361/365: Stuck on the Farm
Today was not a good day. I woke up early with the thoughts of getting a lot done, and I started by pulling my car into my grandpa’s garage. I’ve been meaning to change my breaks for a while now, and today was the perfect day for it.
Once I got my car in the garage and the tires pulled off, I realized just how bad my car was out of alignment. I now have to replace both the front tires on my car, and although I’m really glad I found that out today, it wasn’t something I’m not looking forward to.
After finding out about the tires, I soon found out that someone had used lock-tight on caliber bolts. My grandfather and I tried for a good two hours to get the four bolts off, and we got three of them.
The last one involved a cutting wheel and a cutting torch. It also involves a day wait for the part to show up to the local parts store.
All the plans I had for the rest of the day kind of came to a grinding stop, and I got to hang out all day on the farm. I love the farm, but I planned on seeing some people and going to some shops that I needed to go to before I head back to Stillwater.
So this evening I decided to go for a walk through the woods that I used to play around in all the time. It’s not how I remember it, and I even had trouble finding the gate to go through.
The photos that I have attached are of the area of the grandpa’s farm were I used to have a fort and go out to spend time by myself. My little fort has been blown all over, but I did find the little ATV that I had out there.
I also found a nice deer stand right over the trail that leads you back into the woods, found out later it was my sisters boyfriends, but I decided to take a couple shots because I liked the light.
Hope everyone had a great day,
Mitch
314/365: Not a big fan of daylight savings
Tonight I started walking home from work at about 5, and the sun was already going down. I’m not a big fan of this whole being dark as soon as I get off work, it’s not the best for photos.
I know it means I should be getting up for the morning golden hours, but in all truth I am not a morning person. I have a hard time getting out of bed. I used to be a real early morning person when I worked on the farm, but school has made me weak.
I saw the sun setting through a tree outside of Bennett and I thought it framed BPS real nice. Shot a few frames, and thought I’d share.
Hope everyone has a great Friday,
Mitch
163/365: A Night in the Field
I had the perfect shot in mind this evening. There is a beautiful little waterfall down the road from Kendra’s family’s house. I knew I wanted a nice shot of the waterfall so I headed down their to do it at night, and I soon found out that that you can’t get to the waterfall after 10 p.m.
It was already 11 p.m. so I headed back to Kendra’s house, still in the need for a photograph. Knowing I was either going to shoot a still life photo at Kendra’s house or shoot a landscape night photo.
I headed to a nice little field that is found above Kendra’s house, and saw one of the prettiest firefly fields I’ve ever seen. It was wonderful with the little lights dancing all over the place, and I just wanted to capture the moment.
If you really look in this photo you’ll see little green dots in spots, and the obnoxious green streak in the middle. Those are the little lightening bugs that were all over the place.
For this shot I opened the shutter for about 1 ¾ minutes with an F8 aperture.
I wish I had gotten more green colors of the lightening bugs, but that was a lot harder then it sounds.
Mitch
145/365: Light at the end of the Drive
Today was a weird day for me, but it was also very pushing in my work. We had a group of individuals who really wanted to photograph an old cemetery, and we new exactly were one was.
I myself was not so keen on photographing a cemetery so I went off looking for something else.
One thing that I was really drawn to taking photographs of was all of the fake flowers that were all over the place. At one time someone came in and placed them on a tombstone, but then the years of wind have blown them all over the place.
Walking around, I found them pushed up against trees, fences and everything else outside of the graveyard.
I took some shots, but really enjoyed the dew around the ground but I didn’t really take to many photographs because we planned on heading over to the wildlife refuge.
That was until Mother Nature decided to get angry and send storms up the I-35 corridor. I was driving the great big white van, and the wind was blowing us all over the place.
We decided to delay the wildlife refuge, and hung out in the bunkhouse the evening. I taught some flash lessons, but the storms had all of are minds somewhere else.
I’m glad everyone I knew made it through the storms safely, and I hope everyone who was affected is doing well.
Mitch
123/365: Life in the fast lane
Life has just been zooming along lately, and unfortunately that means something doesn’t get the support that it should. That something in my life is the 365 blog, but that doesn’t’ mean I’m not going out and getting photographs.
