It was a weekend full of "This Old House." This weekend the family took a trip up to Pittsburgh to visit some friends on Saturday. They are nearing the completion of renovating a 120 year old Victorian home. Then early on Sunday morning we drove down to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water.


Falling Water is a vacation home that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the '30's for the Kaufmann family. The design shows Wright's plan to integrate the home with the natural surroundings. There are also many Asian inspired influences in the design that I liked.






Every room in the house had prominent views to the outside and large terraces. The rooms were small and the design forces you out into the open areas outside.




What I liked most about the design was the eclectic nature and influences you found throughout the location. There was a mix of Southwestern adobe in addition to the Asian influences in the interior design and architecture.




At the conclusion of the tour you have a chance to walk the trails and photograph the iconic views of the location. By the time I got to this spot the sun was already high in the sky. I recommend photographing this spot before the start of the tour while the light is more even.


The Fall foliage was starting to show in the trees and in a couple of weeks you would be able to get peak fall shots in this location. It was a nice weekend get-a-way and a great start to the fall photographic season.

We traveled up to New Hampshire for a long 4th of July weekend this year. Our goal was to spend some quality time with our good friends and family. However, I was able to make a couple of quick trip for some photographic outings. Our first stop was Friendly Farms. This rooster was a cooperative subject.



We also made a quick day trip to the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. Saint-Gaudens was a sculptor an artist that designed many statues and was also responsible for the design of many of the early gold coins used in the early 1900s. Shown below is a bust of William Tecumseh Sherman who was a General in the Civil War.



One afternoon I decided to go in search of a local waterfall from one of my guidebooks. On my way I discovered this bridge and was able to make several photographs. It is very close to our friends house, so I plan on spending more time at this location on future trips so I can get better lighting.



I ended up finding the local waterfall but discovered that a tree had fallen into the base of the falls. I ended up spending some time shooting the stream lower in the falls.



I think this is my favorite photo of the trip.



Of course I shot some fireworks as well. But I think my best results were this movie I capture of the dangers of home fireworks.

This past weekend the family took a drive a couple of hours north to visit Amish country in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. This was not really a photographic trip so I didn't take a lot of photos. We drove up on a Sunday and discovered that almost every store and restaurant was closed in the area. The positive side is there was very little traffic and we didn't feel rushed driving on the country roads.




All of the farms fields have been harvested and the corn has been put in corn cribs to dry out for feed and grain.


We also visited a couple of covered bridges. However, the one that everyone typically photographs was closed for construction and renovation.



It was a nice day and a great destination for a Sunday drive.

Last week the family went on a Disney cruise with some family friends. The main priority of the trip was to relax and forget about work. In preparation of this trip I brought the Canon WP-DC21 Underwater housing for my Canon G9 and planned to use it while snorkeling on Disney's Castaway Cay island. On my last cruise I brought my Canon 5D and was able to get up early each morning to wander the decks to take some stock photos. Some of these photos happen to be my best sellers for stock.

For this trip I decided to bring both my Canon 5D and the Canon G9. I think I took a total of 5 photos with the 5D for the entire week. The G9 just always seemed like my go to camera on this trip. I loved the portability and its ability to shoot RAW. I'm not sure if the files from the G9 would be good enough for stock sales, but it was great for the needs of this trip.

This post was not meant to be a review of the G9, but I feel confident that on future family trips I could comfortably leave my DSLR at home.

The underwater housing for the G9 also worked great. I did find that the shutter lag  common to point and shoot cameras was difficult to work with underwater. But after a while I was able to workaround the lag by anticipating the shot. Normally you can by pass the lag with a half press of the shutter to lock focus. But, I found the housing made it difficult to do the half press trick. I may just need more practice with the feel of the shutter and the housing.

On this trip I also discovered I loved being underwater with the fish and taking pictures. I have subscribed to several underwater photoblogs (echeng.com for example) for a while and I can now see the allure of this type of photography. What I discovered is the 30-60 seconds you have underwater during each breath was just not enough and it made me seriously think about taking scuba classes. 

Here are a selection of photos from the trip. I may try to submit a couple of the underwater photos to my stock agency just to see if the G9 is able to keep up with my 5D.

I received a new Canon G9 point and shoot digital camera from my in-laws for my birthday this year. My recent vacation to California gave me a real chance to give this new camera a test. It performed like a champ and is now my "carry everywhere I go camera." The images that come off the camera are great and the size is a little larger than most compact cameras, but is still very portable. The noise at anything above 400 ISO is a little bad, but it works well in most situations.

One added bonus is this camera has video capability. For a while I was thinking of getting a Flip video camera to play around with. But my new G9 is working great as a video camera as well.

On our vacation we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific and I took several videos of the exhibits.




The video quality suits me just fine and I have been recently exploring the world of moving pictures.

Last year my wife and daughter went to California to visit friends and family (I went to Montana.) While they were there they searched for things to do and stumbled onto the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach California. It is a small facility that is used to house and rehabilitate injured seals and sea lions so they can be released back into the wild.

This year we were all going back to California for vacation and we decided to visit the PMCC again.

In the last year they have grown and added several new enclosures. Sadly the population at the facility has grown as well. Many of the animals that are at the facility were either abandoned at a young age, were injured, or had forms of a cancer that are becoming common to the sea lions in the area.

In the Spring 2001 issue of The Newsletter of The Marine Mammal Center, Sue Spong reported that The Marine Mammal Center has found a high rate of cancer among California sea lions. 18% of those examined post-mortem were found to have cancer, most commonly in the urinary and genital tracts. This incredibly high rate of cancer could be due to high concentrations of PCBs and organochlorinated pesticides that run off of land and work its way up the food chain to the sea lion. While the California sea lion population is not endangered, this species could serve as a indicator species on the overall general health of the coastal food chains. [ sealwfy ]

We arrived just in time for the feeding and the volunteer was very eager to show us around. When we visited we saw elephant seals and harbor seals. The baby harbor seals were very young and needed to be taught how to catch fish in the water.

They also had some baby elephant seals that were a couple of months old and they already looked big. The adult male elephant seals can weigh up to 5,000 lbs.

It is a small facility and would make a good stop on your way to or from Laguna if you are visiting from out of town. They started to run summer day camps this year and my daughter was sad we don't have something like this near our home.

You can find out more about the PMMC and also make donations so they can continue the expansion via their website: www.pacificmmc.org

Here is a video of two of the young male elephant seals as they learn how show dominance (often called play fighting.)