Return to the Cleveland Museum of Art

We loaded up the family truckster today and headed up to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I never was much into that particular museum until my good friend and doctoral candidate, Eric, took me on a personal tour of the place.  Really opened my eyes to things.  Plus, it's a great place to take pictures!  Here's some from today's adventures.

Orlando!

Last week I attended a conference I've had the pleasure of going to for the past 10 years in Orlando.  The IBM Connect conference, formally known as Lotusphere, is held each January at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort on the Disney property.  This year since my wife Denise joined me for a few days, I decided to bring down my camera gear that I normally leave at home.  I am so glad that I did.  We spent one of the days before the start of the conference in the Magic Kingdom park and then, (thanks to one of the conference vendors), was able to get us into Epcot to watch the fireworks show there.
Although it was a quick vacation for Denise, we had a blast and it added a lot to something I normally look forward to each year.  Plus, I got MANY images that I am really happy of before the conference and in between sessions on my downtime.  Was truly a magical week.

Going back in time. Shooting old school

I had a lot of fun with this one today.  

A month ago, I acquired several old film cameras from a photographer that was cleaning out his equipment.  This guy had a LOT of cameras.  Among the ones I got from him was a Nikon N90s with a Nikkor 43-86mm manual zoom lens.  The N90s is an auto-focusing camera, but he didn't have any lens for that and I found that this Nikkor seemed to fit it okay.  Right after getting these cameras, I bought a 3 pack of 24 exp. 400 ISO Kodak Professional BW400CN film.  This is black and white film that can be processed the same way that color film is processed, so you can get them developed in an hour.  Since today was a bright, sunny day, I took the camera down to Zoar to give it a run through.  I have to say, I'm pretty impressed.  But at the same time, in awe of how much things have changes.  As a photographer today I have found that we are SPOILED!  Digital is SO much more forgiving.  One thing I thought was funny was that every time I took a picture, I moved the camera away from my face, and looked at the back of the camera like I was expecting to see the shot like you do on a digital camera.  I couldn't stop myself.  What was also VERY strange was that I only had 24 exposures to play with. That's it. When I was shooting, I actually fired of two shots like I normally do and realized that I don't have a 32GB card that these are writing to.  So when the roll was done we headed up to Walgreen and I had the film developed and transferred onto a CD.  I opened them up in Adobe Lightroom and cleaned them up a little..as well as fix some exposure issues. I don't know how often I will use this camera.  Probably will for sure at a WWII reenactment this fall to get some more "realistic" looking portraits.  But for now, it was just a lot of fun to go back to the basics.
So here are the ones I liked the best from today's shoot.

Walking in a winter wonderland

Alright.  Holidays are over.  We are officially into the long stretch of the year known as "hurry up and get warmer out there!".  Or as some people call it, winter.  I was a bit stir crazy today and decided to head down the the Towpath Trail near Zoar with the camera.  I needed to get some walking in because in a couple of weeks, the conference I attend for work will occur which requires a lot of walking.  So I best get the legs ready for that fun.  Wasn't a whole lot to see today.  Way too dark and gloomy out there.  But here's a few to share.  If you have never been on the Towpath Trail, you really should check it out.  It extends over 80 miles from Cleveland to Tuscarawas County and continues to grow!