Well it’s a new year so I guess it’s time for me to start updating my blog again. We’ll see how long this last.

A friend of mine, Lindsay S., recently joined the Models for Charity organization and her first runway show was this past Friday (1/7/2011) at Sparians Bowling Boutique & Bistro’s Grand Opening Celebration. I headed out there with my gear to capture her public debut and met up with a few other local photographers that I know there. I was able to capture some amazing shots of Lindsay and her fellow models who all did a wonderful job.

Sparians Bowling Boutique & Bistro is not your typical bowling alley. They basically took a full service bar attached it to a decent sized dinning room and a bowling alley which has been classed up with really big protection screens over the pins and comfy sofas and chairs along with a very different atmosphere. There are also two rooms in the back for private parties each with their own lanes and one with another stocked bar. The alleys are lighted with dance lighting effects and black lights with a fully automated scoring systems which seems to really watch the clock in that it will start nagging you if you don’t bowl your turn quickly after the last person. I will say the grand opening wasn’t as packed as I thought it would be and the service was a little slow but better then the previous night that I was there so hopefully they will find their grove and have a prosperous future in the area.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

More Photos Here (PicLens )

So, since I had a 3 day weekend and was more or less stuck at home because I’m on-call this week, I decided to finish post-processing the photos and create a single post to get caught up. Enjoy!

George Clinton Concert: 05/10/2008
I think I found out about this concert over the radio and ever since watching the movie PCU, I thought it would be cool to see George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic in person. Hobex was the opening band and before George Clinton took the stage, the large cast of “characters” that make up the Funkadelic did their performances with their normal to the “OMG I really didn’t want to see that” type of outfits (IE: A grownup in a diaper). This was my first attempt at photographing a concert which also happened to be outside at night. I wish I had the Nikon 80-200mm lens I have now back then but I made due with my Sigma 150mm lens. I left after the last official song but later found out all the bands headed inside Lincoln Theater and kept on rocking into the night.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Triangle Strobist Auguest Meetup: 08/19/2008
I attended a monthly Triangle Strobist (Flickr) meet up which was held in one of the parking garages on Centennial Campus. These meet ups are suppose to teach people lighting techniques using off camera lighting typically with small strobe / speedlight units but this meet up turned more or less into a free-for-all. The wife of one of the photographers was kind enough to be our model for the event and another let us use their Mustang as a prop as well. I did learn that even though my camera supports an IR wireless flash trigger system, it has line-of-sight limitations and I really need to get some actual RF wireless flash triggers.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Lassiter Mill Park: 10/12/2008
Someone in one of the Flickr groups I subscribe to posted about their waterfall photo shoot they had at Lassiter Mill Park. I like taking photos of flowing water so I took a trip out there to check it out. I had my tripod with me so I could take some long exposures of the waterfalls and since I was wearing shorts, I waded into the water around the falls to try and get closer to them. There isn’t really much left of the mill except for some old framing timbers and metal beams. Yates Mill Park is the place you want to go to if you want to see a mill.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Zombie Walk 2008: 10/25/2008
I spent a few hours downtown to photograph the 2008 Zombie Walk before heading to Fair, which I already posted about HERE. I don’t know exactly how many people showed up but I would say there was at least 100 people there dressed up as zombies walking the streets of downtown.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Lake Lynn Park: 11/02/2008
I driven past this park many times but never realized there was a lake you could walk around. Yeah, I know the park is called Lake Lynn Park but I didn’t learn that until I visited the park that day. Any ways, I think I missed the peek of fall colors by a week or so but some of the trees still had their wonderful colors going. I didn’t walk all the way around the lake during this trip but did go back recently to test out my new Ultra Wide angle Tokina 11-16mm lens and did one full circuit around the lake which I believe was a little over 2 miles.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Full Moon: 12/12/2008
I took a short drive down some back roads around my house to find a nice dark area to take some pictures of the biggest and brightest full moon of 2008. I wish I had a longer zoom lens but even with cropping the photos taken with my 200mm lens, you can still make out features on the moon’s surface.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Museum of Life and Science: 01/18/2009
I made a trip to the NC Museum of Life and Science with the Raleigh Outdoor Photography Club Meet-Up group to take some photos inside the butterfly house. The Museum has a lot more things to see outside the butterfly house so I really need to make another trip out there to check out all of the other exhibits.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

Snow 2009: 01/20/2009
YEAH!! We finally got some snow. Just eyeballing it, it looks like I got between 4″ to 6″ of snow around my house. When I shoveled my driveway I piled it all on one side hopping enough would stick around to make a snowman during the weekend but when I woke up on Saturday, it was all gone

More Photos Here (PicLens )

This past Saturday I made a trip to the 2008 N.C. State Fair to take in the sights and sounds (more sights really). Saturday started out kind of soggy but by the afternoon things were dry and by time I got to the fair ground around 8pm it was jeans and long-sleeves weather.

