Woodbutcher / Picture a day 2016

8/31/2016 - Scott came up so we could commiserate, I mean cooperate on the day's images. I actually got a good flower shot before he showed, but will spare you that. While outside looking at my pet wasps, I saw a spider on the hood of the car that had just shed its skin. I ran in for my camera with the macro lens and flash. We could heard it close to the skin and then the skin blew away. I chased that spider all over the fender with Scott working the flash. Only got one okay picture of the spider itself. But I got this oddball shot. The spider is way out of focus, but the shadow is sharp. You can see hairs on the shadow legs. Thought is was interesting enough to share.

9/1/2016 - Four months to go. Time to celebrate. I didn't find the prize at the bottom so I had to check another bottle.

WoodButcher said:

9/1/2016 - Four months to go. Time to celebrate. I didn't find the prize at the bottom so I had to check another bottle.

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Checking another bottle is a requirement!

WoodButcher said:

8/30/2016 - Caught up through yesterday. I uploaded this picture thinking it was my one for the day, but later shot some wasps in the mud. Too lazy to process them last night though so you get a flower. However, it is a good shot. Wandering Jew, Purple Queen variety. Sometimes called Purple Heart. Learned something about hashtags last night when trying to post on instagram. Beware that certain combinations don't mean what you first expect.

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Emily is trying to teach me about hashtags for Instagram. I can possibly see where you might have gone wrong with this one

Love the image with the water droplets caught in the leaves.

Jennifer

Sorry I'm so behind. There is a strategy too it. I'm on the road with my wife and didn't want to advertise that no one was at the house. My son is there now, so I can start posting pictures from our trip. However, since is it kind of late already here in Butte, Montana, I won't start until tomorrow.

Do you know how de-motivating it is to write up a post with 5 or 6 images as you start to catch up and lose it? Yeah, it was awesome, but my fault on losing it. Anyway, I have about 20 days that I will start posting up in groups.

Okay, let's try this again.

9/2/2016 - First day on the road of a 17 day trip. Somewhere west of Eden. Texas that is. I'd been watching the sun, horizon and the clouds for about 30 minutes and had feared I wasn't going to get a shot, but this happened. Pulled over on the side of the road.



9/3/2016 - Lunch in Santa Fe, NM. Wandering old town looking for a restaurant that wasn't crowded. Found one and it was excellent. This was a church in the area.



9/4/2016 - Aztec, NM. Staying with my wife's sister and her husband for a couple of nights. He's one of my dirt riding mentors so I had a good visit. This is from some building built by the same indians that built Mesa Verde. Aztec Indian Ruins National Monument.



9/5/2016 - We went through Mesa Verde NM the way to Moab, but I liked this picture of the first arch we came too. So I had my model pose there.



9/6/2016 - Arches NP was really, but I was there a year and half ago. Canyonlands NP was new to me. Normally my daughter wants me to take pictures of her leaping near drop offs. She wasn't on the trip so I used the previous generation. One of my favorites of the trip.



With that, I'll move to a new post.

9/7/2016 - Dinosaur NP. Careful, there are two entrances. One in Dinosaur, CO and one 30 miles to the west in Utah. The Colorado entrance leads to canyons and rivers. Utah has the bones. This is a wall going down one strata of earth. They preserved this section to show just how many bones they found. There is a neat 3/4 mile trail outside and you can see the different layers of earth and spot your own dinosaur bones.



9/8/2016 - I always stop here for a picture of the Flaming river gorge. My wife's first time seeing it.



9/9/2016 - Long day in the car the day before, but the idea was to get to the Flathead Lake area of Montana to see Bruce and his wife (he's The Bruce here). Had a nice visit and we went to a very good brew pub for dinner. Here's the view from his back deck. What do you think?



9/10/2016 - Glacier NP, on my bucket list. Unfortunately it was very cloudy, a Saturday, and the Europeans and Asians have figured out that visiting the US after Labor day means smaller crowds...which means more crowds for us. Oh well, I'm glad that people are getting out to see all this beautiful country. Just didn't live up to what I built it up to be. Weekday and sunny might have been different. However, we did enjoy it.



9/11/2016 - Through the southern part of Glacier NP on the way to Yellowstone NP. We would stop and hike/walk in various areas just to break up the days on the road. I can't even remember what river this was, but it was along Highway 2 in Montana.



Tomorrow I'll pick up in Yellowstone where they went from 75 degrees the day we drove down to snowing when we entered the park.

Nice!

Greta pix. Keep'em coming.

Re: Appreciation / Picture a day 2016

I just sat here this am and browsed through the whole thread from page 1 through today. Had the time partly because the fetching Mrs. Wallace is out of town.
I wanted to thank everyone for their posts. Really enjoyable on so many levels. The tech, the beauty, the humor... and the pursuit of excellence that's required to capture the wonderful and often overlooked details. I guess I find that God gets lost in the clamor of the world and so it did my heart good to change my focus this morning.

Re: Appreciation / Picture a day 2016

Livin'TheDream said:

I just sat here this am and browsed through the whole thread from page 1 through today. Had the time partly because the fetching Mrs. Wallace is out of town.
I wanted to thank everyone for their posts. Really enjoyable on so many levels. The tech, the beauty, the humor... and the pursuit of excellence that's required to capture the wonderful and often overlooked details. I guess I find that God gets lost in the clamor of the world and so it did my heart good to change my focus this morning.

