Fooled You

So I may have posted about an hour ago, but when I got done I decided I wanted to take some late night pictures. The place we are staying at is right next to the property owner's....property, and they are apparently landscape gurus because their property looks awesome. They have tiered sections leading down to the lake with rope lights, lamps, stone paths and other fancy things. I turned the lights on and took some pictures, and it worked out pretty well.

I'll post all my favorites first, then everything else:

[Pretty dang nice huh?]

[Not perfectly in focus, but it was dark, and slightly windy which made the rose move a bit too]

[Rocks lit up by the ropelight run along the bottom of them, kinda cool]

[Lamps.]

[Cool firepit thing that I don't know what it's called. Also, looks like I took this during the day doesn't it? Well I didn't! Long shutter photography is awesome]

[Same picture, but done in black and white with my trial tone mapping program, hence the watermark]

And now here is the rest. Not my best work, but some were just fun shots, or shots I took the time to edit so they are getting posted anyway.

[Took this at about 9:30 pm, you would never know if I didn't say anything]

[Ropelight going through some bushes, kinda cool]

[Those yellow flowers that seem to be everywhere]

[Tried to have some fun with the lamps]

[Found a frog on my way to turn the lights back off. He was afraid of nothing and didn't move an inch the whole time, what a trooper.]

[So this photo was a total accident, I started taking the picture but I was falling over and so the camera moved while the shutter was open and I ended up with this. It looks like some sort of funky painting, so I kept it.]

Alright, I'm seriously done for the night.

Leave me comments!

Ducks! ...and stuff

Sadly something has happened to my excellent storytelling ability and I don't have much to say for this post. But then again this is a photography blog so pictures are the main point, so I can get away with some lame text (hopefully).

So without further ado; ducks!:

[This duck was pretty shy, but no duck refuses free bread]

[This duck was cool, it got really close to me as I stood in the water feeding it. But I was kind of afraid it'd get super hungry and attack me... revenge for all the times I played Duck Hunt as a child or something.]

[My favorite]

The only other thing I photographed today was for my mom. (That really kind, awesome person who bought me my camera, she's so nice) Anyway, now that my brother and I have moved out of the house the time has come to redo our rooms. My brother's old room is getting turned into some sort of nautical/fishing theme. My dad owns an old, wooden waterski that he refinished along with an old fishing reel he cleaned up that my mom wanted some pictures of. She wanted it to look old fashioned. My dad found a cool looking boathouse on someone's property, and luckily no one appears to be staying there right now so we sneaked down there and took some shots. I couldn't get even with the stuff we were shooting so the images aren't perfectly straight, but I was slowly sinking in lake sand while standing in the water trying to take the shots, so give me a break.

Let me know if any of them are good. They might be easier to view on my flickr account since you can view them at larger sizes, or even view them with the slideshow tool: Waterski Set

[I think this one is my favorite]

[This one was tone mapped on a program that is a trial version, that's why it has the watermark.]

[This one was also done with the same program, but I used the preset option for grunge, thought it was kind of cool]

Traverse City

At the time of this posting I'm staying in Traverse City on vacation. My family rented this excellent house on a lake. It has the most intense landscaping ever and it's pretty excellent. Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures of the place before I leave.

On Sunday my boyfriend and I went into town to do some things. First we played some disc golf at one of the local courses. Normally it's a ski area in the winter so it was fairly hilly, but I enjoyed it overall even though I wasn't playing well and got slightly grumpy. My impression of the place probably improved when I overshot a 361 ft hole, making for the longest drive I've done so far. It may have been a shot downhill, but I'm counting it anyways. Then I finally got a birdie on the last hole with about a 160 foot approach around some trees that miraculously went in the basket. Sadly there are no pictures from that because the prospect of carrying my camera along with my disc bag along a hilly course and having to stop to take it out every hole/shot sounds tedious and I'm just not that ambitious.

But after the disc golf we drove up the peninsula to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse.

[The lighthouse]

[View of the entire lighthouse]

[Lee walking out into the lake. I would have liked to join him, but my camera stays on dry land, so I just creeped on him from a distance]

[Looking at something]

[Some girl out in the water]

[Hey, Rocks! Yeah!]

Next came water skiing:

[For some reason we let Andy drive the boat]

[My brother slalom skiing]

[Falling! haha]

[Dad water skiing]

[Pretty]

So there is the beginning of my vacation. Sadly I didn't get any pictures from today, like when I beat Lee at mini golf. Or when I went to an old mental hospital that has been converted into shops, businesses and housing, creepy, yet pretty sweet.

Finally, Vacation

I'm finally on vacation for the first time since last year May. I'm only gone for three days, but it's excellent.

Last night I went down to Pentwater's beach to watch the sunset. It was really beautiful. I quickly discovered that I am dumb and the autofocus option on my lens is really easy to use, I was just really impatient last time I tried to use it. So I turned autofocus on, but then for some reason I turned it off, and forgot that it was off, so quite a few of my pictures were slightly out of focus. I'm dumb.

But here are some pictures from last night. None of them are overly awesome, I was just trying to enjoy the night, not too worried about taking masterpieces.

[This was my favorite]

[the colors aren't as intense in this one, but I like the cloud]

[Colors in this one are awesome]

[So I have this thing against people who think they are artistic just because they tilt their camera when they take pictures. Which I'm not saying it can't be, it's just when people think it's the only way to be artistic and they do it all the time, it bothers me. My boyfriend joked with me to do it.....and then I ended up kind of liking this shot... but I only took one, so it's safe. Right?]

Yay, vacation!