It has been a long time since I posted here, things have been crazy busy. Although my standard commercial photography has been part of that, unfortunately some of the other things I enjoy such as shooting sports have had to take a back seat while I completed something I never thought I would actually do, write a book.

Yep, I can hear my English teachers crying in agony now. And yep, it is about photography…

If you would like more information you can visit the book’s website here:

http://www.allans-stuff.com/leap

visit the discussion board for the book here:

http://www.allans-stuff.com/forum

and even purchase the book if you like, here:

https://www.createspace.com/4249295

It will be available through Amazon US and Amazon in Europe in a few days, with wider distribution in the months to follow.

This past week I was fortunate enough to be in Houston when the Space Shuttle Endeavour was flown through on it’s way to California. I have never been lucky enough to actually see one of the shuttles in person so I made the quick trip to the other side of town to shoot a few images. It was truely awe inspiring.

To think, this shuttle right in front of me has been launched into orbit 25 times, traveled over 122,000,000 miles and safely returned 154 astronauts to earth.

This voyage would be the last time anyone would ever see a space shuttle on top of the 747 used to transport it from the landings in California to the launch pad in Florida. Indeed, this was the last time one would ever be in the air at all.

I used this opportunity to shoot the normal images above and one special image here:

What’s so special about this picture? This is a resized copy of an set of sticthed images which are almost 200 megapixels in size, that means it can be printed at just over eight feet wide with no enlargement and be razor sharp from inches away. To give you an idea, here is a small glimpse of what a section of the image would look like at full resolution:

Honestly, because the blog resizes images, this image shows a little too much and would actually be zoomed in a little more than what you see here.

This is truely an end of an era. No matter how well the new Orion spacecraft performs, it will never reach the majesty and beauty of our shuttle fleet.

My wife and I decided to travel to Albuquerque New Mexico for the annular solar eclipse, that is where the moon comes directly between the sun and our little earth. We choose that city because it was far enough west to see the complete annular part of the eclipse and was directly on the center line where the moon would be exactly in the center. Here is a poster of the images I took while there:

I even shot a little video of the eclipse and if you missed the actual eclipse, you can see it in less than 60 seconds by clicking below

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While in the area, no astronomy buff would dare leave before seeing the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, also know as the Very Large Array or VLA. This has been included in many movies such as Contact and is an absolutely awesome place to visit.

While there was still some daylight left we turned east and went to White Sands National Monument. This place is just breathtaking. Their sign says something about you must see the place at sunset to really get an appreciation of the beauty of it. I agree. My sunset picture does NOT do this place justice and I am still trying to coax a better image out of what I have. The entire sky just lights on fire, and I mean the entire sky, not just the area close to the setting sun, it is simply amazing.

I hope you enjoy looking at the images as much as I enjoyed taking them!

You could not have asked for a nicer evening for baseball, it was warm and clear, and of course a fun close game with the Kats on top. For baseball fans, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Right fielder Jake Arrington even came away with a home run in the seventh inning making his third for the season.
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Yesterday was a heck of a game with #1 ranked Sam Houston State University pitted against Montana State University who just came off a 48-10 victory in the NCAA quarterfinals. MSU started out strong, and no wonder with their reported 750 fans in the stands. Unfortunately, like a steam roller, SHSU built up power and just overwhelmed them on both offense and defense. Taking the game home with a 49 to 13 victory the Kats of SHSU rushed over 400 yards including six touchdowns.
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A couple of months ago I actually got a short vacation. We made several stops along the way, one of which was Cherokee North Carolina. The blue ridge mountains are beautiful and majestic, giving one plenty of quiet time for reflection. I was only there a short time but I had to try to capture some of the beauty to share with you.

Early sunrise:
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Waterfalls just outside Cherokee:
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Heavily wooded area on top of “the Dome”:
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Sunset our first day:
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Wildlife was everywhere, and not bashful!
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Hope you enjoyed the images.

One of the hardest things to do when both your job and your hobby is photography is pushing yourself to be better and keeping things interesting. If all you ever do is shoot one thing, or one small group of things then you get burned out in your job and bored with your hobby.

In order to stop that from happening to me I am sure you have noticed that on this blog there is a very wide array of different types of photography. That list now gets every wider, by several billion miles!

This is my new astrophotography rig, if you look closely at the bottom right you will see one of my Nikon bodies hanging off the back of the scope. Astronomy is something that has always facinated me and this seemed like a logical and exciting way to keep photography interesting for me.

This is M8, the Lagoon Nebula.

And here we have M31, the Andromeda galaxy.

While this is still photography, it is so much more. Learning about the sky, our solor system, our galaxy, and the entire universe we call home is exciting and mind blowing all at the same time. Spending hours imaging the sky will make anyone feel humble.

Enjoy!

Last night’s game while a little one sided with SHSU dominating UCA 31-10, was at least very cool compared to the weather last week which made the game that much more enjoyable. UCA did get us a little worried in the first half with a nice pass for a 73 yard touchdown, but SHSU recovered quickly and led the entire game.

Last month I was able to take a few days in our nation’s Capital and spent some time getting a few pictures. I divided my time between two different views of Washington, one I called “postcard shots” which are shown here, the second I called “the other side” which I will post later.

Probably the most important thing I took away from the experience is that no matter how many pictures you take, no matter how good you are, there is just no way to impart the true majesty to someone who has not been there.

The next most important thing is that I could have spent a month there and still not photographed everything, not even close. What you see here is a small smattering of the more popular and iconic images most people expect to see on “postcards”, which is exactly what I wanted from this series. I hope you enjoy.

Tomb of the unknown soldier:

JFK’s Eternal Flame:

Arlington National Cemetary:

The Lincoln Memorial at sunrise:

The Lincoln Memorial, Washington Memorial and Capitol Buildings at night:

The Korean War Memorial at night, yes, the colors are real:

The White House:

Inside the Supreme Court building, spiral marble staircase:

The Supreme Court building:

Inside the Lincoln Memorial:

The Capital building at dawn from the reflecting pool:

Football season is back and the Kats started it with style by defeating Western Illinois Thursday evening. This was a defensive game with both sides scrambling to gain just a few yards at a time. Even with our record heat and no significant rain for months, the night was reasonably cool enough to really enjoy the season opener.