Ice Castles

One of KC's nicknames is "The City of Fountains". There are over 200 in the region. Several of the modern fountains run year-round. During periods of extended cold weather like we often have this time of year these fountains can build some impressive ice formations.

These images are from the Northland Fountain. I went out this afternoon and the western skies cleared to provide nice contrasting lighting of the ice.

Here is a view of the entire fountain

You can see the size of the ice buildup by the man walking at the right.

Rebound !

Welcome McPherson Bulldog Fans! Click on this link to see more images from 2010 - 2011 Bulldog Sports!

We had our first chance to photograph the McPherson College Women's basketball team this weekend. The game was a close fight, but the Lady Bulldogs came out on the short end of the score 44 - 49.

The Sport Center gym is a typical small sports venue: Dark !

I am working with my new Nikon D7000 to see how much improvement there is with the ISO noise processing. I can see a definite difference. But at 3200 ISO there is still noise. These images have been converted from NEF to JPEG, WB adjusted and noise reduction applied in Camera Raw. Additional sharpening and resizing performed in Photoshop.

Despite the noise, the sharpness that the camera can provide can be incredible. But the camera can also point out all your little errors like hand shake. It will be fun, and a challenge, to master this camera!

Hidden Treasures & A Happy New Year !

Friends,

With the end of the year I have been reviewing the past year's images. Here at the holidays it is a good time to pare away the duplicates and the question marks.

When you do this sort of review there always seems to be an image or two that didn't seem like much at the time of the capture, but grabs you now. This bud was one of my hidden finds from 2010. My hope is that 2011 brings you hidden treasures! Happy New Year !

Image taken with Nikon D90, PP with ACR and CS5