Miscellaneous Photographs

Scott Craig Photographs - Miscellaneous Photos
November 1, 2011 - I don't normally photograph abstract stuff but the reflection of fall foilage on the ripples of Radnor Lake today caught my eye.


August 25, 2010 - My special girl Sophie doesn't usually pose for photographs. The first one is her normal idea of "Posing" but tonight she was watching the fish swim around in their tank and that was about as close to a pose as I'm likely to get. Needless to say a couple of minutes later she was back to the first pose.


August 7, 2010 - Those Eyes! A little fun with the headlights of my motorcycles. Honda VFR (left) and Suzuki V-Strom (right). If you stare at them they become somewhat mesmerizing ;)


June 18, 2010 - A little evening thunderstorm blew through and cooled things down from 97° to 83° over a period of about 10 minutes so I wandered outside to enjoy the cool for a few minutes. The rain was ending when I noticed these leaves backlighted by the sun coming out of the clouds.


June 10, 2010 - I didn't really have anywhere else to put these photos, so I stuck them here. I was sitting on my deck this evening enjoying a relatively cool breeze when this little guy landed on the back wall of my house. He sat there for several minutes, apparently enjoying the cooling evening air as well. I intentionally shot these at very high ISO because I wanted to see what a D90 would do. I've heard good things about their high ISO performance but have never tried it. These are handheld at 1/50 second with a 300mm lens, f/18 and ISO 3200 so all in all they really aren't too bad.


December 9, 2009 - Tennessee summers are normally hazy and humid which causes the sky to look washed out. The clouds are frequently indistinct and diffused as well. During the winter months the sky clears up and turns brilliant blue and the clouds become bright and distinct. After a weather front passes through we get some really interesting cloud formations. The photos below were taken outside my office with the clouds silhouetted against an early morning sky. The wind was blowing quite heavily and the clouds were still large and billowing from the rain that had quit only a few hours before.


December 4, 2009 - I was playing around with Paintshop Pro and decided to add a frame and double matte to some of my photographs. They actually turned out pretty decently and I may have to actually get a few of them framed now that I've seen them ;)




May 9, 2009 The photographs below are so deceptively simple to do yet really yield some striking results. This is how they came out of the camera, no retouching or Photochopping. I did crop a couple of them but that's it. The props are very simple: Night time, a camera that can be set to a long exposure, a tripod, and a flashlight. Put the camera on a tripod, trip the shutter, move the flashlight around in front of the lens until you get tired or bored, and close the shutter. No two will ever be the same, but they are always interesting. It's a simple yet fun and interesting technique. I certainly didn't invent it, I read about it in a book somewhere over the years, and enjoy playing with it from time to time. The white ones are just the flashlight alone. For the red ones I put a red plastic funnel over the flashlight and left the hole open. That's why there is a white streak parallel to the red one.


Using software to "Colorize" the images with differing hues, as shown in the images below, produces some even more striking images. You are only limited by your imagination.



	This is just a photograph of a tree. Nothing special about it, just a tree in my back yard. In daylight it is unremarkable but at night with the street light behind it and the dark blue of late sunset bleeding through it tends to come alive with its own colors.

I love night photographs. Just because the sun goes down doesn't mean you need to put your camera away. There are things you can do at night you couldn't even think of doing during the daytime. Focus on light; how light looks, how it reflects, focus on what you can do with what you can see. These first three were actually taken just before dawn. It had been raining and the parking lot at my office was still wet. The lights were reflecting off the water making streaks of color that appealed to me. I intentionally left the white balance set to "Daylight" so the colors of the lights would show up. I didn't really expect green from the mercury lamp in the right photo, but I kind of like it. Most of the red lights are quartz and appear yellow to the naked eye.


March 28, 2009 - As has been the norm for the past month it rained yesterday, last night, and this morning. About mid-day the sun tried to come out for a little while so I went over to Radnor Lake for a little while. I took a bunch of photographs including a number of macro photos of some small wildflowers. I have no idea what they are, but they did make for some interesting photos. There are many more photos of Radnor Lake, as well as other interesting spots around Tennessee, at This Page.





