Friday night, I went to see my nephew, Andy play baseball. The game was held in the Gary Steelyard, where the Gary minor league team plays. It was another challenging night time shoot, but i took some time to experiment, and came up with some cool shots.

At the ballgame.

Originally uploaded by lopatinj

Friday, I spent some time with my fisheye lens. None of the images in this gallery have been “defished”.

Saturday, we drove to the Round Barn Winery, in Michigan. It was time to bottle the wine that we made back in the fall. It came out really great, although it’s still not quite ready to drink. It needs to settle in the bottle for a few weeks.

Last night, we went to Medieval Times in Schaumburg, IL. It was a blast! I took a bunch of pictures, but it was really dark, and they’re not great. I think i need to make some changes to my camera settings when shooting in a dark arena. I think I could have done much better. Oh well. I was there to enjoy the show, not be a photographer, so in that aspect, it was a very successful evening. We sat in the front row of the Green Knight’s section. He was the show’s antagonist, so it was really fun to cheer him on. I highly recommend visiting Medieval Times at least once in your life.

Today, Peter and I went to Messenger Woods. Normally this is the short time of year where this particular forest floor is covered with wildflowers. Unfortunately, because of the weird cold weather, they have not come in yet. It was a nice hike, but a bit of a dud morning for pictures. We found a really ancient Hamms beer can, which proved to be the day’s most interesting subject. We plan on going back in a few weeks to try to catch the flowers.

I went back to Arrowhead Lake yesterday. Some of the locations in these images might look familiar. I walked around for around 2.5 hours. As I was heading back to the car, I came across a large herd of deer. I got some shots off, and tried to get closer. They all took off except for one. This young deer let me get really close before she trotted slowly off.

This was the first time I carried 2 cameras on my walk. I had my older body with a wide lens and infrared filter, and my newer body with my big zoom lens. I was also carrying a tripod strapped on my back. It sounds like a lot, but it really wasn’t so bad!

In this gallery, I experimented with some rather severe cropping and color/exposure adjustments. The first 3 pictures in the gallery are infrared images.

Arrowhead lake

Originally uploaded by lopatinj