A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

photography

Bang bang!

Faster than a speeding bullet!

Shooting makes for some fantastic photography.

I grew up around guns. My father was a cop and there were always guns in the house. However, we all knew what guns could do, so we never touched them or tried to play with them. We learned to shoot at a younger age so we knew the power of what a weapon could do.

When my father got sick a few years ago, I made sure to get my pistol permit so I could own his pistols. He had a couple remaining and I didn’t want to see them go somewhere else. I keep them locked up and have only shot them a couple of times — at target ranges.

A friend, Pat, recently got his pistol permit and asked me this past weekend if I wanted to shoot. Considering I had wrecked my arm/elbow the day before trying different ways of throwing discs at a tournament (seriously), I wasn’t up for shooting.

But…

I’ve wanted to take photos of the shooting process for a while. Another photographer friend took some wild shots of his brother shooting a while back, capturing the flame coming out of the end of a shotgun. Way too cool.

This was my first attempt at it and I have some ideas on things I’d like to do for future chances at doing this. Possibly this weekend, if all goes well.

Anyway, we loaded up a few containers with water and food coloring and got some cool shots. Too, shaving cream cans make for some awesome shots. Allow me to show a few of my favorite images I took of this process:

Some clay pidgeons being blasted!

Green water being sent all over!

Shaving can creamed into the air!

I’ve come up with a small list of items I might try and get to take photos of while things are being shot. It’s tough for sure as you have to be on rapid fire with the camera and hope like heck that you are clicking fast enough to get the good stuff. I’m hoping there are a few rifles and we can catch something coming out of the barrel a little better, but we’ll see.

Either way, this is a good photo challenge for me.I look forward to it.

If any of you shutterbugs out there have photographed shooting before, any tips?

If interested in some of the other photos I took that day, you can see them on this Flickr set.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.

And then it was white again…

Seriously?

Nearly all the snow in our area had disappeared. Though some still remained in some parks and on mountains, it had been going away at a pretty rapid pace.

Then it snowed.

In my town, it was about an inch or two on the ground. I hear three or a little bit more in different area spots. There’s some snow showers in the forecast for the next few days, but hopefully without any accumulation.

Wasn’t the first day of spring yesterday?

Sheesh.

Alas, the weather made me make sure to turn my attention back to the job hunt. The goal this week is 5-6 applications sent out. I have a pile of printouts I’ve done over the past day or two with about 15 jobs. I’m sure a couple of them I’ll discard as ones I am not qualified for or ones I don’t think would be a good fit for.

I spent about 4 1/2 hours this morning getting some photos together and creating an online gallery for a gig that a friend let me know about. I’m hoping that will come through as it could possible be a foot in the door for some future things. Or it could be just a cool gig to have. I’m not going to get into the specifics as I don’t want to jinx anything. If something pans out, I’ll blog about it at some point.

So as this cold weather sticks around for a few days, I’ll be looking to get some more cover letters and resumes sent out. Hopefully as the weeks go by, I’ll start hearing back on some of them. There are some really good jobs that I think I am qualified for, I would enjoy and I would do well at. Fingers remain crossed.

On a different note — my 70-200 lens arrived today from Canon. I was extremely excited about that. It’s crisp and works very well again. I’m especially stoked as I might go watch a road rally this weekend and it will be nice to have that lens with me.

More later!

A nice day to be out

It started off a cold day, but the sun was out and the blues skies were too inviting not to get outside and do something. Even if it was just a little walking.

I headed over the Smith Pond, which is a hidden little gem in our village. It’s a great spot with some decent hiking trails, a decent-sized pond and just a nice place to get out and breathe some fresh air. My plan was two-fold: to seek out a possible place for a future geocache and to take a couple of photos and try some things out.

It ended up being three-fold, but I’ll get to that in a little bit.

First, the geocache.

There are a few caches already in Smith Pond. They are all by people who are no longer in the area. One is very old, however, and it’s an ammo can. It might be one of the oldest ones in our town and a few people keep a watch on it as it’s a really nice ones. The others are newer.

Where I’d really like to put this cache is smack in between two caches and it doesn’t appear that I can get far enough from each of them to be able to pull it off. I’m trying to find out about the future of a couple of them as if they are being planned to eventually be archived, then I can start planning. If not, I need to start planning again.

The spot is perfect for it, though. So hopefully it will work out.

Then there was the photography.

I purchased a panoramic thing from Photojojo and wanted to try it out today. I did that, alas it didn’t come out how I wanted. I’ll play with the images I took a bit more tonight and see if I can get it to stitch a little differently, but it’s not a bad first effort. I think I might have been using it wrong, so we’ll see. I’ll try it again soon on something.

I did take some other shots with my Diana lens and my pinhole lens. I’ll be working on those likely tonight, so we’ll see how they come out. The shots that I like will make it up on Flickr.

This is one with my cell phone camera:

Smith Pond in Delhi

And for the final thing. As I walked around Smith Pond park, I realized that this would be a good spot for a nine-hole disc golf course. The park is used some by walkers and people fishing, but it could be used for so much more. I’m not talking a world-championship caliber course, but a nice, family friendly course. One where people could come with a couple of discs and throw and have fun.

There wouldn’t need to be top-line baskets, just good ones. The holes probably wouldn’t be that long, but there would be some good woods holes etc. And if we ran it across the bottom portion of the park, there would be a chance to lose discs if not careful as the river runs next to the trail.

I’d have to do research and get someone who knows about course design to walk around the park, but it seems like something that might be worth looking into and talking to the village about. It would be pretty sweet to have a place close to play and with the park’s closeness to the local high school and college, the two of those places could probably utilize the course, too.

Just some thoughts, of course. We’ll see what happens.

More later!

Snapshot: March 19

Another blast from the past!

Me, my brother Joe and my father

I’m assuming this was from a holiday when I was a lad. Just the setup of everything here (though my brother Joe doesn’t look too awful happy in this shot, eh?)

But with the centerpiece, the big ol’ ham, what appears to be a bottle of wine and everything else, I’m thinking maybe Easter? Not sure. Either way, I look pretty happy, eh? Love these old photos.

More later!

Twelve for caching

Let me tell you, when you are doing the monthly 12 of 12 challenge for photography, it’s hard enough.

Add a theme and it gets a bit harder.

Then, take into account that you don’t have as much time to do said theme and it’s even harder.

This month was one of two Geocaching 12 of 12s for the year. The idea is to get 12 photos to show your day in geocaching. I hosted an event in the morning and then only did two caches after, as I was freelancing at night. That stunk in that it’s hard to get 12 photos from a short amount of time. Also, some of the photos I took at the Breakfast, cache and a photo (or 12?) event came out quite bad (flash is wacky for some reason), so I only had the group shot from there.

The group shot, the log of the event (a mat for the group photo) and three caches (two new finds for me) had to be everything I needed for the 12 of 12. I took my nephew Alex out for a couple of finds after he hit up the event (his first) and found a way to somehow get 12 images.

I would have looked into caching for a bit longer that day, but I had the freelancing gig (yay! Felt good to write on a deadline again), so I had to cut the day’s activities short.

I give to you my favorite few shots from the day. You can see the whole set on my Flickr stream or going directly to the set.

The group at the event

The event log

A log being signed

Overall, it wasn’t a bad day. The weather was improving, too. Hopefully there will be some geocaching in the near future, as well as some disc golf.

And, of course, a new job. I’m aiming for three or four applications this week, so hopefully I can find enough jobs to do so!

More later!