Look Up: North Market

Posted: May 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Adventures in art, Adventures in Life, family, food, garden, gardening, Local Tourists, NaBloPoMo, nature, Photography, reviews, Spring, travel | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

M and I took a quick trip to Columbus on Thursday and Friday to visit with family.  Our youngest son and his wife were in town for her sister’s wedding.  Our oldest son and his family live nearby so we were all able to get together for dinner on Thursday evening.  It was nice and something I wish we could do more often.

On Friday we hung out with our youngest son, going to the Columbus Museum of Art to see the Chihuly glass exhibit (where I took lots of photos with my new camera), the Topiary Park, and finally to the North Market where we had a late lunch and did a little shopping.  The North Market photos, particularly the one above, fit the Look Up theme.

I’ll be showing off some of the other photos soon.  The camera and I are still getting used to each other.  For most of the day yesterday I thought I was taking some pretty bad photos.  I was surprised (and delighted!) when I looked at them on the computer.  There were, of course, some pretty bad photos.  But all was not lost or hopeless and I was more than impressed with some of the improvements made to this version of a Z-series Kodak.

There are some minor things about the camera that I don’t like.  The battery compartment is one of them.  It is difficult to open and even more difficult to close.  The batteries popped out twice while I was trying to take photos.  Very annoying.  The reason they popped out is because I can’t always tell if the compartment is closed completely.  The batteries cannot be changed easily.  In my old camera I could pop out the battery and pop in a new one while walking.  I don’t see that ever coming to pass with the Z981.

The minor annoyances may be worth it as I have more options with this camera, a better zoom, and I think the quality of the photos are better.

(Yesterday’s sunset.)

If I had been thinking, I would have taken a shot of yesterday’s sunset with the old camera for comparison.  Perhaps I’ll do that this evening.

(This morning’s visitor to the pond.)

Garden & Pond Notes: Harvested a baker’s dozen asparagus spears today.  Did some weeding in the asparagus bed.  Lettuces and spinach are small but looking good.  M and I sprayed the algae in the pond.  There is too much of it for us to hand pull this year.  We added 3 carp to the pond (to help keep down the plant growth) about two weeks ago.  Haven’t seen them since (which means nothing, really).

Look Up: Inside the Bean

Posted: May 13, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Adventures in art, Adventures in Life, Art, Autumn, NaBloPoMo, Photography, travel | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

Back in October of 2009 when M and I spent some time in Chicago, I took a boat load of pictures of The Cloud Gate sculpture (called The Bean by locals) which is located in Millennium Park.  The Look Up theme has given me a chance to display one or two of them.  This photo was taken inside the bean, looking up.  I’m the one in pink.

This photo was also taken from a “look up” perspective in that I was pointing up in order to capture the flare of sunlight on the top.

In other (exciting) news…

I have a new camera!  Yay!  I think it’s going to take a few days for the camera and I to adjust to each other so it may be a while before anything new shows up here at the blog.

For those inquiring minds that want to know, I went with the newest Kodak (the Z981).  I’ve had good results with my old Kodak and this suited my budget and my current needs (with a better zoom and the ability to shoot in RAW format).  After much thought I decided I didn’t want to go with high-end, expensive equipment.  I’d spend too much time worrying about losing it, having it stolen, breaking it, etc.