I worked the Bikeways and Trails booth at the Slice of Shoreview this year. It's a great little festival. My favorite part is watching the dock dogs jump into the water. I could have sat there all day watching these dogs but I only had a few minutes.
The Lake Johanna Fire Department puts on a huge waterslide with their big fire hoses. Looks like fun.
Here is the intersection of Lexington Ave and Tanglewood Drive in Shoreview Minnesota. We got about five inches of rain last night/this morning. In fourteen years living in this neighborhood, I've never seen this intersection flooded. Lots of rain.
A couple adventurous/not exactly smart people drove through at high speed and I made some photos.
It's been a while since I last posted a Flickr view update. I was waiting for the next big milestone, 400,000 views. On February 11, 2011 my photostream passed 300,000 views. I am astonished that it only took five months to gain another 100k.
This is still Flickr's most interesting photo in my collection...whatever that means:
This one still has the most views at 10,936:
Momma and kids has the most favorites at 35. A nice 8x10 framed print of it is for sale at Cafe Zia in Roseville through July.
This shot was "explored" by Flickr, which is a big deal for me.
This shot is one of my favorites because it took a whole year of planning and I only had a few days while the lilacs were blooming.
For the third year a row, I setup on a beach on Turtle Lake in Shoreview Minnesota for the fireworks. The rich people on the lake didn't disappoint.
This year was easier in one way. I wanted the moon in my shots so I didn't have to re-compose chasing fireworks all around the lake. Fortunately, two docks under the moon were lighting off the big ones.
I used the Nikon D7000 and my Nikkor 70-300mm VR lens. I found I had to crop all my shots last year when I used the 18-55mm. All these shots are taken in Aperture Priority at f/11, ISO 100, on a tripod, with a remote cord, mirror lockup and -2 stop EV (and lots of DEET). The camera figured out how to expose the perfect shot. It usually picked a shutter speed of 3-8 seconds depending on how bright the bursts were during the shot. I used in-camera noise reduction. These photos needed very little post-processing. Some were cropped, most weren't. I applied some d-lighting to some of the bursts and a little sharpening here and there with Capture NX2 (I don't own Photoshop). Overall, I spend less than 2 minutes in the digital darkroom for any given shot.
Here is a slide show. It will look best in full screen mode...click the four little arrow like box thingy to the lower right of the frame.
This year, I'm going to try some multiple exposures now that I have a camera that will do that. I also might try and catch some shots with the zoom and might put the 35mm f/1.8 on my second tripod on an interval...or I might stay inside where it's cool and no mosquitoes. ;-)