Normally I avoid the fair grounds and surrounding area like the plague due to traffic but driving into the heart of the beast last Saturday wasn’t all that bad. I pulled into the first parking lot I came across which as I expected was a pay-lot charging $10 to park. I felt the price was a little steep but didn’t really want to drive around to see if I could find something cheaper which I’m sure is what the people who own the lots are betting most people will do. Looking at the number of cars they packed into the lot (really just a really large field), they made a killing. I later found out that if I drove a little further down the street I could have parked for free at the RBC Center. Oh well.

I guess one perk of where I parked was it was a short walk to one of the main gates to get into the fair. Luckily I was able to buy my ticket using a credit card since I didn’t make a stop by an ATM on the way there which left me enough cash to buy some snacks and drinks. I really didn’t want to use one of the fair provided ATMs since I would most likely get bent over with fees.

I brought along my camera and tripod to take some photos, especially to play around with some long exposures to capture the sense of speed and motion. The first ride I took some photos of was called the “Dream Catcher” which basically was a side-to-side swing that had a seating area at the end that spun around at the same time. Next up was the spinning swing ride where I experimented with using a long exposure + a rear curtain flash so I could not only get the blur effect of motion but to also stop the motion right at the end. I used this same process on the free-fall ride which I think turned out really well.

On my way to the next ride to take photos of the fireworks show started so I quickly setup and started to shot away using different exposure times and settings and I must say I’m very happy with the results I ended up with and it made up for my failed attempt at fireworks photography last 4th of July. So after the fireworks stopped I moved to the next ride which I must say was the best ride to take long exposure photos of. With the ride’s multi-colored lights going on and off seemingly at random at normal speed resulted in photos with color, shapes and patterns that were amazing (at least to me they were). Each time I clicked the shutter I couldn’t wait to see what I ended up with.

After taking some picture of some other rides I more or less packed up my gear and did more fair type activities like eat food. I started with an Italian Sausage dog all the way and water and for desert I had my first deep-fried candy bar (Snickers) which as good as it tasted I’m pretty sure it took a few years off of my life (hehe).

Before I knew it mid-night rolled around and the fair started to close. It really didn’t feel like I was there for 4 hours so I guess as they say, time flies when you’re having fun.

More Photos Here (PicLens )

I’m sure that a lot of people this weekend and in the coming days are going to be glued to the TV watching the different events of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. I know my TV has been tuned to the Olympics just about all this weekend whether I’m actually watching it or as background noise.

I missed the very beginning of the Opening Ceremonies but I must say I was completely amazed by the different performances that I did see. I especially in awe of the movable boxes / character type press performance. The whole time while watching it I was thinking to myself that it must have been hell to program the computer systems and the machinery to make the boxes move up and down like that and then at the end to find out actually people were moving the boxes. I mean WOW! they must have spent months and months of practice to get all the people in sync to do that. Just amazing I tell you. Just as amazing was organizing the share number of performers and having them all be on their marks to form the different patterns on such a grand scale. My hats off to everyone evolved in the opening ceremony and the people of China / Beijing in general for all their hard work. The facilities they have built like the National Stadium (aka: Bird’s Nest) and a National Aquatics Center (aka: Water Cube) for the Olympics are works of art and functional.

Once again like the LHC pictures I posted about a few posts ago, boston.com has posted some amazing photos from the opening ceremonies. Check them out.

GO USA!

• The Mist
• Sweeney Todd
• AVP: Requiem
• Juno
• Cloverfield
• The Golden Compass
• 27 Dresses
• P.S. I Love You
• Over Her Dead Body
• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets
• Meet the Spartans

Or, if you still have an actual tape cassette player, you can just pop the MP3 player into the tape deck and listen to your MP3s as if it was a real tape cassette. The MP3 player cost ~$40 and can be purchased online at ThinkGeek. Long live the 80′s!

ThinkGeek has some really cool products available today on their website. Some notable ones include:

* Wireless Extension Cords
* Spazztroids – Caffeinated Breakfast Cereal
* Betamax to HD-DVD Converter
* PTeq – USB Pregnancy Test
* CaffeDerm
* Super Pii Pii Brothers Game
* PC HabiCase

… and Much Much More.. Check them out. Get them while they last.