Thursday, September 22, 2005 at 5:17 AM | 0 comments  
Christy and I just returned from visiting my parents in Mesquite Nevada. While we were there we visited a few monuments; Zion National Park, Byrce Canyon and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If you're into hiking, then these places are perfect for you. My only regret was not having a higher calibur digital camera. But alas - regrets are for the dying. On the last day we visited Las Vegas. I'll have more commentary and other photos at the Camera Phone Gallery about Vegas, and other trip happenings.

While most of my photos are private, I do have a few compilations that I thought would be of interest.

"Freemont Street 2005"
On our last night, I roamed the old downtown, a.k.a. Freemont Street. It has a certain charm that the main strip lacks. I wanted to photograph the signage. Eventually I'll do more with these images, but for now I'll share what I have.



"North Rim, Grand Canyon 2005"
One of the highlights for me was to visit the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I've seen the west rim, and there is a stark contrast. While the west rim is dead and barren, and a spectacular display of scarred landscape, the north rim is full of life, very green and far more full of life. For this assembly I took about 20 or so photos and used Photoshop CS2's photomerge feature. It does a pretty good inital job, but I needed to touch it up. Doesn't beat a good panoramic camera, but it's what I had, and it's what I did.



-B
Posted by Ben
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 3:25 PM | 0 comments  
Christy and I went to Nevada to visit my parents in September. They live in Mesquite Nevada, a little over a hour east of Las Vegas, right next to the Arizona border. It was great to see them, and I love the desert scenery. It always seems like alien landscape, as if we're on Mars, compared to lush are ever green (when we're not covered in snow) NY state. The hot days are wonderful without the humidity we're used to. Makes a 99 degree day very bearable.

One of the days my parents drove us to a shooting range that a friend of theirs, Mike, works at. It was an amazing sporting range, wide open on any side for miles, set into a canyon floor. While there I got a chance to shoot Skeet and Trap. Up till that moment I never shot a gun a moving target, so I was sure to do miserably. But I quickly got used to the action part of the sport, and before long I was nailing those quick buzzing clay pigeons. In my first round I hit 17 out of 20 targets. In my second go around I scored an 18 out 20. Not bad, but I was trained on Doom, Unreal, and Counterstrike - who says games rot your brain. I've been subtly trained over all these vast years to be a marksman.



Clickable thumbnails;





I'm envious of Mike's pistol collection, this is but a small sample;




Oh yeah, Vegas and the Grand Canyon were cool too. I made some pretty pictures from those trips.

-B
Posted by Ben
Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 4:45 PM | 0 comments  
So we have a big house, some have said way too big for just two people. We don't care. Christy and I bust our asses and we enjoy coming home and having sanctuary. Even though the village of Holley apparently enjoys screwing home owners - we persist. But every bogus tax increase gnaws at us little by little every time.

Our house is 93% complete, and solid. The previous owners were contractors, and rebuilt the house after a major fire about 15 years ago. In fact portions on the attic still have exposed scorched wood, like scars.

If your following along, we haven't had to do much work on the house. I'm and lazy ass artist, computer freak, paint monkey and Christy is a graphic designer, homemaker kinda gal. We ain't carpenters. So, thankfully not much has needed repair.

But, and I say...BUT...

The porch roof sprung a leak. And as I explored the damage I realized the damage was more than just a freak happening. It's been building up over the course of a few years. The damage extends from the ceiling/roof of the porch, to the base of our tower, and up around the window directly above. The culprit, other than some half-assed flashing, was where the roof meets the tower. Water hits that corner from a super steep roof, slams the corner and pours down blasting the window frame. From there water gets backed up, and eventually pools and finds it's way into areas it shouldn't go.

Insurance co. says it's not covered. I say Insurance co. is full of shit. I also say that our lawyer needs to review our policy. But that's a gripe for another day.

Clickable thumbnails;



-B
Posted by Ben
Wednesday, September 07, 2005 at 10:46 PM | 0 comments  
I've always been a big fan of fantasy films. Dragons, Knights, Wizards - it's all good. Excalibur is one of the earliest films I remember watching. It always stuck in my head. While digging through a Best Buy bargain bin, I found the DVD version, at $5 I couldn't resist. Watching it again after all these years was amusing. Funny how the world seemed bigger back then. I took screen captures of the movie as reference to create another love of mine - movie posters. Presented here is the sketch for the poster, as well as the beginning stages of Guinevere's paint. I'm not sure if I like it thus far...Time will tell. I'm doing this one out of pure nostalgia, so who knows when it'll get done.

Clickable thumbnails;


-B
Posted by Ben
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