Weekly Header Challenge - Right Place, Right Time

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Right Place, Right Time

Chosen by Tom.

I panicked this morning, because I totally forgot that it was Headbanger Day!!  Then I checked my Lightroom catalog, and realized--I had already designed a header for this week, and uploaded all my photos!  Everything was ready to go.  So here I am, barely on time once again.  Here is my header, full image style:

These football pictures are definitely a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  Fortunately, I was the team photographer, and I was allowed on the sidelines.  Right place, check.  I have tons of great images, because of a little luck called the right time.  Many plays were way across the field, or my lens didn't zoom enough, or...  But I have a good number of images where the play happened close enough to me, at the right angle, to make the images great.

Many Right Place, Right Time images are a matter of finding your spot, anticipating what's going to happen, then waiting.  With a little luck, you'll get that shot at just the right time.  Here are the rest of my images; some have been featured as header images in the past, simply because they were taken in the right place and at the right time.  Enjoy!

The below shot was pure luck--we were at Andy's (frozen custard shop) with another family, good friends of ours who were moving.  We were there for one last ice cream together (we had introduced them to Andy's frozen custard after we met them).  I had brought my camera to snap some pictures when we heard the whomp-whomp-whomp of military helicopters landing at our local airstrip a mere three blocks away.  Shot between the trees, right after dusk, silhouetted against the sky--sweet.

Cubs win!

Sneaking the camera out for a restaurant shot.

Butterfly landing on purple coneflower.

Boat tour going under the Thousand Islands Bridge.

Girl water-skiing on Lake Bonaparte.

Now I kinda want it to be summer again.  Hope you have a super day!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - The Dark Side

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ The Dark Side

Chosen by Katney.

I want you to know that I really debated with myself over this week's header.  My first thought, obviously, was Star Wars, and although I could find some related images, my mind wandered just a little to the...dark side.  Yep--my header portrays just one aspect of the "dark side" of my family.  Jacob's 23rd birthday was in January, and we turned off the lights to get a good candles-in-the-dark image.  He decided to have a little fun with it, and the image turned out quite dark and creepy, as you can see below.

Major creepy, huh?  Welcome to my family.  ;)

To get the horizontal aspect of the header, I had to crop a lot out.  But I really felt this image best portrayed the theme.  Sorry, folks!  Now on to some happier dark images.  Here's the actual cake-and-candles image I took at Jacob's birthday:

 
On an evening out for ice cream with friends, we spotted several military helicopters coming in for a landing at our local airport.  I snapped this great image below--the darkness of night, plus the darkness of nighttime military maneuvers.

Winter can be a dark time, and we certainly had an endless one this past season.  Here was the view out of our front living room window early in January.  (You can see the shape of the angel on top of our manger.)

And here was the view out of the same window in April.  Long and dark winter, that was for sure.

There's a lot of light reflected on these evening storm clouds over our neighborhood, but there's a slightly menacing feel to them as well.

I love the below image, even though it was a mistake.  Really.  I think it looks like a dark, misty scene, with fog and shadowy trees, and some weird lights floating around.

Here below is almost the same scene.  I had been setting up a pre-fireworks image, and wanted to test the shutter speed.  I recall I had it at 3-4 seconds, and got a nice image (below).  I then pressed the shutter a few minutes later, and started to move the camera, forgetting that I had it on such a long shutter speed.  The above image resulted, but it actually turned out pretty cool.

After all the darkness and creepiness, I leave you with this cute image:  my friend's daughter, playing hide-and-seek after their house had been emptied for moving, peeked out from the darkness long enough for me to get this cute image.

What dark treasures await me at your blogs today?  I'm off to see!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Night Lights

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew
Tom W 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Night Lights

chosen by Craver

I've used several of my nighttime images--moon and stars--in past Headbanger posts, and so my thoughts turned toward the man-made varieties of lights that we see once the sun sets.  I don't have many of those, but I do have several from a very special place, thanks to my strong and thoughtful husband!  Fernando willingly toted my tripod around Paris, both during the day and at night, so that I could get both selfies for us and beautiful nighttime shots.

