The past two times I’ve been out to the gardens have included several nice anole pictures, as well as a couple of other random shots. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the shots.
recent anoles
Custom White Balance Video Tutorial
habitat – 2 feburary
Today was groundbreaking at our Habitat for Humanity house. We went from a concrete slab to having the trusses put on the roof in a single day. Gallery full of pictures is available here.
Where have all the flowers gone?
So over the past few weeks while I’ve been not posting, I had a few opportunities to take the camera out and snap some pictures… Here’s a brief sampling of the flowers you can still see in early January in College Station.
More pictures from the break to come later…
udvar-hazy
Some shots from the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy complex at Dulles. Full gallery available here
dc, part 1
Got a chance to head out and take some pictures today. Here are 6 that I liked a bit. Hopefully more picturage in the next few days.
Some additional D300 images
I promise I’ve been doing things other than taking pictures, but the D300 has been quite fun to play with. A few additional shots…
Additional Nikon D300 Sample Images
Since my first post about the D300 is generating some traffic, I thought I’d post some additional pictures here. If you want to see full resolution shots of any of these images, please feel free to contact me.
nikon d300 – test shots and first thoughts
Got my D300 yesterday and had an opportunity to go and take some shots with it. Let me say from the first that I am rather impressed. I wasn’t sure how much of a step it would be over the D200, but results so far are rather impressive.
High noise levels are, so far, fairly impressive. One shot taken yesterday:
This image was taken @ ISO 1600, F11, 1/250. Here is a 1:1 crop:
Obviously, noise levels are fairly well controlled.
An example @ ISO 3200:
This sample is particularly interesting as it contains both deep shadows and strong highlights. Even in the transition and highlight->shadow gradients, the results are very impressive.
A third example, this time from 6400:
These results from 6400 are likewise encouraging, but my initial tests containing deep shadows on 6400 aren’t quite so nice. There does seem to be a good bit of chroma noise in the darkest of shadows, but I’m going to hold off on making a definite statement on that until I’ve had a chance to shoot with it some more.
At the end of the day, though, the D300 seems to do very well in the noise department, though we’ll see how that stacks up in general use.
Some more general shots from the day, as well as a full gallery:
TMS, 2007 Dickies 500
It’s been a week or so, but I got some cool pictures at Texas Motor Speedway at the races last weekend. This is going to be a ridiculously long post, so I apologize in advance, but there are far more pictures you can look at. Check out my galleries from practice and happy hour, as well as the actual race on Sunday.
Dave Blaney’s CAT Toyota, coming out for his first practice session.
You’ll see a lot of the 43 car, as it’s my uncle’s favorite. When someone gives you 700 dollars worth of tickets, you take pictures of what they like.
Elliot Sadler, headed back into the garage to make some adjustments during the first practice.
Drivers come in and get the temperature of their tires checked. In this case, David Gilliland in the M&M’s car.
Kevin Harvick headed around the track. Again, it’s almost impossible to describe how fast these cars are, or how hard it is to take pictures of them.
Bobby Labonte drives the number 43, though it was made famous by Richard Petty, the driver with the most wins in NASCAR history.
This is a shot down pit row, where teams are getting ready for the Busch series race that starts in a couple of hours.
Behind one of the buildings is a sea of tires – thousands of them. Each set of tires costs 1600 dollars. My real question, though, is what team 36B knows about wheels.
Bobby Labonte cruising around the track.
Tony Stewart, in front of some of the “TEXAS” letters.
A crew member from the number 24 Busch team relaxes and watches the cars during happy hour. I wonder if this job pays well.
Gilliland’s M&M’s car going around the track. Happy Hour is the last time teams can run around the track before the race, and they try to learn as much as possible so they can make adjustments for the next day’s race.
This is Dale Jr’s last year in the number 8 car. Tattoo parlors everywhere are already getting ready for the 88’s they’re going to have to draw.
Juan Pablo Montoya is one of the newest drivers to NASCAR, and is a former F1 champion.
Kasey Kahne is another young gun, and the personal favorite of old women everywhere.
Jimmy Johnson has the highest winning percentage of any driver with 32 wins and 132 top 10’s in only 6 years of racing. The guy is a beast, and incidentally won this weekend too. As of today, he’s won 4 straight races.
Tony Stewart. These cars are going so fast that I took a wider angle picture @ 1/250th of a second, which generally can stop anything, but they were still streaked. I don’t think there’s anyone alive who could take a picture of them without panning.
There are a ton of people out there working the event. Here’s one of the firemen.
Not many people like Kurt Busch or his brother Kyle. They do like Miller Lite, though, which is incomprehensible to me.
This is a wider view of where the cars come in to get their tires checked.
The people at DuPont Motorsports were somewhat protective of Jeff Gordon. Probably not the worst idea at TMS.
Elliot Sadler is possibly my new favorite driver. Maybe because he’s nice and I got this picture.
Matt Kenseth is a fairly cool guy too.
He helps push his car in, for instance.
Dario Franchitti was driving in the Busch race. Go show your mothers, they’ll be interested. I promise.
Before the start of the race, the cars are all lined up on the track.
Red Bull give you wings.
One huge difference between NASCAR and other racing is the distance the cars get from each other, especially in the corners. Going 70 a few feet behind a car is scary. Going 200 a few inches behind a car is insane.
Does anyone else see an issue with Jack Daniel’s sponsoring a NASCAR team?
We had a great view of the pit work.
But only one accident. The rest were on the backstretch.
Turner isn’t paying attention.
Races races are won and lost on pit row.
More often lost than won.
Due to time changes, the race finished under the lights, which was rather cool.
Note the wheel on fire.
Kasey Kahne.
Greg Biffle spun through the grass. Then a few laps later his car caught fire.
While it BBQ’ed, the rest of the field is coming around the track.
Tony, under the lights.
Paul Menard’s high-visibility yellow car was aptly painted, since he got lapped so many times. Maybe he needed a yellow triangle on the back too.
Matt Kenseth led the race near the end.
Then Jimmy Johnson caught up to him.
They raced around the track side-by-side for the last 15 laps or so.
Though Johnson eventually won.