Clear Perspective

I really like how this picture turned out. It is some kind of kitchen instrument (a wire bowl on the end of a wooden stick) that we saw at Sur la table.


~Matt

-- Posted from my iPhone
(c) 2011 iWolff Ltd.

Amazing Prices

I'm in the market for a new SD card for my camera.  Currently I only have a 4GB card I got from a friend--but I'd like to get a new one before our honeymoon, a bigger one so that I don't have to spend time downloading pictures while we're on vacation (and no, I'm not saying where we're going--it is a surprise to Amy and so I'm not telling other people).  I just searched Best Buy for 16GB cards and discovered that they're priced in the twenties.  *sigh*  I must be getting old.  I remember when cards measured in megabytes were more than that!

~Matt

Flowers Blooming

Spring weather is definitely here--the days are nice and the flowers are starting to bloom.

The dinosaurs are begging to be let out of their cages.

And the gardens are starting to look like the wonderful, colorful display they will be for several months.

~Matt

Woods in the Spring

~Matt

-- Posted from my iPhone
(c) 2010 iWolff Ltd.

Without a Hitch

This picture was taken over a year ago, at my apartment.  Hard to believe that Amanda and Kyle will be married this Saturday.  The finger is mostly okay... ;-)

I was reminded of an old joke today when speaking of the wedding.  Hopefully the weekend will not go off without a hitch.

I received notice earlier today that my tux is ready...I just have to pick it up.  I doubt I'll have room for my camera, but I know there will be other photographers running around, and I'm sure that they'll snap my picture also.

It will be lonely not having a roommate any more, but I don't think that Kyle will miss my couch that much...

Here are some more vintage photographs...  :-D

Kyle really likes Iron Man...and pocket knives.  So he has a perfect pocket knife to go with his bobble head!

He loves the knife so much we had to, well, give him a way to easily carry it wherever he went.

And here is Kyle's attempt to pose Iron Man style--do note the cracks in the floor!

I've always wanted to get this picture photoshopped with Force lightning, but I don't have the skills and haven't managed to ask the right people at the right time.

Kyle has his own lightning attempt.

This is an old picture of Cafe Kyle, disturbing I know!  But worse is yet to come.

Kyle sometimes tries to hide, but can't find just the right spot.

You can usually find Amanda in the bookstore.

Okay, are you ready for more disturbing pictures?  Well if you weren't I'm sure you'd have stopped reading long ago.

(Fortunately his face didn't stick like that)

Just remember Kyle hates to eat, so don't offer him food.  He'll be deeply offended!

He can appear studious at times.

Amanda prefers to be skeptical, or was she trying to stare me down?  I'm not sure...

She does do hair cuts...but I'm not sure I'd trust her.

Yep, still not sure.

Amanda probably would make a good nurse--which is beneficial, just ask Kyle about injuries due to Ale-8 bottle caps... :-D

And she can dress nicely in something that isn't a work uniform.

Just watch out Kyle!

Oh, never mind.  He's a goner.

They make such a cute couple!

And lastly I'll leave you a picture of hard work as they stripped down an old dresser and refinished it.  I helped quite a bit, but made sure to also take pictures.

Well I only intended to post one picture, but then I realized how many good shots I had when I started diving through my archives.  I couldn't let them all go to waste, could I?

~Matt

Hiking

~Matt

-- Posted from my iPhone
(c) 2010 iWolff Ltd.

Location:Petersburg,United States

Verdant after the Rain

This is the view I see in spring and summer behind my apartment--when looking out of my garage or bedroom window. It isn't a bad sight. Of course in the winter the view isn't as nice.

I took this picture yesterday after a night and morning of heavy rain. It was a wonderful morning with plenty of thunder and lightning to keep things interesting. The foliage seems so much greener after a storm--even though my camera doesn't quite capture all of the sight.

Poison Dart

I pulled my camera out today and took some pictures around the Creation Museum. It has been far too long since I've snapped candid shots of fellow staff members or of the exhibits.

This little guy is in the poison dart frog display in the Main Hall. I spotted him hanging on the wall and took the picture at an angle so the flash wouldn't bounce back. I think the shot turned out rather well.