March 27, 2009 - The Redbud tree in my back yard has been really pretty this spring. I come home from work each day and see it when I pull in the driveway. I keep taking photos of it because I keep looking for the "Perfect" angle and haven't found it yet. I'll keep trying though.



Last weekend Honey Bees were swarming all over it. I found that bees are very difficult to photograph with a macro lens because they don't stay in one place long enough for me to find them with my camera. I tried focusing on one particular area, but of course they landed everywhere except there. I finally just used my 200mm lens and cropped the images a great deal. They have some "Noise" in them but all in all I was pleased with the results.

I also happened to catch this guy taking a break from flying around my head. He was sitting on the wall behind me, and this time I did have time to get things set up properly. I'm always amazed at the interesting things that are all around us if we just look closely. I never would have thought a Red Wasp had such interesting patterns on its body, but they show up clearly in the photos below.


Various Dates - I love night photos and these are some of my favorites.

The photographs above were taken at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, AZ on February 3, 2009. The photo on the right is of my two best friends in the entire state of Arizona.

The photographs above were taken at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ on February 4, 2009. They show an exhibit of colored glass by Dale Chihuly and it was absolutely gorgeous both in daylight and at night. There are more photographs of the exhibit on This Page.
	The photo to the left was taken on February 5, 2009 in Phoenix, AZ. It was the last evening of my week-long trip and the following day I was to catch an airplane back home. Coming back from a motorcycle ride to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, AZ we were treated to this spectacular sunset. Perhaps it was just coincidental that the brightest sunset of the trip occurred on the last night I was there, perhaps the weather Gods were just saving the best for last.


The two photographs above were taken on March 18, 2009 and are of traffic at the intersection below my home. The disembodied "Tubes" that lights make always intrigue me.


Taken on March 5 & 18, 2009 these three photographs above show aircraft departing Nashville International Airport that flew over my home. These aren't "Photochops", the only thing I did to them was adjust the brightness some. The red glow at the right side of two of the photos is a Redbud tree that is just starting to bloom and it was a LONG exposure!.

	This photo of the moon was taken on March 30, 2010. It wasn't "Colorized". The moon was very low on the horizon when I took the photograph and the yellow tint comes from the light being diffused through the atmosphere. It was shot with a Nikon D90 and 300mm lens. 1/125 second @ f/8, ISO 200.

	13% Waxing Crescent Moon shot on April 14, 2010. This is my very first "Astro Photo" since I took it through my Celestron SLT 1300 telescope. It was shot with a 2x Barlow-T and my Nikon D90. 1/125 second at f/5 and ISO 1600 with an effective focal length of 1300mm (1950mm 35mm equivalent). It's the first but it won't be the last! The 376 mile wide "Mare Crisium", or Sea of Crisis, is easily visible in the center of the illuminated area.

March 15, 2009 - It rained all day yesterday, all night last night, and part of the morning today. Everything is still sloppy wet so I guess riding my motorcycles is out for another weekend. Nothing left to do but find something to take some photos of, I guess. The Redbud tree in my back yard is starting to bloom and it had water hanging from the buds. I noticed that every droplet of water acted like a little lens, magnifying what was behind it. The grass was doing the same thing as were some droplets hanging from the needles of one of my pine trees. I thought they were interesting and needed to have their photograph taken.



March 14, 2009 - Not really true macro since the definition of "Macro" is larger than life size, but I had to do something on a rainy day or go nuts. It's supposed to stop raining tomorrow so maybe I can go ride my motorcycle for a while! The truck is about 2½" long and the "Boulders" are polished creek gravel from a craft store.


March 7, 2009 - I've always enjoyed macro photography. It's fun to see what appears when we look closely at something small. This is a small silver swan that sits on one of our bookcases. I have no idea where it came from but it's only about 2" tall. All photos were shot with a Nikon D60, a 25mm extension tube, and an 18mm-55mm zoom lens at 55mm. The first photo uses an SB-600 flash fired at the front of the subject. For the second and third photos I fired the flash behind the subject to get a silhouette. The fourth image is available light using a 60 watt incandescent lamp. The red in the crystal in the fourth photo is from a laser pointer I aimed at the crystal.


March 1, 2009 - We got some snow last night, which is an unusual event in this part of Tennessee. I was in Murfreesboro, TN and stopped at Cannonsburgh Frontier Village to grab a few photos of the snow.

I also stopped at Couchville Lake at Long Hunter State Park but the snowfall there was pretty much non-existant. I still walked around and took some photos though.


February 28, 2009 - There's no telling what a bored ex-pilot is going to find to take photos of on a cold, rainy February afternoon, but there is usually something around. It's an easy effect to produce when you can set your camera to rear shutter flash synchronization. I've done it with cameras that don't have that feature and it's a lot more difficult to pull off!




February 9, 2009 - I took these on a motorcycle trip through parts of Arizona and California between January 31 and February 6, 2009. Like some other places the most difficult thing on that trip was knowing when to stop taking photos. There are about 300 photos of the trip on These Pages.




January 17, 2009 - Radnor Lake State Natural Area has a lot of great photograph possibilities if you can get past all of the rules that prevent anyone from doing anything there. I've been there a number of times and always manage to get a couple of decent photos. This particular day there was a lot of ice on the lake and it had formed into bell shapes on the limbs hainging right against the water. I tried to get some photos of them but one of the "Rule Nazis" made me get "back on the designated trail" so I couldn't get down low enough to photograph them very well. The third photo below shows what might have been had the ranger left me alone a couple of more minutes.


January 15, 2009 - The Trail of Tears Interpretive Center in Pulaski, TN isn't even open yet, but the company I work for did much of the site engineering on the project. There was a problem with some of the concrete at the site, and since I was heading there for another project I volunteered to stop and take some photographs of the problem. I happened to notice the varied contrast and color in the stone of the building and shot a couple of photographs of it as well.


January 14, 2009 - Vivid blue skies only happen in Tennessee during the winter. In the summer the haze is normally so heavy that the sky always looks milky blue. In winter we occasionally have some days when the air is crystal clear and the sky so blue it's hard to believe. On the way home from work today I noticed some clouds amidst the vivid blue of the sky and thought it might be a great sunset. I wasn't disappointed either!


January 10, 2009 - It was rainy but warm today. I was in the basement working on my motorcycle with the door open enjoying the mild weather. I decided to stop for a little while and see if I could get some decent photos of the rainy weather. The second and third photos are interesting because in the midst of all that gloom there is a touch of color from the trees back in the grey.


September 19, 2008 - I took a motorcycle trip from Nashville to St. Augustine, FL during September, 2008. I had a great time and managed to take several photos. I spent one night at Tybee Island, GA and got up early to take some sunrise photographs. Sunset and sunrise photos are deceptively easy to take. If they are underexposed it just looks like it is a little darker and if they are over exposed it just looks like it is a little lighter. I enjoy them because that is the time of day that we get vivid color and pastel color at the same time. There are many other photographs of this trip at This URL.


June 14, 2008 - I rode my motorcycle to the Narrows of the Harpeth State Park today. There really isn't much there unless you are into canoeing since the road runs along a shelf cut into the rock with a bluff going up on one side and a bluff going down to the river on the other. There are places to launch canoes, but that's really about all there is there. Personally I like it just because it's quiet and peaceful, and I happened to notice this little guy poking out among the grass and rocks. It was about the only patch of color in a world of earthtones.


April 20, 2008 - I took a motorcycle trip to Highlands, NC with a friend. On the way we stopped beside this mountain stream for a couple of photos. I wish I had taken a better camera with me but I had what I had so I used it.


October 6, 2007 - I was at Couchville Lake at Long Hunter State Park today and happened to notice the shadows around the trees and guardrails. I thought they looked interesting so I grabbed a couple of photos. I included a couple of other photos just because it's such a nice place.


July 2-3, 2007 - The trick about taking photographs along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is not finding something to take a picture of, it's knowing when to stop. Had I stopped to take a photograph every time I saw something interesting I'd still be out there grabbing photos. I took a 6-day motorcycle trip through East Tennessee and along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina into Virginia. It was a fantastic trip and the photos above do not even come close to doing justice to the views. At every turn along the parkway were yet more vistas of the mountains and clouds. There are many more photos of my trip at This URL.