Photography

Sunset On Hilton Head…

Parris Island,Beaufort,Hilton Head 479.jpgI really liked this shot. The only bad part about trying to catch a sunset when you are on the east coast is that you are facing the wrong direction to get the full impact of the sun going down. There was a bit of rain moving in and the air was great. The first couple of days that I was out of town was extremely hot in Beaufort but once I got to Bluffton and Hilton Head on Saturday it had started to cool down quite a bit.

It’s really pleasant at home now. I have the windows open to let the breeze in and haven’t needed the air conditioning at all, which is a huge change from what it was here before I left town last week.

South Carolina

Here’s a couple of photos I took while in Beaufort and Parris Island…

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That first one is just a tree (duh) full of Spanish Moss right outside the All Weather Training Facility on Parris Island.

Family Day - Parris Island 237.jpgThis was shot while leaving Parris Island on Thursday. Quite a bit of the area around the barrier islands in South Carolina is marsh and swamp. Looks like there was some kind of picnic area. If I had not been on such a tight schedule (and with kids) I would have stopped at several of these and taken a bunch more photographs.

Parris Island,Beaufort,Hilton Head 312.jpgThis is a shot of the Bay in Beaufort from the waterfront area. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, after Labor Day it seems to turn into a ghost town and we had the entire area pretty much to ourselves.

The Girls

A couple of pictures I took of the girls on Family Day on Parris Island.

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Both of these were taken in front of the Douglas Visitor’s Center.

There’s No Place Like Home…

She was damn sure right about that one. Would that I could tap my heels together three times and be there. We ARE home now. Rental car is unloaded, clothes are washing and coffee is making by god. It didn’t take too terribly long to clean up after the feline-type critters either, although the must have finished the food yesterday or this morning. Most of them were pretty darned hungry, although a couple of them just wanted to get the hell out.

I’m in the process of pulling pics from my SD card right now. 517, of which there are probably 5 good ones I am sure. Somewhere around 250 the first day so all told I took 750 photos in three and a half days. The way I figure it is that if I shoot enough there are bound to be some really good ones and then I will end up deleting at least 15% of them as crap.

Here’s one from the graduation…

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My boy is in the family (row) to the right of the Senior Drill Instructor, just behind his left shoulder. Can’t see him in this photo of course, but I know he’s there.

Took this one shortly after graduation…

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It’s one of my favorite shots right now…

Parris Island,Beaufort,Hilton Head 281.jpgI took this last one Friday night. This is the waterfront in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Parris Island,Beaufort,Hilton Head 310.jpgIt was really strange. I know that it’s after Labor Day and most of the seaside town slow down but it was really slow down there for a Friday evening. There just wasn’t a whole lot going on.

Watch This…

…is usually the last thing you hear before a redneck hurts himself doing something stupid. Believe me, I know from personal experience. In this case though I did want you to check it out. I wrote a review on a piece of software at another site this morning and did this with it…

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That’s no mean feat for me. I can hack around in Photoshop a little bit but I have never been able to make animated gifs or anything cool like that. I can think of several different bloggers that I may just have to morph… >:

Portrait Painters

I am not a huge art critic by any means. My idea of fine art is a couple of Norman Rockwell prints, some posters from the Shakespeare festival and an oil painting of my kids. In my living there hangs the aforementioned Shakespeare Festival Poster (framed of course), a picture of Buddha from some art show and a framed photograph of a swamp scene with a dock and a boathouse. It’s actually a pretty cool picture. What I don’t have are any paintings of the family. We do have plenty of photographs of the kids that hang on the wall in the stairway but nothing large in the living room yet. It’s not even the money. It’s more a matter of time and getting everyone to sit down at the same time in the same place.

Paint Your Life is a company that will take your photographs and turn them into 100% hand-painted portrait. The paintings are all done by portrait painters that are skilled in wedding portraits, child and pets portraits as well. You can have your photograph turned into an oil painting, watercolor portrait, charcoal drawing or pencil sketch and it’s very affordable as well. Paintings start at $99 and the charcoal and pencil sketches start at $69.

All of the portraits are painted by artists and are not prints or computer generated. They can also combine more than one photo into a painting. Say you have three separate pictures of your children that you like and want them together…They can do that. Check out this example…


Even more so than getting a picture of my kids it sure would be nice if I could get an oil painting of my parents and give it to them for Christmas. If you want to see what some of their customers have to say, head on over to the customer testimonials and take a gander at what they have to say. Both of my Aunt’s are professional artists and painters and the paintings that I have seen are as good as anything that I have seen them do.

Wallhogs Previews

I received my proofs from Wallhogs via email today. They look like they are going to kick ass. I think once I have approved them (I have already) they print them out and it takes about three days or so. I guess if I went over there and looked I could tell for sure, but that sounds right.

The original post I did is down the page a bit, here they are with the background removed. I have done that stuff in Photoshop before and it is extremely tedious to get right. This is going to be pretty cool.

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I think I am going to stick them on the bathroom wall so I can think about them while I am taking a dump.


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Small Miracles

When Pete was born in October of 1997 it was a real shocker. Not that she was born, but all that we had to go through.

We had gone in to the doctor’s office to get the wife an ultrasound, and they noticed some weird stuff on it, so wanted us to go down to Northside and have one there. Originally we had planned on birthing with a midwife in Carrollton rather than being in a big hospital.

We got down there and they wanted to do an internal ultrasound. Apparently there was way too much fluid. Long story short, it broke her water. The wife ended up giving birth the Pete at Northside hospital, and apparently things weren’t looking too good. For awhile they weren’t even sure that she was going to live or not. It was all pretty damned scary.

Some of the details are pretty fuzzy now, but that could be that I just woke up too. I may add to this when I get home from work this evening. My wife has posted about tthis before and probably remembers much more.

Anyway, They decided that the thing to do was move her to Scottish Rite, which is across the street from Northside. Had the wife’s water not broken at Northside Hospital and given birth to my daughter there, if they had moved her at all, it would have been to send her down to Columbus. It is extremely unlikely that she would have lived at all.

If I remember correctly, the surgery itself too somewhere around eight hours. We were on pins and needles all day. I don’t remember ever having been so scared or worried at any point prior or since then.

A portion of her small intestine had never opened up, so everything was trying to go back the other way. She was full of myconium. They ended up taking out about ten centimeters of it, and they moved some stuff around that was in the wrong place.

She ended up being in Scottish rite in the ICU for 40 days or so. When we brought her home, it was still on monitors. We had to feed her every couple of hours, as the amounts she was getting were so small. She still had tubes and whatnot hanging out of her when we brought her home as well. It is just amazing to me that she is living a normal healthy life.

In 1998

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This is her at one or so.

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With her NEW little sister (at that time)

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Halloween 2002

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2006 Softball Season. She is playing again this year. Practice has already started but I think we have a couple of weeks before the first game.

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The Scurvy Dogs!

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Arrr…the zombie madness is upon me

Avast! Too much precious time spent leeward at SWG has turned me into a scurvy zombie. The bastards.

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Hilton Head

Stephanie and the girls got home yesterday afternoon. They took a few pictures. I like this one.

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There is a pretty cool playground in Harbour Town that we have taken the kids to several times. I think that they took this one there.


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