~Matt

Part Three, Day Three is not the end

There will be at least two more posts of swamp pictures.  Hopefully y'all aren't tired of Okefenokee yet.  I'm still enjoying writing about the trip.  Please comment and let me know if you've enjoyed looking at these posts.

Again, this is what I think of as classic cypress swamp.  I enjoyed looking back into the forest, realizing that the water continued along with the trees--despite the fact that it almost looked like we were on the lake in the midst of a mountain forest.

It was scenes like this that really made me think we were in the forest.  I'd hear bird calls and the wind whistling through the trees just like I've heard it so many times in Colorado.  I miss the west...

So many still surfaces made for great reflective pictures.

I tried to capture several pictures of canoes passing through trees.  I think a couple of the other photographers got a picture of our canoe doing the same.  I need to take a look through the nine plus gigs of pictures (which I burned to 3 DVDs) that represent our combined photographic efforts.

This sign actually turned out crystal clear.  I'm pretty sure this referenced the shelter where the Boy Scouts decided to eat lunch.

I wonder what caused this tree to grow into such an unusual shape.  It certainly wasn't snow or ice.

This was an important gator.  I saw him and called out a warning to the canoes behind ours--not to watch out, but to slow down so they could get pictures.  We then steered our canoe back the way we'd come so that I could get more pictures.  I then discovered that there was another gator behind this one.

This is my favourite gator picture from the swamp.  I've been using it as the desktop background on my computer ever since I got back from the trip.  For a time it was even the lock screen image on my iPhone, but I change that frequently.

This is the gator from the last shot.  He actually ducked down into the water a little further than you can see above, but here you can see how part of his tail is still above the water's surface.

Deb and Marty took both pictures and video of the gators.  I haven't looked through their pictures, but I'm sure they had a good angle on the gator on the log.  All I could see of him was his backside.

Denise certainly didn't want to be left out--but she was just a bit further away and her camera only has a 10x zoom (mine has 12x).  She did get several great flower pictures that I either couldn't master or was too impatient to get.

This mile marker was the end of the road...er...river.  I didn't take many pictures during the stretch between the last gator and this sign.  We exited out of the narrower part of the swamp (though the lakes were much wider than some passages had been the previous day) onto Billy's Lake.  Some darkish clouds were overhead.  I really thought I felt drops a couple times, so I thought it might rain.  My first reaction was that I didn't want to be rained on, then I realized that as long as my camera was safe it might actually be fun.  We'd prepared for rain, but it hadn't actually happened--so why not?  ;-)  However, the clouds simply blew over and the day stayed hot and warm.  It didn't start raining until I started driving home.

Perry and Stephanie had waited on the water for us to catch up.  After the rush of the day before we decided that there was no point rushing this past day (as I think I mentioned previously), so we were fine with being the last canoes to arrive, especially as we were still earlier than our planned exit time.

Stephanie grabbed this shot of all of us around the last mile marker.  There was a sense of accomplishment, realizing that we'd paddled 31 miles in three days.

Billy's Lake had many other boats on it, including boats with tour guides, double-decker craft, and awninged (I can't believe spell check allowed that word) craft like this one.

This turn-off marked the last leg of the road into Stephen Foster State Park.  Plenty of the park is swamp land and even has some canoe trails, but there was also a road that came all the way to the Okefenokee refuge border.

In case you were wondering where to get just about everywhere in the swamp you could follow this sign board.  I bet plenty of people still get lost, however.

Dry land and vehicles seemed a somewhat strange sight.

Our canoe had actually created a wake a couple times.  Once just for the heck of it we raced across a lake, paddling as fast as we could (and this isn't as easy in a fully laden canoe as it is with one empty of all but two bodies--the live bodies of the paddlers that is).

I assume these canoes belonged to a rental company.

This was the van that had come to pick us up.  He'd arrived early and told us later that he always arrives early as many people end up finishing before they think they will.

This was the last picture that I took from the canoe... :(

We had so much equipment that it wouldn't all fit into the van.  We had to repack the bottom canoes with equipment from everybody else's boats.

After packing everything up we headed into the small store and nature center.  I'll post pictures from those locations next, then iPhone pictures (my camera's memory card was full) from the visitor's center in my last two swamp posts.  I might try to scrounge videos for a video post but I'm not sure if that will happen soon or not.

~Matt