Tag Archives: summer

Olympic Gold in China for Photos and Photographers

August 15, 2008 – 6:40 am

Have you been following the Olympics? Working from a home office gives me the advantage to have the coverage on all the time and it has been great. If you can watch during the day you get some of the less highlighted sports in the summer games like Badminton, indoor volleyball, fencing and more.

The swimming is of great interest to those of us here in Auburn. The Auburn University Swim and Dive program has become one of the premiere training grounds for Olympic swimmers, worldwide, and it is really something to watch the swimmers from right here in Auburn compete so strongly in each event.

Auburn Womans Gymnastics

Auburn Men\'s Swim Team

One area of interest to me of course are the incredible photos that are coming out of Beijing. I have been following Vincent Laforet, an incredible photographer who is covering the Olympics for Newsweek, (see most recent post for Newsweek called Things Are Starting to Click—and I’m Not Talking Only About Cameras This Time) and each day he has brought the world more incredible images of the summer games in Beijing.

Watching these event on TV, like the U.S. Gymnastics team win gold or seeing Michael Phelps break his own world record, is great, but being there and taking those images with your own eyes must really be something. Vincent, through his photography of the Olympics can give us a perspective that shows the intensity of the competition, the agony of all the training that it took to get there, and the faces of winning a gold metal.

The Summer Games in Beijing has inspired me to get moving with our plans for the Winter Games in Vancouver 2010, now only a year and a half left before the opening ceremonies in February 2010. I hope our plans to go to the winter games in Vancouver will come to pass, if so, I will be lugging all my camera equipment to Canada to get what action I can get.  It won’t matter if I am shooting for a local paper, or something bigger, there will be some incredible photographic opportunities in Canada in 2010, and I plan on being there.

Of course there are thousands of photographers covering the Summer Olympics in China. Another also shooting for Newsweek, Donald Miralle, has also produced some fantastic images (see his latest post Badminton is My New Favorite Sport).  Another is Mike Powell (also shooting for Newsweek, see A Bit of Sun) who has captured some great shots of the gymnastics and kayaking.

Vincent also maintains a personal blog (latest post Things Are Starting to Click—and I’m Not Talking Only About Cameras This Time), although he requests comments be left on the Newsweek blog to save a bit of editing time on his end. Great job Vincent, Donald, and Mike, I love photos that inspire, that is what keeps photography alive and exciting.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal, Photography | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Sumertime in Alabama Equals a Butterfly on Lantana

September 18, 2007 – 6:29 am

Butterfly on Lantana in Alabama Summer

I thought I would post an image of the day post once in a while here so here is the first one. This was taken about a week ago in my back yard on some very overgrown Lantana (see description below). A good photographer and teacher once told me that you don’t have to go to exotic places to take some great photos, sometimes you don’t have to look any farther than your own house.

Some times it is very hard to find those images when you are looking at the same place day after day, but there are usually all kinds of great opportunities that we overlook just by looking at the same thing every day.

These butterflies come to this plant all day every day, and have done so now for months, I just didn’t think about taking a photo of them until the end of the summer.

Images Details

  • Camera Body : Nikon D100
  • Lens : Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 Macro
  • Mount : handheld
  • Exposure Value : -1.0
  • Focal Length : 157mm
  • ISO Speed : 400 (this was a mistake, didn’t check the setting)
  • Aperture : f/8:
  • Shutter Speed : 1/1000
  • File Format : NEF converted to .jpg

Characteristics of Lantana Plants: [Lantana camara (sometimes misspelled Lantana camera), ‘Spreading Sunset’]
Known for their hemispherical clusters of small, bright-colored flowers (see picture above right), lantana plants can reach 6′ high (with a spread of 8′) in Florida landscaping. The flowers may be yellow, orange, white, red and purple, and often colors are mixed within the same cluster. Most people dislike the smell of lantana flowers, but the foliage is quite fragrant, smelling, in fact, like citrus. Lantana plants are salt-tolerant, and they’re drought-tolerant once established.

For those of you who were looking for a ham radio type of entry, the butterflies often land on my vertical high gain VHF antenna that is mounted at about 50 feet. If you have any comments or questions just post them below.

By islandzephyr | Posted in Photography | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

This Long Drought in Alabama and the Southeast Continues

June 24, 2007 – 6:04 am

The water in the pond is gone. The fish are easy pickings for the birds these days and the plants are all struggling too. We have been in this drought all spring (and really going back into the winter) and the pond has just slowly gone away. Here is what it looks like now.

This pond at one time was filled to the brim, which would make the entire pond about 10-15 feet deep in the middle, now you can practically walk across the pond.  You can just see the pipe going into the pond on the right.  That was completely under water and unseen last year and the total volume of water this little pond holds is enough to be visible on Google Earth, but not right now.

This summer we are having to go around and water individual trees to keep them alive.  A high pressure system remains over the southern part of the United States and just will not give up any ground.  So, we are left with these scortching clear skies every day.  No clouds, no rain, no humidity (which is really strange for the south in the summer), just a clear blue hot sky.  Eventually it will have to start raining again, but it doesn’t look like it will happen for a while.

By tiger | Posted in Journal | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)