Tonight I took a half hour to just dedicate to the photography, and I headed out to take some photos. I really like taking photographs at night, because the world that we know in the day changes once the sun goes down.
Driving by the Colvin and the Seretean Wellness Center I saw this row of trees that I had never noticed before, and they had a wonderful backlight to them. I stopped and took some photos, and then I did some shots of me ghosting through the scene.
They didn’t turn out the way I really wanted them to, so I chose it up and tried some slow zooms into the photo. The lights made a cool looking scatter pattern that I really liked so that’s what you get to see tonight.
Finals week is almost over, and then Special Olympics, and then the photo tour. So life doesn’t look like it’s going to press the breaks anytime soon, so I’m just going to keep running and shooting.
Hope everyone’s finals week is good,
Mitch
91/365: Night under the Stars
Last Night the Patchin-Jones student staff spent the night under the stars at Lake Carl Blackwell. It was a fun evening spent with good friends, fun times and no fire.
Payne County is under a burn ban, so the big plan of spending all night playing music and talking around the bon fire was not going to happen, so the lanterns came out and the sleeping bags got put on.
I love being out under the stars, away from civilization with no need to do much of anything.
We did a lot of fun things that ranged from playing Frisbee, playing dominoes and a giant marshmallow fight. We brought huge marshmallows to make s’mores with, but with no fire that kind of ruined that for us so we made an impromptu dodge ball game with the marshmallows.
This was a great time, but I have to admit that my favorite time was just sitting out under the stars and talking with Jordan, I just love being outdoors.
Most the time when I got camping I try to get away from technology and everything that comes with it, but this time I had to bring the Ipad to read a book. If I take a day off, I don’t have a day to catch up so I brought it out with me.
I also brought my camera equipment to get the photo of the day, and I got two that I really liked so I’m sharing two of them with you today.
The first shot is the campsite from t close by hill. I noticed that the lake was reflecting some lights, and the tent was blue so I thought if I could get the tent illuminated right it would look kind of cool.
I shot with about a thirty-second exposure, and had everyone in the tent playing dominos move the lights around inside to illuminate the tent. Nothing to special just had the camera on a tripod in bulb mode using a trigger to hold the time counting it out in my head.
The second shot is about a ten-minute exposure on a tripod. Once again had the tripod in bulb, and just let it sit open for quite a while. I had seen photos like this before; I had just never gave it a try myself.
Hope everyone had a great Friday night,
Mitch
50/365: As the Sun Sets
Kendra and I went on a wonderful drive around the Oklahoma back roads tonight.
We started by heading out to the OSU Equine Veterinary College, where we couldn’t find any of the horses in the field. They all looked like they were up in a round pin but we didn’t think it would be ok for us to drive up to the farm.
After that we headed west until we couldn’t go any further then south we went.
I saw this oil pump out in the field with the sun setting behind it, and was compelled to stop and shoot it. It was one of the only photos I actually like this trip.
I used a long glass to compress all the trees in the background, and then did some burning to the sky in Photoshop.
Have a great night,
Mitch
Snow falls all around… even on the filter…
Theres nothing prettier then a layer of fresh snow with no foot prints (except for Kendra). I hate ruining fresh snow, but I had to get this shot.
You know I’ve never eve realized that their were OSU flags hanging on light posts heading to library lawn, but they stood out like a sore thumb against the white backgrounds.
I love this little patch of trees along the walk way, and with all the trees and benches covered in snow made me really want to capture the scene. I also saw the OSU sign and I thought it would be a great way to incorporate it all. I had to ruin fresh snow to get set up where I wanted to , but I had to at least thats what I tell myself.
I’m sure an hour after I did it you couldn’t have been able to tell because the snow was coming down hard, and it was everywhere. I had it in my jacket, my pockets, my hood and even on my lens. Luckily I had the camera wrapped up, but if you look up in the top of the filter you can see that there is a blurry spot on the top of the picture. Thats from a flurry falling on the lens, and me being the idiot that I am not remembering a lens cleaning cloth.
Watch out for the snow flakes, and remember a cleaning cloth.
Mitch
Living life one picture at a times Blog 
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