Without further ado, mostly because I have a bad cold (developed in literally an hour yesterday) and my head is fuzzy to say the least, I give you my images for Night Lights.

My header image, minus the crop:

On Avenue Champs-Élysées, looking east toward the Arc de Triomphe.

The below is one of my very favorite images from our trip.

On Avenue Champs-Élysées, with the Arc to my back, looking west in the rain.

On Avenue Champs-Élysées, looking toward the Arc.

On Avenue Champs-Élysées -- Fouqet's, a restaurant featured in the movie Taken.

On Ile St. Louis, while we enjoyed our ice cream from Bertillon, just after a brief rain shower.

Pont des Arts, one of the four pedestrian bridges crossing the Seine.

Looking across the Seine River, with Notre Dame in the center.

On a side note, as I write this blog on Tuesday evening, I'm planning on heading out to the backyard patio to see if I can catch a good photo of Mars.  Today is the opposition of Mars!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - What's Up There in the Sky?

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ What's Up There in the Sky?

I almost forgot to post this week--argh!  Travel--especially when you get home at 3am and collapse into bed--messes with my head.  I keep thinking today is Monday...

You get the benefit of fewer words, and mostly pictures.  ;)

Here they are:

My header, which is the moon over my parents' lake house in the Adirondacks of upstate New York:

ISO 100, 17-85mm at 17mm, f/14, 30-second exposure (counted in my head)

More of the moon, way up there in the sky:

ISO 100, 70-300mm at 300mm, f/5.6, 1/800 second

The Florida moon, along with a few asteroid trails!!

ISO 100, 17-85mm, f/8 64-second exposure (again, counted in my head)

Below is the moon, along with Jupiter and Venus (Craver inspired this one):

February 27, 2012

ISO 100, 17-85mm at 17mm, f/22, 53-second exposure

Captured an airplane just to the left of the steeple below.

An annual airshow at the local airport, half a mile from home.  These below shots were taken from my back yard.

Way up there in the sky, for the last time, went the Space Shuttle Endeavor!  We were lucky enough to experience the launch (about 50 or so miles away) when it was delayed almost two weeks, and our vacation with friends began!

Fireworks are up there, too, especially if you're sitting really close to the launch site.  Two of my favorites from last year's Independence Day celebration:

ISO 100, 17-85mm at 17mm, f/8, 4-second exposure

This little guy thought he was way up there in the sky, too!

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Happy Birthday, America!

We have awesome friends who go out at something like 5:30am the day before the fireworks show to lay out tarps for 40-50 of us to sit together and watch the fireworks, right in the front row.  With my camera and tripod, it's an awesome opportunity to hone my nighttime action photography.

I experimented with a couple of long exposures, just to mess around and get my camera ready for shooting fireworks.

I should have moved down closer to the corner and set up there for the actual fireworks.  The reason?  That truck in the above shot, which was parked there to provide after-show lighting.  You'll see that truck further on in this post.

School buses, shuttles for the Naperville Ribfest, constantly drove by until just before the fireworks show began.  I took the opportunity to "capture" one of them driving through my frame.

Then, it was time, and the fireworks began.  Naperville does a great job with its fireworks, and this year was no exception.  Most of my shutter speeds were four seconds, with low ISO (probably had it at 100), so sit back, scroll through, and enjoy.

The below one was crazy cool, with blue lines flying all over the place.  The captured image looks vastly different than what my eye saw.  And yes--I was actually watching the show!  I have a shutter release and pretty much never looked through the viewfinder.

There was a breeze which caused the drifting effect in the below image.

This green one was a really cool capture.

And this one was one of my particular favorites.

These ones below were low to the ground, and all sparkly and glow-y with lots of light flashes and booms.  I think I captured these well.  :)

The finale shots are below, and you'll get to see that lighting truck I mentioned at the beginning.  It wrecked these shots.  Grr.  I can always edit it out, though I saved only three images.

Yes, the last shot is really overdone and overexposed.  Four seconds was too long a shutter speed!  But I kept it because it was pretty much that bright, not to mention loud as all get-out.   We had a fantastic time together tonight!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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