Beautiful end to the day

This storm cell develped to our east as the sun went down in the west....

We'd had an incredibly hot and humid day and as things began to cool down, storm cells began to pop up all over according the the radar.  I believe this was the storm cell we saw heading toward LaFarge, WI.

Lucky me.  My Nikon lens steamed up from coming inside the house...I'd brought my FujiFilm FinePix 30 EXR, which is a point and shoot, with a very long lens and was able to catch these shots!

Behind me thick mist rose out of the valley...

Yesterday was too hot to really do much outside other than chores and some other things.
Since I'd had a brutal work weekend...no, work was not bad, just long hours that I am not used to....

We napped when the afternoon storm came through.  Yesterday's total rainfall was 3/4" of rain for our little area.

I am hoping that I get some time to go and look for fungi today.  Warmth, moist, humid air, rain, and more warm weather seems to be a real bonus for fungi!

Yes...my 'cheapo' point and shoot did very well I think.  I think I have over 10K clicks on it and it is still shooting!

I am having riding withdrawals!

Seems I haven't ridden in days.  
But that could be do to my demanding schedule.
12 hour overnight shifts, day shift, night shift...all make for a weird sleep schedule.

I however did get out early the other morning with my cameras, one Nikon and one point and shoot for an awesome foggy morning sunrise.

I didn't realize how chilled I was while awaiting just the right light to get the 'right' shot.
Of course there is no such thing.
It is pure luck, either the sunrise combined with humidity and temperature make the right conditions ... or not.

In this case it seemed to have done perfectly for my purposes.

After the sun peaked over the ridge, I moved to another area to watch it rise again.
Seriously, in hill country you can do that!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered frost on the soybeans!

This last photo was taken with my point and shoot FujiFinePix camera.  I posted it to Flickr and imagine my surprise when this morning I looked at my Flickr Account and realized that I'd had 49 thousand hits on this photo.

I think this just proves that you absolutely do not need the most expensive camera in the world to take a fine photo.

It helps to have good equipment.  But this was not what I considered my best camera.  It is my haul around the woods, climbing rocks camera.

Take a Hike!

Okay, I hope that didn't sound mean at all.  But I just had to try out my new snowshoes.  
It is funny how after a few days of bitter cold, it doesn't seem to bother me much.  
Of course I do dress for it.

The snowshoes worked wonderfully.  Morris even liked them enough to try and walk on the backs of them.  I took them off when I got to the creek and left them on the trail to put back on when I returned.  This meant coming home the exact way I'd left, but that was okay.

Morris as usual, had a blast.
Here he tries to dig out a mouse nest.

Later on as we got nearer PeeWee's Valley, we heard the ruckus of snow mobiles.  I swear, they must put something on those things so that they literally scream.  The echo in the valley was a bit loud.

Morris didn't really like them at all and we didn't travel any further down the valley.  I had intended to go to the big spring and get some shots of the frost on the rocks, but that will have to wait  for another day.
The shot above was taken with my FujiFilm FinePix HS 30 EXR in RAW mode and then edited with Fuji Film's software.  I think this is some of the finest software that any camera company has ever come up with for RAW.  Nikon has a stand alone converter, but it isn't as good as this.

My purpose today was to try out some more functions on the Fuji and on the Nikon D3100.  I was trying to avoid the dreaded blue cast that I seem to get quite a bit on snow shots.  There are some tricks to helping with it and I'll review that on another post.

After about an hour Morris began to try and walk ~ not walk on his feet.  He kept holding his paws up and then began to shiver pretty hard.

I decided to pack things up and head back home.  Feeling a bit sorry for him I held out my arms and he climbed into them.  He then rode with his back feet on my pistol belt and spare cartridge, his front feet cradled into my arm or sometimes...he turned and rode looking backwards over my shoulder.

We got home just before dark and began to help hubby out with the chores.  I had let Morris in and he raced towards the heater which was blowing warm air.
It was a great day.

Art through photos

At first I thought it would be a piece of cake.
Sure, take the photo and then drop it into any processing program and viola......ART!
Here is the original:

 

That was pretty boring right?

So I dropped it into Elements 5 by Adobe and decided to run it through Topaz Adjust 5.

Dang.

Still not very exciting.

 Then I though perhaps if I added some 'far' out textures and colors it I may come up with something interesting.

I added a painted texture and another 'painted' texture.  I used overlay for the layer blending and adjusted how much would show through.

Now I wasn't sure I really 'loved' it, but this photo was beginning to grow on me.

This photo taken with a point and shoot Pentax Optio...don't ever underestimate a pocket camera or what you can do with it.

Next thing I did was grab a so-so photo and run it through Corel Essentials 4, free when you buy a Wacom Tablet [which I did a year ago].  I painted it in 2 different layers and then blended them together.

Here is the original:

Here is the painted version:

I ended up liking the painted version enough to put it in my 'calendar' shots for this coming year.

This shot was taken with my FujiFilm Finepix HS 30 EXR.

My conclusion, do NOT underestimate what you can create with a non-DSLR camera! 

First impression FujiFilm FinePix HS 30 EXR

FujiFilm Finepix camera [all in one none DSLR].
Many folks don't believe you can take very good shots with anything but a DSLR.

I agree a DSLR is great.  But my one drawback I have found while hiking is that I either choose to bring only one lens and have often chosen the wrong one to use. 

I'd sold my FujiFilm FinePix S1500 a while ago [very cheaply to a friend so his daughter could experiment].  Frankly, I missed that camera which allowed me to go from one 'lens' to zoom lens with a flick of the finger.

It was one of the first digital cameras that was made this way.  I figured that improvements had been made in the past 6 yrs.
I was correct. 

This camera at first glance looks and feels like any DSLR.  It has heft to it and seems to be built quite sturdy.
Never having to change the lens and yet having the 24-720 zoom range is, to me, a huge plus!

I don't get caught without the wrong lens in the woods, or have to drag more than one lens along and try to change them in a hurry.

I can do super macro and lay the camera on the ground and use the tilt screen to capture my image.
Yeah, that it super cool!
Macro:

Colors:
Shot in Auto mode zoomed into the bush...

Morris:

B&W mode of the ridge where we walked:

Landscape mode using the tilt screen while laying on the ground:

 

Conclusion:

This camera has a lot of potential that I have not even tried yet.

It also has a one touch button to record movies.

I'll be trying this out in more ways.  One of the features I do like about it, is that you can take hand held 3 exposures without a tripod and do a fairly good HDR.

Most of the shots taken, though could use a tad bit of post processing.  But the average user can get along fine in the auto mode.

There are many functions to use.

It'll take time for me to get through them, but getting around the menus are not too bad. 

Just takes time to get used to them.