Rockwood, Tennessee

These are a couple of my 35mm slides from the old days.

The upper photo is of my Father in Law raking and burning leaves at his mother's house in Rockwood, Tennessee. It's in east Tennessee between Chattanooga and Knoxville. Her house is a pretty little house on a hill. Of course, more often than not, you're put to work when you go there.

The bottom one is of anntenae on top of a mountain overlooking Rockwood. There's a small park and also a fire tower up there and is a wonderful place to go see the sunrise. This is therefore another rare bit of proof that I've gotten up and out before sunrise.

Hastily Gathered Photos Post

Woops. I ususally figure out the day before which photos I'd like to post. Looks like I was slacking in that department on yesterday evening. Oh well, here goes.


These were taken at Sebastian Inlet State Park, Florida.

The top one is a nice, large jetty sticking out in to the Atlantic on the north side of the inlet to help keep it clear.

The bottom one is pretty self explanatory. A beautiful day AND waves big enough to surf on, if just barely.

Black And White #6

These two photographs were also taken when we were sitting on the Melbourne Causeway and waiting on the Space Shuttle Atlantis to launch.

This family was enjoying some leisurely fishing, and their hard shadows in the intense sun begged to be a black and white photo.

I added the second one to show you how intense the sun was last Friday. The way it overpowers this photo was just how it felt to try to see the shuttle launch which happened about 90 degrees to the right. Most everyone had a hand up to block the light from the left. Sunglasses only helped marginally.

It was a beautiful day and a spectacular launch despite the sun's trying to upstage the shuttle.

Magical Sky

Friday evening after leaving the Shuttle launch, Lovely Wife and I went to Barnes And Noble and looked around. We bought a few books (and Lovely Wife a Starbucks coffee) and then headed out into the parking lot to get our car and go home.

This was what the sky above looked like. And since I still had my camera with me, I steadied it with my arms braced on top of the car and took a few shots.

Nikon's vibration reduction feature helped out quite a bit too, because most of these were shot between 1/10 and 1/30 of a second.

The sun had been set for a while, but these clouds were high enough to still catch the light of the sun way out of our view. We stood and watched until the sun set for the clouds too. It was beautiful and as interesting as watching the Shuttle lift off.

We got a two-fer Friday evening!

Shots On Sunday

I don't drink al-kee-hol, so I'll give y'all a different kind of shots.

Here's a couple more from the Space Shuttle Atlantis liftoff this past Friday evening.

This first shot was the plume of smoke from all the lifting engines to get the shuttle into orbit, taken after Atlantis was out of sight.

As I worked on the above photo, I realized there was a speck on the lower left side of it, so I enlarged to see if it was a plane. It was a sea gull. Cool. This is an enlarged section of the above photo.

In this final shot, I widened the zoom to 18mm (27mm in 35mm film thinking), and when you enlarge it, look in the center of the photograph, low in the sky above the island, you can see the light of Atlantis's engines.


Have a great Sunday, folks.

Shuttle Atlantis Takes Off Friday Evening

At about 7pm, Lovely Wife and I left the house to try to go to the Melbourne Causeway to watch the Space Shuttle lift off. Hopefully.

I had my trusty camera with me:
This is a crop of one of my shots to show Atlantis better.

I had to blow this next one up about a billion, squillion times.

We live something like 30 or 40 miles south of Kennedy Space Center, but even though the shuttle is small from this far away, it's incredibly impressive anyway.

We parked on a good spot, looking north up the Indian River Lagoon, and waited.

We got out of the car at 7:25pm, and leaned on the bridge's guard rail and waited.

At 7:38, right on time, Atlantis lifted off.

In about 3 minutes or so, the thing was out of sight, having shed the two solid boosters.

You can see the light of the flames of the shuttle's engines for a bit longer, but they soon disappear.

We left, and headed up the road, and on the radio, they announced that the shuttle was in orbit, was 120 miles up, and doing great.

At this point, we were less than two miles from where we watched the liftoff. It takes eight and a half minutes to reach orbit. Amazing.

To see the shuttle do it's thing never gets old.

The morning rains and bad weather had my back freaking out and I ate pain pills like House all day, but it was still productive, and ended beautifully with the successful shuttle launch and an amazing sky just before it finally got dark.

And one of the coolest parts was that just after the shuttle had disappeared from sight, the sound finally made it to Melbourne and the rumble was startling, even this far away. I don't worship men, but they sure can do some amazing things sometimes.

Poodles Driving A Car

The top photo of the poodles in the convertible was taken in the store that had Betty Boop out front in yesterday's photos. We have poodles and Lovley Wife had a fit over this. I love our little yappers and can't wait to see them at the end of the day. They greet me like my daughters did when they were little. So, no anti-poodle bigotry in the comments, ya hear? This guy does NOT think that poodles are for wimps. (Just kidding. I actually love to see the look on people's faces when they see a guy my size holding a 6lb ball of white fur with black eyes.)

The bottom photo is just a photo looking down New Haven Avenue in downtown Melbourne, Florida. There's a shop there on the left, with the chalk board out front, that makes soap in the store itself, and the smell is almost as good as walking past a restaurant. You can visit it on the internet at indianriversoap.com, though due to technical difficulties, you won't be able to smell the store. Sorry.

I tried and tried and couldn't find any html commands to deliver scent to you.