June 9, 2010 by brian.

April made for a great time to visit Amicalola Falls.  The web pages are ready, and in addition to them, a slide show you may view is available.  If you click on the link, it may open in your browser but may not automatically play.  I suggest that you right-click on the link and select Download, to place it on your PC.  After the download completes, double-click on the file and it should play in full screen mode.  After you give your permission for the file to play in full scree, the slide show will begin.

The web pages are done and available here.

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April 5, 2010 by brian.

About 2 weeks ago, a group of us flew from Atlanta to Rome, Italy.  We left on Wednesday, arrived on Thursday, and rode 2 trains to Sorrento, Italy where we stayed for 3 nights.  Day 1 is the trip and arrival in Sorrento.  For day 2, we hopped on a ferry to the island of Capri, where we took a smaller boat to the blue grotto.  It was very cool.  The dark cave and the glowing blue water made capturing photographs difficult.  Upon our return to port, we rode the funicular up the mountain, enjoyed what Capri had to offer, and then returned to Sorrento on the ferry.  Traveling to Pompeii on day 3 by train, we strolled through the city while listening to a Rick Steves audio tour.  I am in the process of creating a web gallery for the remaining days.  Stay tuned for further developments …

Day 3 lead us to Pompeii.  We saw a market area with depictions of what vendors would be selling there,  castings of people caught in the ash, cafe areas, a brothel with more depictions of services available, and a bakery.  Back in Sorrento as we walked through the streets with vendors we saw a couple of them selling tomatoes (without the smooth outsides) and very large lemons that are used to make limoncello (a liqueur).  We also wound up having a lemon cake dessert with frosting almost daily.  It became affectionately known as a ‘lemon boob’.

Our return to Rome on day 4 was by ferry instead of by train.  After checking in at the hotel, we walked around to see some of the sites.  One of them was Trevi Fountain, where I captured a few photographs, with my Olympus point and shoot camera, for a panorama .  Another was the Spanish Steps, which also had a fountain.  All of the walking left us parched so we stopped for refreshment, which is where I saw an older MINI. We went to an area that had restaurants around a plaza and in the plaza were vendors with items for sale, like paintings.  As night approached our travels lead us to the Pantheon, where we spent a little while before retiring for the night.

I added two panoramas from Pompeii that were captured with my DSLR.  The first one is near the center meeting area and shows Vesuvius in the background.  The second one is a view from just outside of the area that you have to pay to enter.

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March 4, 2010 by brian.

The orchids are in full bloom at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  “Towers of Flowers Feb 6 - Apr 11” is the name of the event this year, and they certainly did have towers of orchids!  I highly recommend making time for a visit.  If you don’t get there, you may still enjoy some of the flowers I captured by clicking here.

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February 17, 2010 by brian.

On Saturday, I went out in the morning to capture what the storm left behind.  The snow stopped somewhere around midnight.  Some of the photos are here.

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February 12, 2010 by brian.

The forecasters were correct about the snow.  They only missed the start time by a few hours originally stating it would start around 9 AM when it really started snowing here around 1:30 PM.  I snapped a few photographs which are available here.

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August 5, 2009 by brian.

Last week I went on a trip to Greece with friends.  We flew to Athens, Greece on Tuesday, overnight, arriving on Wednesday.  After we checked in at the hotel, we made our way to ruins which were visible from the hotel.  That made for a long day, so after dinner we eventually made our way to the hotel intent on getting a good night’s sleep before we took a ferry the next day to Naxos.  You may view photographs from the first day here.

On Day 2, we checked out of the hotel and rode a train to the docks where we boarded the ferry to Naxos.  On arriving there, we were picked up and driven to the B&B.  Lunch (and working off lunch) was the next order of business.  The dock area had a nice place to watch the sunset, although it was a tad breezy. The photographs for day 2 are now here.