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Thank you. Words escape me.

9/12/2016 - The day before we had been heading towards Bozeman. We made a late decision to head south to West Yellowstone. Got one of the last rooms in town. Then booked a nicer hotel for the next two nights. Good decision since the rain/cold front that chased us all the way from Glacier NP turned into light snow overnight. So the town of West Yellowstone went from 75 degrees the day we arrived to low 30's the next. I've been to Yellowstone two other times and this time was really special. I saw way more wildlife. The geysers and thermals were very hard to photograph because the air was still. I'll do a separate gallery of the Yellowstone and Teton NP photos.

My wife enjoyed it, but waited until her feet got wet before switching to hiking boots. Then she started being tolerant. Check out the size of those snowflakes!



9/13/2016 - Bull elk and some cows near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.



Bonus shot for the day. We saw a bunch of vehicles by the side of the road with people with spotting scopes and binoculars. Being curious, I stopped and asked what they were looking at since all I could see was a huge, snowy plain with some hills on the far side, about a mile away. They said it was a female grizzly and three cubs. Yep, in their scopes I could see it. So I grabbed my 150-500mm lens and set up my tripod. This is uncropped at 500mm. Please click on the image and select original size. Then you will see momma and some blobs. She is on a kill, the blob right next to her is cub #1. Cub 2 and 3 are just to the right. The others are ravens. I will say that I saw a grizzly. My wife says she saw a black spot on a hill.



9/14/2016 - Heading out for Jackson, WY, we made a third attempt to see Grand Prismatic, but the weather still killed the view. However this guy and a buddy decided to walk right through the crowded parking lot. This image is uncropped at 200mm. I was back and making sure I could duck back on the bridge over the river. Others were as cautious. Unlike some people we saw the day before.



9/15/2016 - Early in the morning we headed out for moose. Veronica said she really wanted to see one and it would really make the trip for her. So at 5:30am we got up and headed out. Success!



9/16/2016 - Changing aspen leaves on the way up Independence pass in Colorado. This ends the trip photos in the 365 project.

Nice trip pictures, I had been waiting...

Wow, these are great!

The sunset at Eden caught the wife's attention at 130 deg's to the screen. Great job Rusty.

Let's catch up some more.

9/17/2016 - The wasps were busy while I was gone. Time for them to go. This is a pre-obliteration shot.



9/18/2016 - Well, I guess some were away when the desolation started. So I hit them again the next evening. See them trying to retrieve larva/eggs?



They are now gone.

9/19/2016 - These are the rocks Veronica collected from Flathead Lake in Montana. They were cleaned, then wiped down with linseed oil to get that wet look.



9/20/2016 - Neighbor's daughter going for a ride on a friend's nice new R1



9/21/2016 - Death in the back yard. Was trying to get pictures of our last tiger lily bloom and saw this spider making off with his dinner.

9/22/2016 - Wishful thinking. On the trip I put my 18-135mm lens on the camera that Veronica was using and she had a blast. Really the perfect lens for her since it covered so much ground. That left me using a 70-200mm or a 11-16mm. Unless I made her trade. I kept wishing I had this on the trip.



9/23/2016 - On a whim, after work I ran up to Lake Georgetown where the BeemerlessBob pre-pie run campers were. Carolyn (KamaLyR, sp?) offered me some gum. Those camel folks have a different sense of humor.



9/24/2016 - Pie Run shot.



9/25/2016 - My neighbor out with his grandson. Which is important since he really is the boy's father figure.



9/26/2016 - Well, my canas are still blooming. Or blooming again. Just love the color in the late afternoon sun. Handheld with the 105mm macro lens.

Well, if you want to test drive the 24-70, give me a shout.

9/27/2016 - a simple B&W conversion.



9/28/2016 - Really bored, out of ideas. Went looking for objects inside to shoot. Found one of Katie's ceramic horses. Played with lighting it.



9/29/2016 - Just a flower in the yard that I shot before I mowed it down



9/30/2016 - Remember that picture of my browser window with the lens? This is a shot with that lens. The 28th was my birthday and I got the lens. It arrived this day.



And that finishes September.

Nice work... How do you like the 24-70 f/2.8?

Still bonding with it. As I was telling you, the 70-200mm was amazing to me when I got it. The 24-70 is very sharp, but I've gotten spoiled (i.e. developed bad habits) by image stabilization, which this lens doesn't have. So I need to work on my trigger finger some. Other than that, I like it.

All great shots, even the "bored" shots

I love the 24-70/2.8. It is by far the most used lens I have, especially when I don't know ahead of time what I'll be shooting. I dragged my 70-200 on the Utah/Colorado trip and only used it one day (Bryce Canyon). I brought my tripod as well and never once used it. I might have used it had we stayed in places where evening shots or night shots were an option, but we stayed in hotels each night. The 24-70 is just the right length that I can leave it on the body all the time and it fits perfect in my small bag.

some good stuff there. I actually like the horsey shot.
It's always easy to Monday morning quarterback, and not knowing the circumstance...I like the kid on the bicycle shot; wish you could have taken 2 steps left, tightened and shot at his level.
and I'm glad you haven't given up.

kurt said:

Well, if you want to test drive the 24-70, give me a shout.

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Way ahead of you. Arrived on the 29th. I'm just so behind in posting. Thanks for the offer.