AMPLIFIERS

Amplifiers are sturdy, heavy and definitely cool! The term "Workhorse" comes to mind. If I could play guitar, I would have a killer amp.

ALICE AT NIGHT OF JAZZ

Annual High School "Night of Jazz", with a wonderful dinner and good jazz.

SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD

The current weekly assignment at Digital Photography School is "Shallow Depth of Field". It's been snowing out all day, so I decided to shoot something inside. The cats food bowl with the bag in the background seemed like it might be a decent shot. When I moved the bowl to set up the shot, it scraped the floor and the cats woke from their naps thinking, it's a new day and time for breakfast.

Junior (pictured) would not be deterred, so I took the shot with him in it and I kind of like it.

PARK SWING

When I was a kid, the seats on this swing were wood boards. We would slide out of them and fly through the air, always trying to best our previous mark, or better yet beat the other kid's marks.

Barely a stones throw away from the swings there was a lake where we fished. The lake was next to a river and across the river was the town dump, where we spent countless hours breaking any glass items we could find and shooting rats with BB guns. The good old slightly dangerous days.

DClone90

Just because I've got a new toy with my Nikon D90 doesn't mean I've given up tinkering with vintage and toy cameras. I've figured out a way to basically put a digital back on these cameras. Just use a piece of ground glass, attach it to the film plane and open the lens and take a picture of the glass with the digital camera.

I will perfect this with a tube later this Spring when it's warm enough to work comfortably in the garage. A black tube connecting the digital camera to the film camera will cut out stray light and should render an image faithful to what the lens (in this case a Diana Clone) projects to the film plane. It worked quite well in these first experiments.

Diana and Holga with digital backs and image stabilization, plus instant image gratification sounds like fun to me.

FARM COUNTRY

Nature's beauty, like blessings from God or answers to prayers are often hidden in plain sight.

DEER & CARS

At an insurance company this would have been assigned a claim number and someone's deductible was possibly met and the auto was probably fixed.

AMERICAN SLIDE AGAIN

Days with low humidity would provide a trip down this slide fast enough to prevent one from ever sticking a landing.

AMERICAN SLIDE

This is a slide a kid could get hurt on. A rite of passage for thousands of kids. It is steep, high and has a step halfway up that wiggles when stepped on. It was this way fifty years ago and it hasn't changed.

When you could hustle up, slide down and run around and do it again you knew you were no longer a little kid.

SPRING'S PROMISE

It's been feeling a lot like Spring lately with temperatures in the 60-70 degree range, and if you look closely there are many visible signs as well. It is a most welcome change.

A MIGHTY GOOD ROAD

When I was a kid this was the "Rock Island Railroad" line. Hobos passing through would come to our house and my Mom would always give them something to eat. They knew where the sympathetic homes were. I don't know how long it's been since I've seen a hobo riding in an open boxcar.

FROZEN POND MIST & THREE CATTAILS

It got very windy and the temperature plummeted overnight, from above freezing to nine degrees. The entire south shore was covered with ice encrusted weeds.

I never seem to notice when cattails disappear. The old ones stand all winter, then before you know it, they're new again.

YESTERDAY'S MUDDY WATER

Yesterday the wind blew ripples across the water.

OLD FAITHFUL

Standing by EverReady, you wouldn't think of them as off-road vehicles but the grain trucks spend a lot of time in the fields.

OPEN 24/7

The door has been open season after season, wet, dry, hot and cold. Weathered indeed!

SUNSET IN MARCH

Fence posts and weeds. Plentiful here in Iowa and some of my favorite things to photograph.

IOWA BARN

I drive by this barn every day. I always think I should stop and photograph it before it's gone.

CORN CRIB SILHOUETTE