Day 3 started with breakfast at our B&B followed by a walk into town to rent scooters.  Once we rented the scooters and started across the island, I kept thinking about the brown landscape before us.  We did come across green patches, but I mostly remember the brown grass.  After dropping off the scooters and walking back to the dock area,we found a rooftop to watch the sunset.  Day 3 photographs are here.

On Saturday, Day 4, we checked out of our B&B and were transported to the dock to catch the ferry to Santorini.  The web page of photographs is not yet ready, but I did manage to make a group of photographs into couple of panoramas.  Click on each photograph below for a new window or tab with the full size photograph.  When it appears, you may have to move your mouse over the photograph and click on it to enlarge it to full size.  The first one is a view from the back of the B&B.  The second one is a view from the dock looking back towards the town.

The web page with photographs from Day 4 is now up.  You will find them here.  In other news, I recreated the 3 other days. The single images are larger.

Day 5 was a full day on Santorini.  I was up almost early so I walked around taking photographs of the surrounding area.  It turns out we were under the flight path for flights taking off from the airport.  Later in the morning we were on our way to Fira, one of the larger towns.  From there it was on a bus for a couple of stops.  We got off and walked back to Fira.  In Fira again, we took a bus to Oia, which was known for the sunsets.  After walking around Oia for a while, we found a restaurant where we’d be able to watch the sunset.  The evening colors made for some wonderful photographs.  Have a look here for all of these photographs.

We spent most of Day 6 on Santorini.  Our first stop was a winery where we took a tour and then sampled their 3 wines; 2 whites and a reddish dessert wine.  The dessert wine was pretty tasty and definitely sweet.  We next intended to take a bus to Fira to eat at a recommended restaurant, however finding the bus was quite a different matter.  Apparently no matter which side of the road the bus stop is on, it serves both sides of the road.  Who knew?  After we had lunch in Fira we hopped a bus to the town closest to our hotel.  After the bus dropped us off, we checked out a little grocery store, just because we could.  From there we walked along the black sand beach until we reached the bar / restaurant close to the hotel.  One last beverage before we were taken to the airport for the flight back to Athens.  Day 6 photographs are here.

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April 23, 2009 by brian.

When Bruce and Carol came down here to Atlanta for a visit at the beginning of April, we managed a visit to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens on the last day of the Orchid and Glass exhibit.  The next time I go, I plan to take my tripod to capture better photographs.  Have a look here for some of the ones I captured during this visit.  The Gardens are definitely worth spending some time there.  If you click on the above photograph, you will see the full size version of it.

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February 23, 2009 by brian.

While I was in New Jersey with Courtney and Regan, Courtney thought it would be a good chance to go to New York City to show Regan some of the sights.  Her cousin, Bridget,went with us and showed us which trains to use to get there and back, as well as guiding us around NYC.

We parked a few blocks from mom’s house, took a train to Secaucus, another one into New York, walked to Grand Central Station and Times Square, took a subway back to Penn Station, and boarded our train back to New Jersey.  The photos, using my trusty point and shoot, are here.  You will see the Empire State building, the girls approaching Grand Central Station, inside Grand Central, Times Square, the return trip showing Giants stadium and the start of the new stadium, and shots from the window on the plane back to Atlanta.

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January 11, 2009 by brian.

For the first weekend of the new year, I decided to visit the zoo in Atlanta.  It was a little overcast with sometimes rain and sometimes sprinkles making for an interesting photographic challenge.  All I had for support was my monopod which definitely helped, but the tripod would have been much better.  I managed to see the pandas, a couple of fuzzy pigs, and a giraffe taking cover from the rain.  The silverback area was excellent.  A couple of the youngsters were at the window while an adult has his back to the window most of the time.  Click here for the photographs on the web page.

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January 11, 2009 by brian.

A few weeks have passed since I put up the previous post about the fog in Hapeville.  I thought I should get the web page together with photographs from the first night I went out.  This was the day after Christmas and the town was all lit up.  The fog provided some excellent lighting conditions.  Here is the web page with those photographs.

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