Tag: Photography

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Minestrone

This morning I decided I need to make something hearty and mostly healthy to eat for the next couple of days.  After looking through some things I decided on Minestrone Soup.  This is a favorite of mine but one I had not made before.  After looking up some recipes it was not difficult and decided to go at it. I really like Allrecipies.com to find good dishes.  They always have lots of reviews, with people making suggestions on how to make them better.

Minestrone soup is most often a vegetarian dish, however I had some ground beef I wanted to use, so I started with that.  Next added the aromatics to make a mirepoix with some red wine and tomato paste.  I added about 1/2 of my stock and some Quinoa in place of about 1/2 the pasta to make the soup healthier.  Since this has a long cooking time I added it early.  I added the rest of the ingredients minus the spinach and zucchini since I did not have any.  I let it simmer for probably about 40 minutes until the vegetables were al dente added my pasta and let it cook for about another 10 minutes.  Minestrone Soup I  and Jamie’s Minestrone.

The end result was quite good.  The quinoa was a good substation and I am glad I put it in.  This made a dutch oven full so lots of taste leftovers.  It should freeze well too.

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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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Lincoln Airshow 2011

Wow, what an Airshow. This was one of the best all around airshows I have been to. A lot of this had to do with the VIP access that @Rossnelson and I had (Thanks @Pafford). We were at show center, as close as you could be. I was so close that when the Blue Angles fired up their engines and then made a turn on the ground you could feel the heat and jet wash. The lineup was great. For me seeing the A-10 Warthog fly was fantastic. This has always been one of my favorite planes since when I was young. It really amazed me how maneuverable it was. If only they could have shot its Gatling gun. I also had a neat opportunity to see another B-2 stealth bomber flying. This one was named after Nebraska. This was great since the last time I saw the B-2 I was not really close enough to get good photos of it. It was also rare since it did not land and was only at the show on Saturday for 3 passes only. The Blue Angles put on a good show as always. Their precision flying really is amazing. The show was not as fast or as loud as I remember though. I would have to say that the F-15 at the Offutt show a few weeks prior to this one was louder and had sharper turns. One of the Blue Angles did have mechanical troubles it looked like and he landed early. The last flying B-29 was cool too. It is amazing that there is only one left flying today, considering how many of them were made during WWII.

The bad, was that parking was terrible. We must have parked in the worst possibly place because it took 1:45 to get off the air base. Granted they said over 250,000 people came to the show over the weekend but we expected traffic to be better.

Enjoy the photos below. They are only a small set of the more than 600 I took that day. View the rest of my edited photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P

http://liquidretro.net/Images/LNKAirshow2011/LNKAirshow-09-10-11-290.jpg

View the rest of my photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P

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Fireworks Photos Oak Lake, Lincoln NE 2011

The city of Lincoln decided to hold its annual Uncle Sam Jam on July 2, 2011. This is always followed up with a professional fireworks show that evening. I wish the fireworks would have been on the 3rd so that I could have gone to the Nebraska City Fireworks display (July 2nd) as well but it just did not fall that way this year. The weather was perfect for this display, it was about 75F for showtime with a light breeze to keep the bugs off. Enjoy the photos below.

The entire set can be seen on Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157627107802974/

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DIY Studio Results (Whitney)

In February I decided to start building a studio in my basement.  At the time the weather was cold and I was out of things to work on in my house while it was still cold.  This was always something I had wanted, so I built a Backdrop stand out of PVC, bought some fabric to use as a backdrop and found a good deal on some great studio lights through a contact at Awesome Camp 2011.  About the time this was finished the weather got warmer and I started work on remodeling my garage.  A couple of weekends ago a good friend came over and we played around in the studio for a couple of hours.  She brought lots of clothes and we had fun mixing and matching. I am looking forward to future studio time to learn. I still have a ton to learn about studio lighting but i think the results below turned out pretty good.

I ended up firing the Alienbee B800’s I have wirelessly with my Canon 7D with the built in wireless flash firing trigger built in.  This is a great feature, it was guess and check to get it set right but so far it seems to work great, and quite reliable.  I shot tethered via USB to my old laptop using Lightroom to see the shots as I took them.  This was cool and my model really liked being able to see every shot as they were taken.  I think for the next shoot I will bring one of my external monitors so the images are larger.  Other things I learned was I need a bit more width to the room to move lights further away from the source.  For big shoots I might have to push furniture to the sides of the room and setup there.  I will have to think on this. The backdrop holder worked well. I need to re-engineer one side of it a bit but for the most part it did its job well.  I did learn the carpet under the model while nice for her to stand on causes the backdrop to have rinkles.  This is distracting in the photography and next time I will remove it.  I also learned that I need to iron my backdrops.  Not looking forward to this task as it will take forever.  Does anyone have a steamer?

I do plan on doing a blog post sometime on the construction of my DIY PVC backdrop holder, and my garage remodel, but I make no guarantee when that may be.  In the mean time enjoy the small sample of pictures below and the link to the set on Flickr.

 

 

 

 

See the rest of this set on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157626682837239/

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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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Madrid – Atlético de Madrid Championship Celebration!

Today we traveled from Barcelona to Madrid via high speed train, it was a nice ride. Speeds reached 300kmh and it was very quiet and smooth the entire way. It’s a nice way to travel.

When we reached Madrid we happened to get a very talkative taxi driver who told us all about the celebration that was happening near our hotel this evening. The Atlético de Madrid futbol team was celebrating its championship in a large parade through town. Our hotel is right on the puerta de sol which happened to be the ending point for the parade. The players got off the bus and went up into a government building to show off the trophies to the crowd. It was really a cool experience. Everyone was singing the team song, cheering, etc. It reminded me of a Husker football game day back home.

The weather here is cold right now. Today it was about 50F with short bursts of rain and even a little hail. Hopefully tomorrow will be warmer with more sun. We also found our favorite European ice cream bars the “Magnum Bars”, they bring back great memories. I wish that you could get them in the USA.

Today I took a lot of video with the new camera which increased the file count and spaced used for today only to 185 files at 9.26GB for a total of 518 files at 14.9GB. WOW!

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Spain 2010 – Barcelona

W made it to Barcelona, Spain after only 7-8 hours of various delays in both Chicago and Zurich, Switzerland. The delays were mostly due with the volcanic ash clouds that are continuing to hamper air traffic across Europe. We got in to Barcelona at about 8pm on Tuesday and after being up for nearly 24 hours everyone was tired so we got a quick sandwich and called it a night.

Today we went and visited Sagrada Familia a very famous church that has been under construction for over 128 years and is not expected to be complete till 2026 if ever. It as was amazing even in its unfinished state. We also visited a very active open air food market and the Olympic site which held the summer games in 1992.

Expect more lightly processed photos along with blog updates as the trip continues as we are able to find time and an internet connection.