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iPhone and Instagram enabled picture.

I know I could shoot this much better if I had more time. Time it seems, is in short supply. How do you create with limited time on a daily basis? If I make it a full year surely there will be an improvement in my skills and composition. Right?

I cut the Venison loin into strips and lightly breaded with flour. I fried the strips for about 5-7 minutes for both sides and then added the vegetables. After about another 5 minutes I added the sauce. That I let run on medium heat for a final 5-7 minutes and served on a bed of rice.

The sauce was made from the following all mixed together before hand:

2 tablespoons Corn Starch
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper
1/2 cup Light Corn Syrup
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic

Added peanuts as an after thought. It was great with or without the nuts.

Yes, that right! Free iPad backgrounds for all my friends. This was a fun little project. Nothing like a little Rain-X and glass to create some really nice water beads. I struck them with the flash about about 45 degrees and set the aperture to F22. I don’t have a macro lens so I converted my F2.0 100m lens to a macro by inserting a lens extender between the lens and the body. This simultaneously shrank the focal length and lowered the depth of field. The results are pretty neat I think. They don’t even look real, but they are! Enjoy.

I love the hour glass with black sand that has been sitting on my desk since I started working here. I can’t believe it took me this long to take a picture of it. The trees outside my window and the gray sky made the perfect monochromatic backdrop for the picture. I used my iPhone 4 to take the shot. If I had my 5D I would have been able to capture the sand frozen in space.

This is a re-post from http://vimeo.com/32001208. Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011.

Shooting locations in order of appearance:

1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

Quite simply the best cafe in Bowling Green. Their sandwiches are wonderful. I can’t wait to go back and try a pizza. The Sunday brunch was excellent as well.

Maia Madison from David Scifres on Vimeo.

I got my 5D this Friday YEAH!!! I had been taken aback by my oldest daughters friend Maia Madison’s artistic ability on her Nintendo DS. The new camera, coupled with my desire to learn Adobe Premiere, led to this video. When Maia came over to visit, I could not resist the opportunity to try and capture the creative work she had done. Not bad for my first real video attempt.

As promised I took Anna and Sarah to Chicago for the weekend. We had a blast. We purchased a CityPass which got us in the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Art Institute, the SkyWalk at the top of Sears tower and the Science and Technology building (which we didn’t make it to). The hit of the trip as it turns out was Navy Pier as well as tea at the American Girl Doll store.

Critter2, originally uploaded by mdscifres.

A friend of mine and I went to the smokey pig for lunch Friday where we were accompanied by this little critter.

Testing out the share link from FLickr

Finally, I finished the 356 pages (and 756 pictures) of 2011 Adventure Book. Boy am I glad that is over! I pledge to do that progressively this year. Of course, I say that and I am practically in May already and I haven’t even uploaded pictures from 2011 to Flickr yet, let alone worked on the Blurb Booksmart book for 2011.

Jupiter will swing to within a mere 368 million miles of Earth on Monday night, making its closest pass in 47 years. The planet nears the Earth roughly every 12 years. This will be the closest the planet has come to Earth since 1963. It won’t be this close again until 2022. It can easily be seen with the naked eye at sunset in the east near the horizon, but a telescope affords an even better view. I managed to get this shot using my telescope and my iPhone.

You can clearly see the 4 Galilean moons in this shot. They are the largest of the many moons of Jupiter and derive their names from the lovers of Zeus: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They were discovered sometime between 1609 and 1610 when Galileo made improvements to his telescope, which enabled him to observe celestial bodies more distinctly than had ever been possible before.

Pictures from our summer trip to tube at Deep Creek North Carolina (Bryson City). We also mined rubies at the Sheffield Mine.

Click here —> Full Screen Slideshow of Deep Creek Adventure

Finally finished the 2009 Adventure book – (Preview Book). 470 Photos in 240 pages using BookSmart by blurb.com. This is the third year I have used blurb.com to produce our custom print on demand annual. A new feature of the application I really enjoyed this year is that you can now edit the fixed layouts and create your own new custom layouts. I didn’t use that feature as much as I would like to have done on this years book mainly because of the rush to get it out. I intended to do more customization going forward. If I can just discipline myself to build this thing each month vs. the entire thing at the end of the year.

Below are links to the 2008 and 2007 books.

“Pilgrims on The Ohio” was published in 1997 over a century after Ruben Twaites river trip and features a never before published personal collection of photographs taken on the journey in 1894. The book includes 74 photographs from the trip as well as his narrative descriptions of the images and page references to his journal. Also included are essays by Reid and Fuller discussing Thwaites’ life and the development and influence of the Kodak #2 in the history of photography.

Thwarts personal journal from the same trip is entitled: Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites. One of the things Thwaites does in his journal is describe the journey in context of what the early pioneers were experiencing. I am particularly interested in these photographs and his journal writings because my 4xGreat Grand father migrated from either Redding, Wheeling or Pittsburg on a flat boat (or raft) in 1798 (almost 100 years prior to Thwaites journey). I was hoping reading this text might give me some perspective into what it might have been like.

In the spring and summer of 1894, Reuben Gold Thwaites (noted American historian and Society Director), traveled with his family down the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, taking photos all the way. Thwaites’ photographs of the six-week trip offer a unique opportunity to take a glimpse into the gateway to the nation’s interior.

Thwaites used a #2 Kodak camera to take the circular black-and-white images. Thwaites was an early adopter of the Kodak #2 camera, purchasing one in 1891 to document his travels on a bicycle through England. This particular Kodak model, introduced in 1889, was one of the first cameras designed with the amateur in mind. It replaced the heavy, cumbersome glass plate with flexible film on a long roll. Photographers could shoot the entire roll and then send the camera into Kodak to have the film developed and prints made. It was from this generation of camera that Eastman Kodak coined the slogan, “You push the button, we do the rest.”

Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites (PDF)
Afloat on the Ohio by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Full Text and other versions)

Some of the photos below were taken in Cannelton, Bridgport and Owensboro, which are all near where my ancestors eventually settled some time around 1810. They first spent about 12 years in Bridgeport Kentucky area which is couple miles outside th of Frankfort.

I highly recommend camping at Standing Stone State Park. I  went with “The Cousins”  and Anna and Sarah two summers ago. This park was amazing and it was very close to  Burgess Falls and you could easily take a day trip there as well. Since this trip, I have foolishly sold my Lexus, purchased a truck and pop-up so we can camp more frequently.