further in Lightroom and did some other minor tweaks.  

The next is "Waiting for Spring."

Something about this bird just said that to me. 

No crop on this one. Just a B&W conversion and other minor tweaks.

ISO 200  176 mm f/11 1/160sec.

Tuesday's Dead (points if you know who sings that song)

No new photos today. I was busy with personal stuff. However, I got home and edited some older photos. I wanted a black & white thing today. Maybe because it is Valentine's Day and I never really got into this holiday. Maybe because I was taking care of the personal stuff. I am not really sure, but I felt a bit unsaturated today.
So without further ado & without color:

 

The above photos were taken in my home town of Canton, MA.

 

That's Boston from Blue Hills.

Mondays

It's Monday. These are a shot from yesterday.
Sunset. Metered off of the sky to the left of the sun.

A snowy Saturday???

So, it was supposed to snow all day on Saturday. It didn't. We got a few flurries here in Boston. If you can call them flurries. I am a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander. We have winters with one distinguishing characteristic; it snows. It snows a lot. However, we haven't received much of the old white powder this year. As a matter of fact, there have only been two accumulations that I can remember happening. I like to ski. So this bothers me. I feel bad for Europe. I think they have inherited our winter. New England, Old England, it would seem we have traded winters.

Anyway, enough rambling. I worked my day job today. I went in around 1 PM EST ( 2 1/2 hours early), to avoid the inevitable delays caused by the snow. Neither of them happened. So I showed up early to work. I took a walk outside and snapped off 60 shots. Man, could you imagine how much that would have cost in the good old film days? "Oh let me just burn through 4 or 5 rolls of film..."

So, I didn't get home until about 12:30 AM and started editing. 60 photos are a lot to get through, so I focused on these four. It's 2 AM right now, which helps to explain the rambling. I hope anyone who takes an interest in my little section of the internet enjoys these. Please leave any comments below, if you like. I'd like to hear from you.

Vanilla Sky

Hello,
Another day is over. Yesterday I took some pictures of the sunset in Boston. After that I followed the advice of many photographers and turned around. I liked those images more than the original sunset ones. The sunset was nice, but the onset of dusk, coupled with the moon just popping over the buildings, was of more interest to me. These were taken with a Canon T1i and a 50 mm f 1.8 lens. I hope you enjoy.

As the sky grew dark, I made my way through Kenmore Sq. and to the subway. Sometimes I am utterly stunned at how beautiful everything is. This serves to remind me that once in a while we should stop and take a look around. Who knows what you may see.

Sunday, Feb 5th - Happy Superbowl Sunday.

Yes, Happy Superbowl Sunday. Once again the New England Patriots will be playing the NY Giants. In a testament to strength, honor, and violence; two teams will come together in a blood bath. The battle is the second time these two titans of the arena have met in a superbowl. Will Tom Brady and the Patriots be able to overcome the defeat handed to them by this team during their last meeting? Will Eli Manning prove that he is an elite quarterback? Will he be able to say "Hey, I have the right to hang out with Brady and my brother."?
Who knows? Who cares about the last part, aside from Manning himself. I am cheering for the Pats to crush the Giants and grind them into the ground. But this is not a football blog. It is a photography blog. (Stay tuned on this blog for a special set of links at the end. My brother is a poet, among other things and I will give links to his work. He is also a professor at Suffolk University in Boston, and is working on a law degree. His name is Chrstopher Siteman. Read his poems damnit! Ha. No, seriously, check out his work.)
So, without further ado, here we go:

 I went to work today and made these photos on the way in and after I set up my gig. I ran some pretty quick edits while trying to warm up. It was so cold by the Charles River in Boston:

  

 

 I also played around with some B&W edits: 

This statue is in honor of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

 

 I like the flag in the archway. I took four shots of this trying to get the flag right. Unfortunately the sun was not cooperating. I wanted it to dress up like the sun in the California Raisins commercials, but it wouldn't put on sun glasses:

 Is there anything more inspiring than an empty place? It is brimming with possibility. Look in the distance. Imagine anything you want. Now fill it up. You are the dreamer. No go dream the dream.

Here are my brother's links. Please give them a look:

http://thefiddleback.com/_webapp_4800141/10,000_Days

http://www.ditchpoetry.com/chrissiteman.htm

http://borderlinepoetry.info/

http://www.whitewhalereview.com/issues/1.1/poetry/siteman

http://www.fringemagazine.org/lit/longer-poetry/night-also-called-my-name/

from Summer 2011

http://poetryquarterly.com/?page_id=7

http://www.themonarchreview.org/after-the-reading/

http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/journal/blazevox11-spring-2011/

Saturday Feb 4th 2012.

Hello,
So I am sitting in bed writing away. I have taken a few new photos, but I cannot publish them all. Unfortunately I need the model's permission on a few of them. So until I contact her,  I have more bird photos and one street photography photo. I have been messing about with street photography a bit lately. I am still not used to doing it, and feel very intrusive. However as time goes by, I expect to become more comfortable with the whole process. So here a few photos from around BU and Kenmore square: