Ahoy!

95/365 "humor", originally uploaded by asterismos.

“Wait a minute, garrrr.….this t’aint me sloop!”

On a visit to Price Park this past Tues­day, daugh­ter found this flip flop down­stream from Price Lake. After a short hike, we enjoyed a mid­day cool off in a small creek named Boone Fork near the pic­nic area and trail of the same name. This week is also Price Pals week on the Blue Ridge Park­way where Junior Rangers can learn all sorts of infor­ma­tion about ani­mals and veg­e­ta­tion within the for­est. We plan to attend friday’s ses­sion for sure as it is “Wilder­ness Sur­vival Day” which includes instruc­tion on ways to build a shel­ter and fire, and also how to canoe your way around Price Lake.

Filed under current events, environment, homeschooling, photography, summer | Comment (0)

DIY Light Stand + Homemade Reflectors

I was asked by some of my fel­low 365 group mem­bers to share a lit­tle bit about the home­made light stand I have been using for some of my “ghetto light­ing” assign­ment shots. I have also recently made some reflec­tors so I could par­tic­i­pate in the recent  “ghetto light­ing + reflec­tors” assign­ment. I hope you find the fol­low­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of DIY photo gear projects use­ful. The above mosaic is a com­pi­la­tion of images show­ing my light stand, reflec­tors and images pro­duced using my home­made gear.

I was most inspired to make a light stand after read­ing this tuto­r­ial. I had been using my hus­bands desk lamp but it unfor­tu­nately broke dur­ing the recent ghetto light­ing assign­ment.  As a home­schooler and crafter, I recy­cle lots of objects. Our com­mu­nity has a won­der­ful site at our county’s waste cen­ter where you can drop off things that you don’t want or may be bro­ken but are still usable. Any­body can take the items left for free. I have found many things that either just needed to be cleaned or have slight repairs done but are still per­fectly usable to me. This saves a lot of things from going to the land­fill since our trash is shipped to a nearby state.

Con­tinue reading »

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Biggest Snow of the Year

The High Coun­try near Boone and Blow­ing Rock received its biggest snow­fall of the year on Sun­day, March 1, 2009. Snow started around noon on Sun­day and fell at a very fast rate with the first inch stack­ing up within the first thirty min­utes of the storm. By 3pm roads, with three to four inches of fallen snow, were impass­able because of slick con­di­tions and stranded motorists who blocked the road­way. Watauga County res­i­dents awoke Mon­day morn­ing to between 8–12 inches of snow and many stranded vehi­cles still on roads and highways.

Filed under current events, environment, winter | Comment (0)