Some Random Photos

This is the first Christmas in quite a few years that we've had a Christmas tree. And with Christmas trees come lights, right? And photographing lights is always fun. Especially when they're all sorts of fun colors...
You can tell where this is headed, but add into that equation a video camera that shoots photos in 16:9 aspect ratio, and you have something that I can't resist. I haven't really tried out the camera feature on this video camera yet, and I figured today was a pretty good day for photography. Especially with such an intruiging subject as a Christmas tree.
So here's the result:

There's just something so much fun about shooting widescreen photos. It offers so many more possibilites! And that camera has a great focus. It can focus easily on objects less than an inch from the lens, which provides an insane depth of field...and that means really cool pictures!
Of course, if I start mostly shooting in widescreen, they won't fit on the blog very well. Maybe I'll have to work on a new blog theme that will accommodate wider photos...

Some Great Videos

I got this one off of John Moore's Twitter feed. It's a really amazing men's accapella group doing "12 Days of Christmas"...sort of.



And another one that a friend showed me:



These guys really have a gift for giving humorous performances...

Settling In

Well, we've been here five days, and the house is about as unpacked as it's going to get for a while. Life feels like a lot more time has gone by, but it's not even a week since we arrived.
I finally snagged some photos, but not very many:

All in all, we're settling in pretty nicely.

Moving In

I guess with all the excitement of arriving I kind of forgot to keep posting updates. Some of you might be wondering if we all died, or something. No, we just got extremely busy the instant we arrived. We stayed at the Leavitt's place for three days: the day after we arrived, we drove to Portland to take the RV back to the rental place and pick up our car. Then yesterday we unloaded the ABF trailer, and had lots of help, because the Fishers and a few other people came over. Now we've spent all of today unpacking the boxes.
So...yeah, fun stuff. I don't have any pictures, unfortunately, but I'll try to remember to start taking them again.

Breakfast

So we were on the road bright and early this morning (read: 8:30), and didn't bother to have breakfast before we left. So we stopped here for breakfast.

Multnomah Falls. We're back in the land of western-style indian names. No more Miamis or Tuskaloosas...
Well, fifteen minutes later we're back on the road! I think we set a breakfast-eating record...

Movie Stuff

So, I've given up editing the little sword video that Paul and I shot a few months ago. You know, the one that I posted a couple of screenshots of. That one was so spontaneous that in fact, it was hopeless. But the next one we did, on our second trip to Oregon, was better planned. However, I had a little project that had to be completed before I could start editing that footage together. Now that that's done, I'm finally looking over this footage that's been sitting on my hard drive for a month or two. These long, boring two days of driving across northern Utah and Idaho and eastern Oregon have been a good time to do the first rough edit. (yes, multiple edit layers, even on something less than 45 seconds long)
I'm really liking it!
I'm hoping that this one will actually make it to the internet some time...like the last one didn't.

Here's some screenshots:

The black vignetting around the corners is caused by the fact that we used a cheapo wide-angle lens...
I think we're going to get the $200 dollar one made by Canon at some point.

But anyway, I think it's bedtime. We reach the end of our trip tomorrow!
But it's the only beginning of something better, I can tell...

Some Fun Random Stuff

Okay, so I just found out that Rebecca over at Just Me... has gotten some of her Hogan's Heroes team buttons completed and posted. With the whole insane Twilight thing going on, and all the "Team [insert random Twilight character's name here]" commercial products, Rebecca had the brilliant idea of making Hogan's Heroes 'teams'. Kind of a spoof of the whole Twilight craze, right? Well, I had no idea she was this good at that kind of stuff! My two favorites so far are these:

  

Great, huh? And there's more to come! Granted, they're not completely accurate spoofs...but Twilight is too dark, anyway. These capture the whole lighthearted attitude of Hogan's Heroes completely.
See the rest of them here.
Great job, Rebecca!!!

Zion National Park

Well, this park is the last place we'll stop to sightsee. From there to our destination should be just two and a half days of haulin' it cross-country. Well, not real cross country, because we kinda do have to stay on roads, but you get the picture.
So these will be the last photos you'll see of our trip, exept for maybe a few random ones from the intervening ground.

No, that is not a bunker or gun emplacement, but simply a window into the mile-long tunnel that connects two parts of the park.

 

Behold the Area 51 escapee...

 

This crevice was actually just the right size to crawl up. I could have gotten to the top of this rock formation, but since at the base of it I was already standing on a ledge about fifty feet in the air, I decide not to push things...

 

Now this was a weird bug. I still have no idea what it is.

And that was Zion Park...

Now for the up-to-the-minute update. We crossed the Oregon border about an hour ago, which puts us about eight hours from our destination...at three o'clock in the afternoon. I'm still pushing to just drive right on through, but my parents like their sleep, so somehow I don't think that's going to happen.
But at any rate, we're less than a day from....home, I guess, now.