These pretties came from the Isle of Skye in Scotland at Dunvegan Castle. Enjoy!
In August of 2000 I had the opportunity to to take a wonderful trip to New Hampshire and Maine with my dear friends the Trippeers where we hiked a week on the Appalachian Trail (The AT Trail) and then spent another week in Acadia, Maine. There are many a story from that trip--some never to be told again ;) The hike ended up being a bit more challenging than we had planned--OK, the AT train in New Hampshire is INSANE!!! Straight up and down mountains without switchbacks. We were often bouldering as much as we were hiking. The trip was still wonderful and as we started out we crossed this covered bridge. I loved the light on the mist is the morning as we began out trek.
Here is a bit of fun with patterns! When visiting Munich, Germany I swung by the Residenz Munchen which is palace of the old Bavarian monarchs. There were many a goopy decoration as one would expect in a palace but I was especially struck by the parquet floors throughout the palace. Each room was done in a different pattern of inlaid wood. Some were a bit busy for my taste if I were to try to live with them, but the craftsmaship was impressive to say the least.
Hello all! Here are 2 more from my recent visit to the smokies. Once again changing up the exposure settings to play with the water effects. This one is a bit more traditional but still interesting :)
I had the chance to go up to the Great Smokey National Park in early October for my fall break with my parents and my fiancee. We had a wonderful time being leaf watchers and I am sure some of those picts will make their way here (I am just not getting around to editing them!). These two shots are essentially identical, take of the same subject just a few seconds apart. This is the Cades Cove primitive Baptist Church, organized June 16, 1827. As we were getting ready to leave I noticed that if you stood in just the right part of the parking lot and hoped that no one ran over you, the sun was right at the top of the bell tower/steeple. I snapped a couple shots playing with exposures and f-stops to come up with these two. I like the contrast between them--I hope you do too!
So, for those of you that haven't heard yet, I'm a gettin' married!!!! Yup, that's right...pigs are flying everywhere! We do not have a definite date yet, but Courtney and I will be married sometime next year. Yea!!!! This picture was taken by me just after the proposal :)
When visiting Scotland and England back in 2007 we ended up visiting Cawdor Castle up near Edinburgh. It is in this castle that Shakespeare set Macbeth. Not that it likely happened here, but it is still a nice castle with a great gardens. It was kind of rainy that day (in Scotland?!?! Never!) but that didn’t stop us from hitting the gardens for lots of pictures! So, here is the beginning of 1 picture form Cawdor Castle per day for a little while. Enjoy!
The old Odgen home. I love the dove tail joints here. They have stood for over 100 years and likely will a hundred more!
I love the mix of all of the stages of fall here...green, yellow, and red!!!
Fungi....everywhere!
Just a really darned cool leaf
Here are some more goodies from the Smokies a couple of weeks ago :)
Well, it is here if here is the Great Smokey National Park. It was 85 in Atlanta today...not really Fall if you ask me!!! My parents are in town though so I took them on up to the Smokies to go leaf watching. At it was incredible!!! Fall has arrive up in the mountains (as well as WAY too many people in Gatlinburg. Wow, that town in scary!) and we traveled for four days (Courtney joined us for 2 of those days) and we saw many a leaf changing color and took even more pictures. All four of us had cameras and I think that at times we may have all even taken the same picture :) These three picture are to start you out in the Fall Feast and were all taken the last day. I was really happy to actually see the 'smokey' aspect to the Smokies in the middle picture. So often the smog limits visibility but real really lucked out. You could see out in the direction of Pigeon Forge that the smog was definitely there but it in most of the other directions the view was incredible. It was much clearer this year than last year when Courtney and I visited over Labor Day. More people too!
While traveling around in Europe I became obsessed with windows for a while. Each country has such different architectural styles and the winds seems to reflect that. This little door/window was taken in Germany. I love the lines of the 1/2 timbering surrounding the window. It has a very primitive/earthy feel to it.
This weekend I joined a bunch of friends visiting Washington Farms in Watkinsville, GA. We went pumpkin picking and even braved the corn maze--a pretty good one as it took us 45 minutes to get through! At the end of the maze they had the Vortex Tunnel to walk through. It is similar to the ice cave on the Universal Studios Tour. Essentially you walk down the middle through a tube that is spinning pretty fast around you. With dots painted on it. And you get REALLY dizzy. It is really darned disconcerting even if you know what to expect. I took this shot at the beginning of the tunnel. The camera had no chance of focusing on the spinning craziness so I put it on manual and held it as steady as I could for an 8 second exposure. Trippy!!! Click on the picture to see it full screen and feel like you are there!!!
