Category Archives: Our World Tuesday

Our World Tuesday – Fireworks

Hey I know the Fourth of July is over. That is alright I’m still going to post fireworks pics from Tulsa’s fireworks show on the Fourth.

The show gets bigger and better every year and the fireworks ever more complex.

People show up and spend hours there picnicing and hanging out. We used to do that but we have figured out a way to get there late and leave early. That leaves all sorts of time for people watching.

I love taking pictures of people taking pictures. Just so you know.

Like this, I’ve also captured the famous leaning tower of Tulsa. Don’t laugh too hard. A local lady got convicted of murder last year for pushing her husband out a window of that building.

Heather would never do that!! But I can’t tell what she is thinking right now. Oh well, back to the fireworks.

Like I said people show up all during the day, some spend hours out under the hot sun.

There is music and portapottys and lots of beer drinking.

The thing about fireworks show is that even though people come all through the day.

As soon as the finale is over everybody goes home.

Did you go see fireworks this year? Or did you stay at home and terrorize the neighborhood dogs?

Our World Tuesday

Running and Thinking on Turkey Mountain

Last Wednesday I used my weekly kitchen pass to go run on Turkey Mountain. It was a good day to run on the mountain because it was pretty windy and the trees on the mountain cut the wind by a lot. It also looked like rain was coming. If it is warm I don’t mind getting wet but I’m not fond of electrocution so I won’t run in the rain if there is thunder and lightning. Lightning has the potential to ruin your entire day. I figure my odds are better on the mountain than down on the River Trails.

I’ve gotten lazy with the running. I like to do it in the morning. I also like to drink coffee check on other people’s blogs, poke fun at the liberals and tea partiers on facebook, and read the paper. Somehow I’m spending more time sitting on my butt than running. I can tell by my waistline and by my running.

Running is a total feedback thing. The more you do, the better you get, the less you do, the worse you do. Plus as your weight goes up, that just makes it harder.

Trail running is fun. Once I get a quarter mile down the trail from the parking lot I hardly see anybody. I see bicyclists but very few other runners. When the weather is iffy I don’t see hardly anybody. I like being by myself but I wonder sometime if I fell and broke or twisted something what I would do. When I’m up there I don’t worry about it though.

I’ve never seen a threatening person on the mountain. I’ve come across a few homeless camps but the people living there are nowhere to be seen. To me it would be a lousy place for a homeless camp. There is no potable water up there, there are no food stores or convenience stores anywhere close. Plus runners are notoriously cheap, except for their running gear, so they would poor marks for panhandling.

I’m on Instagram (@yogiab) and every once in a while I check #turkeymountain to see who is posting what up there and last week I saw somebody posted a photo with some sort of caption about getting high on turkey mountain. The picture looked like some sort of pipe that looked kind of druggy to me. That actually simultaneously annoyed and chilled me. To my knowledge none of my family and friends uses illegal drugs. I guess that I lead a protected life. The other thing was “What the heck are you doing getting high on drugs on my Mountain!!!“

Plus I was frustrated. Why would somebody do illegal drugs? I don’t get it.

Well anyway, it was getting dark when I got back to the parking lot. Time to go home!

I’m linking up with Our World Tuesday

Our World – Life on the River

Last Friday afternoon the family went to the Blue Rose on the Arkansas to have a late lunch.

Fresh from my brush with skin cancer I had my SPF50 and fancy hat on.

Heather was coordinating things and making things happen while still looking great.

And Logan, he was wanting to know when his burger was going to show up. I kept wondering why he wasn’t in school.

Here is mine, burger, bacon, blue cheese. Yeah baby, and I didn’t share.

And a couple of adult malted beverages. Don’t worry about Logan he had a soft drink.

Such was the scene on the first real sunny, really warm day of the year last week. It felt really good to be warm and in the sun right on the river.

What did you do on your first real sunny, really warm day of the year?

Our World Tuesday

Our World – HDR Photography the Easy and Inexpensive Way

I am a picture taker, not a photographer, I don’t give a flip about f stops, RAW format, and shutter speeds and all the rest. I just want a decent photograph. One thing that I find a really difficult is taking decent photographs when the subject is in a shadow, or when there is a lot different shadows and sun on the subject. It drives me crazy. I found out something this past weekend about a way to overcome, at least partially, these problems.

I was at the Philbrook Museum and I was trying to take a photograph of one of my favorite sculptures there, “Prayer” by Allan Houser. I have never had much luck. I decided to try the “Bracketing” function for the exposure setting on the “P” mode of the camera. I have a Canon Powershot SX40 HS and I understand that the “Bracketing” setting is pretty common. Basically on that setting the camera takes three shots, one with the correct exposure, one underexposed, and one overexposed. So the shot above was the correct, the one below is a little overexposed, and the one below that is a little underexposed.

Next, I found a website once I got home Fotor HDR Software that combines the three photographs into one. It also has to do some other magic like correcting for the movement of the camera while you are taking the the three exposures.

The result is called an HDR photograph. HDR stands for “High Dynamic Range” where by taking multiple images and combining them one can get a photograph closer to what one sees with their own eyes. Check out my friend Wikipedia HDR for more information. Back to the Houser Sculpture, below is the result.

I am really happy with this. Everything looks better. I’m sure that there is software out there that can do the thing a lot more handily than the web site. I’m not into software though. I like to do everything on the cloud. Software requires updates and then moving the software to a new computer is always a hassle. I’m intrigued by the Photoshop model now where you kind of rent the software. I’d love to hear from somebody who is doing that to see how it is working. I notice that Paintshop offers HDR tools and you can buy it for $80. I have an older version that I could upgrade but it was verrrryy slooooooowww. I have a new computer but I don’t want anything that drags.

Feel free to correct me if I have the whole HDR thing wrong. I’m just now getting into it. Also if you have information about other websites or software that can do HDR I’d love to hear about that also.

Below are some more pics from Philbrook that I did the exposure bracketing and then processed them through the Foto HDR site.

Red and very dark purple tulips.

This is a good example of a subject that is hard to take a photograph of due to its shadowy setting.

The Tempietto is the signature structure of the gardens at Philbrook.

This is Philbrook built by Tulsa Oilman Waite Phillips in the late 1920’s and then donated to the City of Tulsa in the 1930’s. It houses an outstanding art museum. Check out the Philbrook Museum of Art‘s web site for more information.

Anyway, I feel that I have discovered a great tool that anybody with a rather modest camera can use. I’d love to hear from other people who use HDR imaging.

I’m linking up today with Our World Tuesday.

Our World Tuesday – Pioneer Plaza in downtown Dallas

I am in Dallas the first part of this week on a cattle drive in Pioneer Plaza downtown. Get along you bony ,skinny, long-horned cows.

Look at those ribs.

Is this the Rio Grande? I don’t know but that is my hotel in the background. Very high tech and green. That is a code word for they don’t want to change out your towels. That is the type service you get for a couple hundred bucks a night. They also turn off the power to your room when you leave your room. It makes it kind of hard to charge up a depleted cell phone. Besides that why do they call it green when it is blue? I’m just behind the times I guess.

This guy tried to horn me! I’m calling him Wendy. We’ll see who comes out on top of that.

And this my new friend. I call him “Touchdown Texas” cuz of his horns. Not that the actual University of Texas Longhorns scored very many touchdowns this past year. Just saying.

And hey, this installation has its own virtual geocache! Can’t beat that can you?