Blue Heron on Far Bank

Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville is a nice place to visit on a sunny Sunday morning - well, not the dead people's part, but the large duck pond on the edge of the grounds.

The pond has a large permanent population of various kinds of ducks and geese. Like much of the mid-Atlantic, formerly migratory Canada geese have made a permanent home here.

If you get here early enough, you may luck out and spot a blue heron who also makes his home here.

This place is only about a half-mile from my mom's place, so I've been bringing my camera whenever I go to see her, in case I have a few minutes to stop and see my feathered friends.

Rocky Mountain Mall

Although this scene may look as if it's taken from the background video for a karoke version of Rocky Mountain High, the actual location is what amounts to a large strip mall just west of Annapolis.

This ties in nicely with yesterday's backyard photography post. The point is that you don't have to travel to exotic locations to make compelling images.

This photo came about as I stopped by my bank to make a deposit early last Saturday morning before heading to City Dock to play around with my new Tamron 18-270mm superzoom lens. As I pulled into a parking space, I noticed how the low morning sun lit up the red-tipped grass planted in the divider between the bank's parking lot and that of Fudrucker's next door.

Shooting from slightly above the grass and at the long end of the zoom's range, the shallow depth of field makes it look as if the grass goes on forever.

In fact, here is what the scene looks like to the casual observer

Lovely, isn't it?

Well yeah, it is, if you look beyond the superficial.

Great photos are everywhere, and as Dorothy said, there's no place like home.

Backlit Backyard Leaves

Last Thursday after work, I went out of my way to go shooting in a fancy-schmantzy neighborhood of Baltimore. When I came home and got out of my car, I happened to notice some beautiful backlighting on some on these hostas at the side of our house.

After all was said and done, this was the only good photo of the day. I wouldn't say at all that the special trip to that fancy neighborhood was a waste, but it's funny how I found the best image right in my backyard.

Unintentional Art

You Silly Dog!

Flag and Flag Kite

Our flag billows and a 4th of July kite flies at the shore of the Chesapeake Bay last Saturday.

Lemmon Street, 8 AM

Fremont Ave Gingkgo

I carried my DSLR with its new "walkaround" lens, a Tamron 18-270mm zoom, with me to work today for the first time.

There are some gingkgo trees just before I get to the entrance of our building, but I tend to only notice them in the fall, when their leaves turn yellow and carpet the sidewalk. But today, I finally "saw" them and took a few photos.

The new lens seems to have nice bokeh, as I was able to smoothly blur some cars, grass, and brick walkway in the background.

I bought the lens in early June after a few weeks of gearhead anxiety. Once it arrived and I had a chance to shoot with it, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it. But I decided to do just that over the past day or two. More on that later.