P52 Week 38: Red, White, and Blue...Not Black and Teal

A Happy birthday shout-out to my little sister Susan! Love her to pieces, and so proud of her.

Gave her a Birthday call yesterday, and she reminded me that she loves reading my blog, and then scolded me for my short posts as of late. 

Yours truly and little Sis

I know, I know…I’m a week behind. No excuse, but I had some personal matters to take care of last week, and have been way behind on sleep. So hopefully, things are settling down now, and I’ll be able to stay on top of things. 

Spoke too soon.

Pats were on til Midnight Last Night, and then I just HAD to watch the Breaking Bad finale til 1:30..Stupid me.  Hated myself today at work, for sure! When will I learn?

In Uniform, ready for the game

Speaking of football, Sue and I went to the Panthers/Giants game last week with a friend from work who has season tickets. Don’t worry, I’m not changing my colors to black and Teal, but I sure will root for anyone that can beat the Giants 38-0 and can sack Eli Manning 7 times. Great game! And it’s a plus having a stadium 6 miles from the house, and going to a game where it is not 5 below and snowing. I’m getting spoiled down here!

Here’s some shots from the game.

Skyline from Bank of America Stadium

What's more embarrassing?
Being a Giants fan?
Or having your buddy wear an all gold body suit?
You see all types at a Football game.

God Bless America

Pano view from the upper deck..
Not a bad seat in the house!

1 of many Extra Points

Apre Game at Duckworth's

Sue and I had a great time with our friend at the game. Thanks for inviting us Debbie!

What else have I been doing??? Processing and shipping out canvas prints to some top fans! “Spreading some smiles, 1 wall at a time”. Also, trying to find some time to redo the website. Smug Mug, where I host my site, has redone things to help make cooler looking sites. And that means, I need to change things up to take advantage of the new features.  So, there will be some great new stuff in the coming months.

Ok, photography stuff of the week..The latest book I've been reading is Time Lapse, by Dave Delnea. (Found here at Craft and Vision). I'm always trying to be a sponge and learn whatever I can in my craft.  Time lapse photography is the art of incorporating motion into a still scene by adding many exposures, taken at different intervals.  Kind of like a movie.  To do this, I'll need an INTERVALOMETER....That's a remote that allows you to trigger the camera at varying and multiple intervals. Didn't know what one was last week...Now, I've got one coming in the mail... :-) So I'll be doing some new experimenting in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Next week's post will have some shots from the Lyda Farmers Market in Hendersonville, and NC Arboretum in Asheville. Made the journey there to the Blue Ridge Mountain area this past weekend with the Charlotte Photographers Group. So y'all come back now and check it out!  

Have an awesome week.

Em

P52 Week 37: Oops I Did it Again...

Hello faithful reader. Many apologies for skipping last week. So gotta play catch-up.
Been a crazy couple of weeks at work. I've been spending more time leaning toward the left side of this picture than the right. Which is a good thing, since that side pays most of the bills.

While photography may have been a lower priority this week, I did manage to document a bit of my life.
I helped my buddy Dilip build some Golu or Kolu steps.

It is for the Hindu holiday Navratri. It was great getting the tools out of storage and creating that sweet, beautiful smell of sawdust. Nobody lost any fingers, but Dilip did learn how NOT to drill thru metal, and managed to lose a finger nail.

Watch out Dilip. That sucker is gonna spin

Attaboy!

And I also went to a team BBQ at my friend Ramesh's house. Good people, food, games, and Sue's famous Jello Shots.

Bet you folks back in NH miss those...

Oh Oh Oh!....Ask me abut my Balls....
What this about your balls?"
Funny you should ask...

So, Ramesh asked if I had any outdoor games for his BBQ. I said I had Bocce Balls, and I explained the game to him.

