blackfly

200mm f5.6 1/160s ISO250

csi blowfly

The name green bottle fly (or greenbottle fly) is applied to numerous species of blowfly.  These flies are found in most areas of the world, and the most well-known species is the common greenbottle.  The maggots of this fly are known to preferentially consume dead tissue while leaving live tissue intact, and so have been sold for use in maggot therapy, primarily during the years before the widespread use of antibiotics and medicines and in modern times due to a resurgence of medical literature documenting their effectiveness. These flies are known to lay eggs in cadaver tissue in the wild within hours after death. The developmental stage of their larvae in the cadaver can be used to accurately predict the time death occurred.

HOUND DOGS UPDATED WITH COMMENTARY.

b r o o k l o v e

I love to fish.  I do it for fun. It is relaxing, peaceful and rejuvenates me.  It feeds me.  I love to trout fish in the mountains of North Carolina.  I love scooping up bluegills in a South Carolina pond.  I scoring smallmouth in Maryland and hooking up with a largemouth bass anywhere.  I've caught hundreds of hundreds of fish in my life.  I can start at 0600 with a bottle of weater and a granola bar and be on the water for 12 hours easy, maybe 15 is they are biting.

I kept a few trout early this season in NC and MD, cleaning and grilling them for dinner.  But for the most part I practice a good policy of catch and release.  I am pretty dang good at setting a hook into the edge of a fish lip.  I remove them as carefully as possible an treat each and every fish with care and respect.  It may sound corny... but it is very true.  I take photos of many of the fish to commenorate the catch.  Then I release the fish gently back into the hole from whence it came.  It is a beautiful thing and I love it.

dusk cometh

80mm f5.6 1/320s ISO100

Approximately 350,000 people are employed in some aspect of agriculture, making it the largest commercial industry in Maryland. Agriculture also remains the largest single land use in the State, with 2.05 million acres, or roughly 32 percent of total land area used for farming in 2008. The majority of Maryland's farmland is located in the north central part of the State and the upper Eastern Shore. In 2008, some 12,850 Maryland farms averaged 160 acres each.

In 2008, corn for grain averaged 121 bushels per acre. From 400,000 acres, 48.4 million bushels of corn were harvested. The soybean yield, in 2008, averaged 30 bushels per acre, with a total production of 14.5 million bushels. Winter wheat increased to 73 bushels per acre, with 13.1 million bushels harvested. Barley increased to 90 bushels per acre, totalling 3.1 million bushels.

(oh yeah... barley- the new supergrain haha)

the main grain

28mm f5.6 1/500s ISO100

New strain of giant grains in Maryland developed and cultivated to feed thousands and cure world hunger...

hound dogs

28mm f2.8 1/10s ISO200

retroactivecommentary

How come ELVIS doesn't get any comments?

haha- ok here is the deal.  This is my blog for my photography and I get to post what appeals to me.  Most times I am posting "something from my eye to yours" that has art flair or common appeal to the masses.  Hopefully some cross section of viewers will appreciate my flowers, mountains, coastlines, cityscapes and the sublime.  Maybe I do a good job of posting a little something for everybody from day to day.  Some days you love... some days you don't.

Okay... so back to ELVIS.  These figures are exactly the ones you see in small collections grouped together in antiques stores.  Some people never notice them at all.  Others are desparately looking for a "Silver Series: 1976 Bicentennial Commemerative Memphis Special Blue Suede King Artist Edition" Elvis Presley figure.  I am neither.  I notice these figurines with a photographers interest only.  The real pleasure in it for me is that it is a special passtime... for my daughter and me. 

We enjoy walking around antique stores with our cameras.  We share this and bond.  We talk over techniques, camera settings, perspective, color, lighting... you get the picture (and so do we).  Sometimes we are side by side and others she takes her camera and does her thing.  Then we get to look over photos together that evening.  When we do this we rip through some 700+ frames together.  It is a blast for us.  It is a proud pleasure for me.  I love seeing her artistic interpretation of my novice photo lessons.  She learns so fast and takes what I share and spins it into some new angle I hadn't thought of. 

These Elvis' figures...  10 minutes apart from one another... we took the same photograph.  I shot Elvis and then she unknowingly took the same shot.  We didn't know it until we gandered later that night.  The antique shop photographs are usually not "art" for everybody to enjoy.  To me... this is not a snapshot of the "hound dog." They are a piece of me and my shared experiences with my daughter.  I love her the WORLD.

as photographed by Madison Sparks

dew roseta

125mm f5.6 1/160s ISO250

I stepped outside with my morning cup of joe... and there she was calling.  I answered.

toofbroosh

28mm f2.8 1/80s ISO100

fun with foto.

Washington Monument Facts

The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches (169.294 m).^{[n 1]} There are taller monumental columns, but they are neither all stone nor true obelisks.^{[n 2]} It is also the tallest structure in Washington D.C.. It was designed by Robert Mills, an architect of the 1840s. The actual construction of the monument began in 1848 but was not completed until 1884, almost 30 years after the architect's death. This hiatus in construction happened because of co-option by the Know Nothing party, a lack of funds, and the intervention of the American Civil War. A difference in shading of the marble, visible approximately 150 feet(46 m or 27%) up, shows where construction was halted for a number of years. 

CAN YOU SPOT THE FIVE SIGNIFICANT "PLACES" IN THIS PHOTO?

1200 Pennsylvania

65mm f5.0 1/60s ISO1200

The Ariel Rios Federal Building is located in the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C., across 12th Street from the Old Post Office, which the new building was designed to replace. The New Post Office, as the Rios Building was originally known, housed the headquarters of the Post Office Department until that department was replaced by the United States Postal Service in 1971. The building, which now houses the headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was renamed on February 5, 1985, in honor of Ariel Rios, an undercover special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was killed in the line of duty on December 2, 1982.  

Currently, the Ariel Rios Building is badly in need of renovations. Many of the windows are original single paned with hollow frames, allowing air and heat to bleed out. Similarly, the original plumbing from the 1930s contains lead and signs in the bathrooms of EPA Headquarters warn that the water is for external use only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Rios_Federal_Building

arrow

470mm f7.1 1/500s ISO800

I shot this from a 19 floor building roof onto a 3 story parking platform.  I suppose that is roughly 160 feet.  It's a bird's eye view that offered a different perspective to an everyday site.  Create your composition.  Write your draft.  Stroke your canvas.  Define your own art.

structure

470mm f7.1 1/400s ISO125

"Four-Sided Pyramid" by Sol LeWitt

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

http://www.nga.gov/feature/sculpturegarden/sculpture/sculpture10.shtm

BPC: Weathered- "orneight"

125mm f8.0 1125s ISO100
Oxidized and pocked with 50+ years of exposure and environmental beat down.  Weathered and worn translated to well experienced. Been there done that.  This relic Ford emblem has been through decades of life.  Now sent to retirement in pasture...  it watches on.

petals VI

125mm f5.6 1/125s ISO3200

a series... to be continued...