Tag: Nebraska

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Summer Concerts 2014

Arctic Monkeys With Royal Blood

It was nice to go to a Rock Show again. The Harrah’s casino is a pretty good venu. It was the first smoke free concert I have been too indoor or out. Sound quality was good, not great. Royal Blood was my surprise of the show, having never heard of them I became a fan and had to grab their album when I got home. Arctic Monkeys put on a good show, focused most on their music playing song after song.

 

Katy Perry

I wasn’t originally planning to go to this one but got a ticket at the last minute. While not the biggest Katy Perry fan I left the show very impressed.  Seats were great at midcourt since the stage was a big triangle and went to just over midcourt. This show was a huge production, over 15 trucks brought in tons of lights, screens, moving floor sections, props, and fireworks. Sound quality in the PBA is really great, although bring your earplugs, it’s loud. You really forget about how many hit’s Katy Perry has had and she sang them all.

 

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Pretty Lights Analog Future Tour – Lincoln NE

Pretty Lights came to Lincoln on November 15th as part of his Analog Future Tour. Unlike other electronic artists, this show had real live musicians playing along with Pretty Lights.  The keyboards and horn players were pretty cool.  This was a more laid back show in comparison to Bassnectar but this is to be expected.  It was a long show at over 3 hours of music playing.  I enjoyed it for sure.  All photos and video below were taken with my Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

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Transit of Venus 2012

Tonight was the Transit of Venus. This is where Venus comes in line between the Sun and Earth. As a result you can see a small black dot appear on the sun. This is Venus. This will be the last time this happens in any of our life times with the next one happening in year 2117. After work I stopped by the observetory to look through a telescope and had kind of given up at trying to photograph it but after a bike ride I decided to give it a go after someone on twitter asked if I had any photos. I am glad I did because the results turned out pretty well for the equipment I have.

I shot these with a Canon 7D and Sigma 70-200mm lens. I used live view on the 7D so I would be looking at the LCD to not damage my eyes by viewing the sun directly or through the magnification of the lens. The results are what you see below.

Clicking on each image will load a larger version that allows you to see Venus better.

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Summer Thunderstorms in Lincoln

Last night on 8/6/11 Lincoln experienced a damaging thunderstorm. The air has been full of humidity and there was lots of heat in the atmosphere so energy was abundant. The storm had tons of lighting, it knocked out power all over town and made it pretty unstable for the rest of town. One of the local TV stations took a direct hit (During the weather cast) and was offline for a little while. After the storm there were reports of lots of down trees, fences, etc. Nature repeated itself later that night with a second round.

The pictures below were all taken after the storm except the first one. The storm rolled through when the sun was starting to set so this created some great colors on the clouds. The bubble clouds are mammatus clouds. These were some of the most defined mammantus clouds I have seen recently.

I am always a little slow posting things to the blog but am much better about posting to the new G+ which I love. Follow me at http://Liquidretro.net/+

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Avoca Quack-Off 2011 (Duck Races)


I heard about this event on Twitter and decided to go take a look. It would be good for my 356 photo project right? The quack-off is a duck race that is a fundraiser for the local volunteer fire department.  It has been going on for over 20 years. During this year the small town of Avoca Nebraska grows from 250 people to over 2000. Many local bars in Lincoln and other surrounding larger towns charter busses to take people to this small town and bring them home safe. Alcohol was a common theme along with the ducks so the bus to get people home safely was a wise idea.  Tailgating was happening all around town anywhere people could gather. Fires and BBQ’s were common.  The local bar served basic food and drinks for anyone who did not bring their own. While there were lots of little kids I would not really of called this a family event with all the drinking.  People of all ages were at the event but it was a majority of college aged kids.

The event worked like this racers registered a few hours before the race for $20.  They could use their own duck or “rent a duck” for a fee if they needed.  The racers were then organized into individual races (5 racers at a time). The winners advanced until a champion was crowned.  The race was held on a basketball court in the local park.  The last few days had been very warm so things were very muddy from the melting snow for the spectators. The weather was great for January in Nebraska. Sunny with a high of 35 F.

This was an experience to say the least.  It was nice to just walk on to the basketball court and take photos.  With a big lens and an attitude that you know what you’re doing gets you a long ways.  Everyone was nice and enjoying the event. Bleachers would of helped people not in the first few rows see.  There was even a marriage proposal from a young couple who had their first kiss at last year’s race. She said yes and then the couple won their race.  Below are a few photos from the event. You can see more on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157625814754047/

The newly engaged couple wins.

Kind of sums up the quack-off

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Lincoln Zombie Walk 2010

The Lincoln Zombie walk was this past weekend on 8-28-2010. This year was bigger than ever as over 1200 Zombies participated in taking over downtown Lincoln. The event was moved to be earlier in the month this year and it was a great success. The weather was fantastic with highs in the mid 80’s compared to last year when I remember wearing my winter coat and gloves. The time was also moved to a little earlier which made photography much more enjoyable. The zombies were suppose to do the Thriller dance at the Union but at the last minute decided not to for an unknown reason. In the end everyone gathered outside of Pershing Center for a street dance. I met several Lincoln Flickr and Twitter people for a Flickr Walk and Tweetup. It was great fun. See the photos below.

See more photos on Flickr Page http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157624728841511/detail/

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Manual Lens Portrates on a Canon DSLR

I have gotten very interested (With the help of an influential friend) in some of the older classic manual lenses, so I now have a SMC Pentax 55mm F2 Type K in Pentax mount and a Jupiter 9 85mm F1.8 M42 that I have been mounting on my 7D and I wanted to try them out so I went out with a friend and had some fun around town. The 85mm is hard to focus because it has such a small DOF and its goes through 2 converters to mount on my camera so its no perfectly tight. The lens is also a bit stiff, but optically its good. I need more practice. The Pentax is a great lens & I am getting the fever for more. Its very sharp and extremely mechanical. Great little lens. Thanks to my model Megan for the great job, I could not have done it without you.


Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Pentax 55mm

Sigma 10-20mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Jupiter 9 85mm

Canon 50mm F1.8

Canon 50mm F1.8

To see the full gallery Click http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/Megan1/

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Lincoln, NE 4th of July Fireworks 2010

Better late than never right? The city of Lincoln’s annual firework display was postponed one day due to the large amount of rain on the morning of the 4th of July. The evening of the 5th was perfect weather wise. I met up with some of the #LNK tweeps out at Oak Lake Park to watch the display. It was a nice time and I got a few good photos that I will post here. This was my first time watching the fireworks at Oak Lake Park and it had its pros and cons. The space is better for the amount of people that come, parking was fairly easy and emptied pretty quickly. However the background they shoot the fireworks against has too many lights, and is pretty industrial. In that regard Homes Lake was better, and much closer to my home. Hopefully someday they will decide to move it back to Homes Lake.


For more photos see the gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/LNKFireworks2010/