2 Points

When he was writing up the Evite, he forgot what they were called, and wrote "Come for BBQ, Badminton, Cornhole, and Emery's Fun Balls..."Luckily, someone corrected him, but I heard about it. What a hoot...he's so funny. Not one to let that slide, I brought my Fun Balls:

We had a blast. I work with a great team of folks which makes going to work, fun.

On a photography note, I did manage to squeeze some reading into my time, and finished a book by Andrew S. Gibson called "Slow'. It's about slow exposure techniques. A great read, which can be found here at Craft and Vision. Check it out!

That's all for now folks...Til next time...Stay awesome!
Em

P52 Week 36: This week in Pics

I had an awesome week last week. Made it to Friday in such a good mood. Not worn out and beaten down by a miserable job. But instead invigorated by great people and fresh opportunities and new challenges. My only conflict is loving technology again, which is digging into my photography time....So much fun, so little time. (Ok, maybe it also helped that it was a 4-day work week, and football started this weekend - GO PATS!)

Had a great visit last weekend with my daughter Taylor. She had to go back home Monday. It was a short but very sweet visit. Love you honey! Thanks for putting up with my camera...I have to practice portraits somewhere, right?

Taylor in Charlotte

So what else did I do this week? Went to a meeting of Concord Photographers Group. Always gets me re-inspired. This week we learned about historical photo websites. Very neat seeing scenes from way back when. Makes me want to make memorable pictures all the more. If you're interested, check out these three:

• Shorpy.com
• The Library Of Congress
• Metropolitan Museum

Please let me know of others you may know about.

Speaking of way back when, Sue and I went to the Metrolina Expo. Acres and Acres of antiques and collectibles.

Stolen Shot of a Trike

It was very nostalgic seeing toys back from when I was a kid, or things I know I had seen in my parent's and grandparent's houses. I would have had more pictures from the day, but I got warned by a proprietor that cameras are a no-no at things like this. Sue has told me that before too. I would have argued the point, but instead I spent more time enjoying what I saw instead of spending time taking pictures. Kind of like not having your camera when the perfect sunset comes out. Sometimes you just need to enjoy the moment yourself.

There were a few antique autos that I managed to get some shots of without being harassed:

It was a good expo. Spent about 2 1/2 hours there and only saw 1/2 of it. We'll go back next month I'm sure. I almost escaped unscathed. Kept trying to convince myself that "We're trying to simplify. We don't have room for more junk". Almost got out of the gate, but I saw a ball jar of marbles and HAD to buy it.. Oh well - they're small.

Jar O' Marbles

Lastly, in keeping with my sister-in-law's request to take pics from around my area, here are a couple I took while out on an evening bike ride. Totally unrelated except they are from around town:

Morrison Blvd. Office

South Park Spider

I'm trying to make arrangements with my office building's owner to get up on the roof and take pictures of the area. So hopefully in the near future, I'll have some less scary shots. (unless you're afraid of heights)..

6060 Piedmont Row - my Office

Well, there's this week in pics. Check out those historical photo links I provided. Good stuff!

Have a great one!

Em

www.EmerysIsland.com

P52 Week 35: Words from the Big Head

No, not me, but THIS big head:

MetalMorphosis

Gonna keep this short, as is slipped my mind that is was Monday. Been an awesome weekend. My daughter Taylor flew in from Austin for the long weekend, and blogging was the last thing on my mind.

We were busy. Dined out a lot, went to the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens, went bike riding uptown, shopped, and went to see the Big Head. It's a monstrous metal structure in the shape of a head where the different layers rotate independently. Taylor found this online ( I had no clue about it). Unfortunately it wasn't moving, but it was still cool. Check out a video here, if you are interested. Anyway, it was a short but sweet visit and was good for my soul.
---
EmerysIsland had the drawing last night for the free canvas print. It was won by Kathy DeStefano. Can't wait to hear which print she wants. I do love give-a-ways. I love sales too, but give-a-ways are a close second. You know I love to make people smile.

Orchids at DSBG

Have a great week!
Em