Spangler Hills Rally on the 10th of November brought standard rally fun such as PeeWee races and a Poker Run plus good food and good friends. I was invited by Wendy to come out and get some shots so here is one of them. Many more can be seen at my Rally featured gallery link on http://allyourpictures.smugmug.com . Hope you enjoy them!

Trying out a new filter required finding the appropriate style photo to make it work. In costume I think this one may bear further study.

Mother Cinnamon opens her robes and out rush the children...

So what does a photographer do on a lazy Saturday afternoon after his new technical aquisitions didn't work out like he wanted? Well, since the wireless printer server didn't serve, and the remote wireless hard drive server wanted to format his hard gotten library of 'everything', and the HUEY colorimeter made everything look green instead of the other way around, I did what any good techie would do...I experimented.

First, I took apart an available and formated hard drive that was old but still functional. this was tricky as finding all the screws (like those hidden under the hard to remove label) is tricky.
Second, I used my handy dandy external hard drive power supply to spin up the disk. Cool in and of itself, once I found out which wires I had accidently disconnected. Third, I asked myself...will it work? So I hooked up the USB port and started copying files to it. What do you know, it worked just fine.

So we watched some videos get copied to it and then played them. There were a few times near the end of the experiment that it seemed to be having problems. It may not last much longer but it certainly was an interesting adventure in techie-dom. My son thought it was very cool but he also thought the video we watched 'I love sky' was hilarious.

Something blue...

Sometimes it really is just the wonder of it all.

Eggbert was stumped, now that he'd gotten everyone else ready what was he going to do...

So I thought to myself, what would be an entertaining way to shoot the LA Zoo? I decided on doing a glamour series based on the good friends I met at the zoo. Here they are, first my dear friend the Ibis allowed me to hang over the bars and shoot through the fence while precariously focusing using the screen on the back. Digicammers of the world, there are things that just can't be done with an SLR due to size, weight, location, contortion, etc.

Next contestant was a Lion who decided to give me a little show of teeth at just the right time with some strong but effectively angled late afternoon sun.

The Giraffe that wasn't trying to strip the leaves off the branches overshead posed nicely for me as well.

Lastly, another stretch that might have been served better by a 6 pound camera/lens combination however since my digicam weighs only about 12oz with batteries, shoots handheld without IS/VR at about 3 stops below recommended shutter speed and fits in my coat pocket, I used what I had...and for the most part I was happy with the shooting.

Well, more photos to follow but this pretty much covers the highlights of our zoo animals, it was warm and the animals were not out and about. I also tried resizing these in the Picasa Blogger plugin so I hope they actually look okay online. Cheers.

all that was left was half of the student's trusty bic pen, the penalty for chewing gum on school grounds had been escalated to specially calibrated laser turrets ever since the principal stepped on a giant wad of gum and lost his shoe.

the wasps are back and they're bringing their larvae, hey la, hey la, the wasps are back. too many 60s tunes this weekend, or was it 50s.

the tracker noticed a tack in the leaves, obviously the office worker had panicked and dropped one of his treasured blue tacks. this was a break that only rarely occurred as office workers are notorious horders of all types of surplus supplies.

a very cooperative blue darter on our locust tree...i thought he was dead right up until he wasn't. that was a bit of a surprise. 100-400L doubling as a macro. :)

waiting for godot...or at least for my daughter to return from a cross country meet. i'm going for the emily dickenson mode today of course since i'm trying to use punctuation that might not be correct either...oh well

Outdoor scenic from Utah, just kind of liked the colors and the sunlight on the mountain. Couldn't decide if I wanted to take the shot so I may have waited just a bit too long but here it is.

Okay, so sometimes I go back in time instead of forward. A friend asked about the details on this one so here they are, Core Elements in Grand Junction CO area and yes, we really are all upside down. Except for the bottom right shot. And yes, it really is easier when you are younger, and lighter.

Missed this one the other night...cropped into it but it was long and was a 'quick' reaction drill on my part. Focus time and capture worked out great. I sharpened a touch just for detail but I was happy with the airborne nature and the ball placement.

Okay, this is my other favorite, shot three of a burst on a takedown that looked like it was from a kung fu movie rather than a football game...I was humming the toon to Invincible throughout the game as I played, I mean shot, I mean...well...played. :) They even tried the last play from the movie with the breakout to hit the guy on the punt return...they didn't pull it off though because the punt got blocked. Ooops. :(

Okay, this guy was Mr. On Fire all day long and you can see his eyes through the lens in this shot...wide open and radar running at least three to five yards ahead of him. BTW, AIServo running saved me some incredible shots as I could see it adjusting on some of the more dynamic moves. It was around 102 degrees, with light breezes and sun drifting toward the west. Much better than last week with the overhead sun at 2PM. Okay, I was really frustrated today but as I look back on yesterday I am thrilled. BTW this is on a 70-200 which made my shutter chatter even faster, it was almost scary. :)

The DC Knights strut at half time...ISO 3200 under the floods and not too bad. DOF is shallow but I'm shooting wide open. Still makes for a decent shot all in all.

McConnell takes off on this backfield running play that left the Wildcats in a hurting status. ISO 6400 using AISERVO with center spot tagged as focal point. Does anyone else have that 'weird' problem where even though the center is selected it still lights up an adjacent zone? Otherwise, I loved the shot. Touched up with a bit of sharpening which seems to have smoothed out the 'minimal' noise. Okay, I'm starting to have fun. :)

Take one at a sports poster for DCHS, I've been shooting their first few games and trying to get a feel for the 'subtleties' of their play. This guy is a rocking JVer.

I really like the collage feature in Picasa, it's a lot of fun...especially with sessions like todays...:)

Well, that's it for tonight...I decided that the best way to share some of these shots was to try our the Lightroom Web Gallery function so here it is, www.allyourpictures.com/boon (for boondoggle :)). I hope you enjoy the gallery, it's flash and runs like Autoviewer. I picked a variety of shots from the past 72 hours covering storms, ghost towns, football and a great migrant flower seller out in the middle of the desert by one of the onion farms. He didn't speak english but 2 dollars and a camera landed me some great poses with wonderful light. Have a great rest of the holiday weekend.