Shoshone Falls, Idaho



Shoshone Falls, Idaho



I added one-day vacation to make this long weekend and a furlough day a mini vacation to visit our good friends in Nampa, Idaho. We drove about 430 miles east to Boise area and the next day our friends drove us another 130 miles to see this Shoshone Falls also known as The Niagara of the West. It is located near Twin Falls, Idaho. Some of the images are very similar other than the angles and the foreground. I do hope you enjoy our mini retreat.

Shoshone Falls

f 4.5 - Close Ups

Photography by Pokie

F 4.5 Close Up, well, I am not trying to be technical, but this is simply f stop that we always use for the close up photography. Recently I learned a new term call “bokeh” or simply the blurriness that make the picture more appealing. With f 4.5, we could achieve that “bokeh” but it is very hard to shoot a perfect picture, Pokie has to take a lot of pictures, and the focusing that close drains the battery really fast, something I learned while on this trip. If we have a ration 10 to 1, one being the images that we can use, we are considered lucky. On this trip, Pokie took some 200 images.

Here are the close up..

Schreiner's Iris Garden

Schreiner's Iris Garden

This could be the end of spring series flowers for this year. This morning we headed early to Schreiner’s Iris Garden in Salem, some forty miles to our south. We were here before about five years ago, so this place is no stranger to us, but I still have to look it up on the map on how to get here. The sun was a bit strong in the morning, but I used it to my advantages and take these flowers with the back lighting to bring out the colors. On the way to this garden, we made a detour and took the “red carpet” as you can see in the “bonus shot” at the end. As always, I hope you enjoy the journey.

Schreiner's Iris Garden

Rhododendron Up Close



Photography by Pokie



I think Pokie was getting tired in taking close-up photos, she was complaining that she was cold that Saturday morning, nonetheless she took more than 150 images and she chose to which ones would be show case on the web.  So, this is her work.

Close up Rhododendron and others

Rhododendron......

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden

Rhododendron usually blooms during the month of May and it coincides during Mother’s Day celebration, so to all the mothers out there – Happy Mother’s Day (this year is May 13th). Originally I wanted to go to the Oregon Garden in Silverton about forty miles to our south, but when Pokie saw that these Rhododendrons were in full bloom on one of the television channel, we decided to come here instead. Nothing beats free admission if we come before 10:00 A.M. To help the matter, the weather cooperated with us, not too much sun, no rain, well almost. It was drizzling for about five minutes.

So come join us to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden


Hoyt Arboretum 2007 (Revisited)





Hoyt Aeboretum - Oct. 2007





I consider myself a purist when it comes to digital photography (no retouching within the image), but I almost always make some simple adjustments of the brightness and contrast to any digital images that I take.  It is a must since what the sensor sees and our eyes see are different. Lately I started perusing the post production software namely Photoshop CS and found some interesting tools that I can use but still within the “purist” limitation and boundary. I went back and look for some images that I think is worthy of these adjustments. Here is Hoyt Arboretum revisited.

 Hoyt Arboretum 2007

Experimental nightshots



f 8.0 at 30 seconds

 I always wanted to try night shots with the digital camera, I did with film in the past and as far as I remember I always set it at f 8.0 for 15 seconds or 30 seconds with ISO 100 to record the streaks of the headlight and the tail light of the cars. This brought me back many years ago when I still shot B&W films. So I asked Pokie if she could drive me to where I thought I could get a shot of the freeway, but alas a fence was on the way, so we moved to a location where I thought I could get a shot or two, then we went to a place near where we live and got a shot of the pond. No composition is the main objective here, just the exposure.

Here are other images