Sunset, Early March

I jumped in the car right before sunset yesterday to get some pics of Papago Park, on the east side of the valley. I felt like I missed more good shots than I got, but I got some purty ones.

It's been cool again the last few days, and last night Pam and I sat out on the balcony, sharing the ottoman between us, covered in my Welsh wool blanket. Lots of stars out, for an urban area of four million people.

Most of these shots I took using shutter priority - I decide how fast I want to shutter to open and close, and the camera will adjust the aperture and the ISO. It was low light, and I had the shutter set to 1/500th of a second, so the camera set the f-stop to 5.6 and the ISO to 800, so these are pretty grainy. I don't use the shutter priority setting very often, and didn't anticipate the high ISO and grain, and played with the color a lot to get something I liked.

Are you wondering how I got this pic? ;-)

This is an office building near my apartment. Pam and I walked by it the other day, on a walk through the neighborhood. I loved the color of the windows, and the style of architecture - which is...I don't know :)

So I came back here a couple of nights ago, just at sunset, and got a few good pics. This is looking roughly due North.

I had the vibration reduction on the lens turned off, accidentally, so only a few pics came out unblurred. Oops.

Serendipitous

Such a nice surprise in Austin this weekend: I was in town visiting my sister, and was taking pics of the Texas History Museum on MLK and Congress. While snapping, the circus/performance group Clan Tynker were setting up for a show that night. They graciously allowed me to take some pics.

The dancer is Serendipity, and my photos don't do justice to her dancing.

Austin is such a beautiful place. I lived there for ten years - went to school, got married, had a baby there too. So it was like homecoming. A friend and I closed a club or two Saturday night (electronic music), I spent time with my sister, enjoyed my niece's 18th birthday party, and drove round lots to see Austin.

Montreal

I love my job. I spent Thursday with folks who needed software training, then I had Friday and Saturday to hang out in Montreal before flying to New Jersey on Sunday.

The snaps were taken with my FinePix point and shoot. An inexpensive thing, and produces images to match, but it's got a pretty cool form factor, and I just didn't want to carry my Nikon for a week.
Also, from the first pic I got a warning that the battery was dying, so I took very few pics.
And I shot in black and white - or it's digital equivalent.

I really liked my time in Montreal. It's a big, beautiful, strange city. The picture with this post is of Silo No. 5. It stored lots of grain for export, back in the day (I don't know when that was exactly). So it represents Canada's glorious, industrial age past.

I stayed on the east side of the St. Lawrence (Fleuve Saint Laurent), just at the Pont Jacques Cartier. I spent a lot of time downtown, in the area around Mont-Royal/Rue Rachel and Boulevard Saint Laurent/Rue Saint Denis. I drove through lots of neighborhoods - Mont Royal, Outrement right by/through the University of Montreal, up (down?) along the river to the north right by the weird Olympic Stadium, down (up?) the river through some narrow curvy streets through tall squat beautiful government looking buildings where the sidewalks go right up against the building facade, up and down through the hilly neighborhood where McGill University is. I walked alot. I got soaked in the rain, and stuck in traffic. I spoke a few words of French. I bought souvenirs in a shop selling clothing from India and from vendors in the park by the angel statue. I watched a young girl being silly and laughing and her father pretending to be impatient with her. A shopkeeper told me how he saw a guy getting beat up and he drew attention to himself and away from the guy getting beat up - and then he got beat up himself.

Montreal felt good to me.

Newark was also nice. Or, I had a nice visit there. I saw how my company's product was being implemented, which I haven't seen much of, up close. I ate dinner in the city one night - Thai, on Meg's recommendation.

Have I bragged on Meg lately, btw?

Garden of the Gods

Taken last week, while I was in the area for a family reunion. My sweetheart was with me, and I brought my daughter over from Portland. Pam and Meg met for the first time, and Pam met my mom for the first time as well. All firsts for me too. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Garden of the Goddesses

Click. Here.

August sunset

From my balcony.