Last evening we drove to my sisters and brother-in-laws farm in nearby Statesville, NC, for what has become a 4th of July tradition. Friends and family converge with food around 7pm for a cook-out/picnic style meal in their yard followed by a fireworks display in an adjacent field after darkness falls.
The event seems to grow each year and the fireworks would do a small town justice. My brother-in-law looks forward to this all year. He personally purchases the fireworks and won’t hear of anyone else contributing to their cost.
It has the air of an “old time” Independence Day celebration or as my wife stated: “like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.”
It’s always a good time and I enjoy photographing the fireworks.
May you all have a happy and safe 4th of July.
For those readers not from the United States:
In the United States, Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the national day of the United States – Wikipedia
Any zoo, even with the best of habitats, is still a cage and this particular gorilla seemed to be contemplating that fact at the moment I made this photo.
While I enjoy the opportunity a zoo provides to photography animals I’d never have an opportunity to photograph in the wild, it also makes me sad wild animals have to live in captivity. However I’m a realist, and I know it’s often a choice of making the best of a less then perfect situation. The fact is many of these animals would not be alive if not cared for in our zoos. Many of them have been injured or have lost the ability to fend for themselves in the wild.
So I try and celebrate their lives and not focus on their captivity.
I got a new cell phone, an LG Dare. It’s a touch screen phone with some nice features. It’s not an iPhone or even a Palm Pre but it seems a capable phone/pda. The more I use it the more I’m liking it.
I’d always said I wouldn’t leave Verizon for a particular phone and I was tired of waiting for one of the two “status” phones mentioned above to migrate to Verizon, hence the Dare.
My old phone, a flip Motorola, was beginning to show its age after five years–in cell phone lifetimes that’s forever. In the past I’ve used Sprint, AT&T and Alltel but none of their networks are as good in my opinion as Verizons.
A nice thing about the LG Dare is that it’s got a decent camera–3.2 megapixels with AF and flash which can be turned off if needed. It has filters, facial recognition, white balance and ISO 100, 200 and 400 controls. It will also take multiple shots (3,6,9), will do video and has a micro sd memory card slot for storage (I believe it’s even a little better camera then the one in the new iPhone 3GS.)
Not bad for a cell phone camera (see photo)–heck, my first point-and-shoot digital camera didn’t have as good of specs!
I’ll be well satisfied with the Dare. Maybe next upgrade I’ll be able to try an Apple or Palm touch phone–how about making that happen Verizon! 
I’d love a Banana Daiquiri about now…
I’m “reposing” for the moment with photography and posting. I certainly haven’t lost interest as I’m reading and working out the kinks with some post-processing experimentation but it hasn’t developed to this point into anything worthy of sharing.
I’ve also been feeding my geek gadget needs with the new laptop and integrating it into my workflow. Then I’ve got a couple of home projects I need to get completed. So, all good things in their time.
The photos of the gorillas are from the North Carolina Zoo. I love watching and photographing the ape/chimpanzee family because their actions, movements and poses are often so human like. Both of these images were taken through not-so-clean safety glass but I managed to remove most of the slight haze without losing too much clarity. When shooting through glass I constantly keep reminding myself of positioning and reflection control. If lucky I can get close enough to the glass to eliminate most of the worst reflections, but that’s not always the case.
Before I made these photos I stood and watched someone with a high-end D-SLR shooting through the glass from several feet back using the on-camera flash. I wonder what results they got?
Last evening we drove to my sisters and brother-in-laws farm in nearby Statesville, NC, for what has become a 4th of July tradition. Friends and family converge with food around 7pm for a cook-out/picnic style meal in their yard followed by a fireworks display in an adjacent field after darkness falls.
It has the air of an “old time” Independence Day celebration or as my wife stated: “like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.”
