Hiking in the Chattahoochee Forest

Here's a few photos taken during a hike last month in the Chattahoochee Forest.  I was there from some boys from our church on a High Adventure activity.  The hike was 7 miles one way and we had to cross a river...not on a bridge, but through the river...about 20 times each way.  The hike was exhausting, but well worth it.  We hiked to a waterfall, had fun jumping off of it, then hiked back.  I didn't really get any photos of the falls because I was too busy jumping off them.  I did get some photos of the boys jumping off though.  :)

The couple of photos I have of the river were using a slow shutter speed of 1/8 of a second.  I should have been using a tripod but didn't bring one with me.  With the photos shrunk down some they still look fairly sharp, but next time I'll have to bring the tripod with me.

Swept Away

You may remember the photo below that I took a few months back of the Lone Tree.  Normally if I feel like going for a drive I'll go down this road because it's quiet with lots of open space, and I always enjoyed seeing this tree as I passed by.  OK, call me a tree hugger if you'd like, but I do really enjoy observing nature.

Lone Tree

After all the tornadoes blew through on April 27, I wondered what happened to this tree and if it made it through.  I knew that one of the huge EF-5 tornadoes went right through the area where the tree was.  I tried several times in the following couple of weeks to drive down there, but the road was blocked off while recovery efforts were in the works.  I finally got a glimpse of the tree a couple of weeks later and noticed that much of the tree had been destroyed in the storms, but it was still standing.  I didn't have my camera with me at the time, but I finally made it back last week and found that the tree had been cut down.

I realize it may be a silly thing, but I'll miss seeing "my" tree when I drive down this road.

So long

Probably one of my favorite things to observe in nature is water.  Anything from rivers, streams, lakes, rain, and especially the power of the ocean.  Last month I took a hike with some youth from church in north Georgia where we had to cross a stream several times before making it to a waterfall.  I've got quite a few water shots, so I'll hopefully get some of those posted soon...

Using Nicknames

I've been thinking about this for a while now and have finally gone back and taken out all of the times I've used the names of family on this blog.  Since this is a public site, I feel better about withholding the names and using nicknames I've come up with for this blog instead.  I've noticed other people have done similar things on their blogs.

I apologize for deleting any comments from my previous posts.  Again, I'm just removing all given names from my blog.  I always appreciate your comments!

So here are the new names you'll see:

This is Q, my beautiful wife.

This is Bimmer.  Before he was born we were trying to decide what to  name him, and since I drove an old BMW for the first few years of our marriage, we nicknamed him Bimmer until we finally came up with his real name.

This is Firebolt. Just matches her fun and fiery personality.  :)

This is hot dog bun (HD for short). The story with this is I was joking with the kids about what we should name him, and  being silly I suggested hot dog bun.  They both started cracking up, so the name stuck. 

Spidey!

I haven't been able to get many photos posted lately.  As I'm sure you all know we had several tornadoes pass through our area a couple of weeks ago.  This caused much destruction and devastation to our area and many other places around north Alabama. Our home was spared any damage, just didn't have power for a week.  It's been heartbreaking to see families who have lost their homes, friends, and family members.  However, it's been very inspiring to see the community come together to help out their neighbors.

Another deterrent from my photo taking/posting has been a major work project that has been keeping me working between 12-13 hours a day leaving little energy for any photo work.  Hopefully that will come to an end in the next week or so.

However, I do have a few photos to post from before the storms came through.  I'll just post one for now, which is now one of my favorites.  Bimmer loves to dress up, especially as super heroes like Spiderman and Mr. Incredible.  For Easter Q got Bimmer this Spiderman mask to match his Spidey costume.  He loves it!  He was out in the yard with his heroic garb on and I asked if I could take a photo of him.  He grabbed the funnel you'll see on his hand (I guess maybe as a special, terrifying weapon?) and struck this pose.  So funny.  I love this kid!

This photo was taken with my 50mm prime and edited in LR3.  I used many clarity adjustment brush layers on Bimmer and his costume to give him that "edgy" look.

Villains and enemies beware!