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Day 307 ~ Delayed
WHAT: Cityscapes & Landscapes, Project 365 (2009), Travel   |   WHEN: November 8, 2009
Weather has delayed our flight back to Dallas for 5 hours.  Here's a few more images from the trip during our layover.

Don't let this first one full you.  It was taken within 20 minutes of when we got here.  We haven't seen the sun since.








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Day 305 ~ Cancun
WHAT: Cityscapes & Landscapes, Project 365 (2009), Travel   |   WHEN: November 6, 2009
The tan gods are frowning upon us in Cancun.  A tropical depression/storm has parked itself over our resort.  The good news is if I need a little fill light for an image, I can still just take my shirt off and use my chest as a reflector.  More to come later, but for now here's a couple quick ones from day 1.  





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Day 293 - Back Where I Come From
WHAT: Cityscapes & Landscapes, Personal, Project 365 (2009), Travel   |   WHEN: October 26, 2009
At least once a year I try to get back 'home' to Marion, Ohio.  While I haven't lived there in over 12 years now, it will always be that place for me that feels unexplicably familiar, peaceful and comforting.  Just driving through town and along the back county roads in the amazing fall weather makes the world feel just a little more right... at least for a few days a year.

I had big plans during this recent trip to get out with my camera and just wander through the old downtown and out in the country for several hours and see what I could find, but between the napping, eating, Xboxing, flat tire changing, Ohio State gaming, Shark Tank watching (that show rocks!), Reaganing, Rudying, family reunioning, Styering, Tubby's Pizza'ing, searching for my wedding ring'ing, etcetera'ing... it never really materialized like I envisioned. I did manage to get out a little bit, though, and fire off a few images.

I'll start off with an image that has a little personal significance for me.  This is my grandpa & grandma Nicolosi's old house where my dad and his 5 brothers/sisters grew up and my grandparents lived for - I think - nearly 50 years.  While both of my grandparents are still dearly missed, I have a lot of fond memories in this house... sitting with my grandma while she would draw what must've seemed to her like endless requests for birds & dinosaurs - I truly believe she instilled the desire in me to be creative and as a result has had a huge impact on the direction my life has taken.  I also vividly recall years and years of big family gatherings at Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve... some of my most endearing childhood memories.  Every year grandpa would cook his homemade spaghetti and meatballs from scratch on Christmas Eve, and every year I'd scoot it all on to half my plate to make it look like I ate, well, half of it because as a kid, my still-unrefined taste buds preferred the sophisticated blend of preservatives and empty calories made by my buddy Chef Boyardee.  Today, I miss grandpa's homemade sauce.  I remember spending the night and grandma letting us stay up to watch Chiller on Friday night which was basically a series of low-budget B movies that tried to be scary with occasional breaks where some guy in cooky owl-shaped glasses played host and interjected his own lame commentary.  Good stuff as a kiddo, though.  I could go on and on, and I might in a future post some day. 



Somewhere in the country between the airport and Delaware, Ohio.



Looking down the main drag in Waldo.



Don't remember where this was, but it's not important... it's yellow leaves, and that's what matters here.



Found these original wooden doors on an old, decaying house under an overpass in downtown Marion.



It's sad how much of down town Marion has been neglected since it's hay day many years ago, but man, this place is a photographer's dream.  Are you kiddin' me?  I'd have a field day down here with seniors.







A little infrared post-processing action on a barn out in the country side.





Near Schrode's house...




A little self-portrait cheese in an old storefront window in downtown Delaware.



More downtown Delaware.



Peaking through a window into an auditorium in an old building on the Ohio Weslyan campus in Delaware.



Along the roadside off state route 23 across from the entrance to Delaware State Park.  BTW, for those of you non-Ohioans that may be a bit confused at this point, Delaware is a city in Ohio in addition to being a state somewhere near the eastern border of the US (don't ask me to pick it out on a map... I'm sure I'll get it confused with New Hampshire or Vermont).



There's nothing better in the world than fall colors in the Midwest.



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Day 280 ~ Solace
WHAT: Cityscapes & Landscapes, Project 365 (2009), Travel   |   WHEN: October 14, 2009

While the wet weather is wreaking havoc on my fall shooting schedule, it's also providing moments of solace like this morning.  With the warm front that came in overnight, there was a peaceful fog at day break.  The fog acted like one big softbox to create some beautiful light... I love the soft shadow it creates under the tree.  Simple scenes like this are some of my favorites - a single tree standing in the middle of a field on the farm land across the street from our housing development.  I hope they never sell the land because scenes like this are hard to come by around here.


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Day 160 ~ Photografun {Part 3}
WHAT: Cityscapes & Landscapes, Project 365 (2009), Travel   |   WHEN: June 12, 2009
It's time to wrap up last weekend's Austin trip and start lookin' forward to next year's photographer get-together 2.0.  To close out this year's edition, though, here's a few images from the drive home.  I love road trip photography.  I might even go so far as to say it's my favorite thing to do with a camera.  And unlike a couple years ago where I had to call up a buddy to navigate me back home when I got lost driving around out in the country side in the county I grew up in (I hadn't been back in a while, so cut me some slack, would ya?), now with a GPS in my phone I've got free rein to go anywhere without worrying weather I can find my way back to civilization... assuming I have enough gas to get there.

The only thing I have to worry about with roadtrip these days is getting arrested for trespassing.  And lemme tell ya, there was a whole heck of a lot of it goin' on in these images.  My thing is, it's not like I'm stealing or vandalizing anything, and if the owners were around I would (well, might) ask permission, but considering they weren't and that this might be the last time I ever drive by these places, I felt the risk was justified.  Take for example these first two images. I was on a lonely old dead end country road, the land was surrounded by a 4ft barb wire fence, and there was not a soul in sight.  What wold you do?  I agree.  And I, too, decided to scale said fence to walk the property and get these two photos.  Some might say I was trespassing.  I prefer to think of it as "visually preserving American history".  In fact, when you (I) say it that way, it sounds like what I'm doing is not only justfiable, but noble and critical to preserving our heritage.  [somebody gimme a shovel... this pile's gettin' deep.]




Somewhere around Waxahachie, TX, I struck vintage automotive gold.  I saw a couple restored cars out front and naturally exited the highway and looped back around on the service road to take a few photos.  So far so good. I fired off a few shots of the red and yellow cars below...



... and then I began to whistle and inconspicuosly climb the 3ft padlocked gate to see what was behind the building of this vintage car slavation/restoration business.  Jackpot.  There was a plethera of old gas station equipment, signs, automotive parts.




I walked a little further and hit the motherload.  Way out back, hidden by a rusty old aluminum fence and some trees was a pasture of vintage automotive corpses... a final resting place for icons of American history.


I was a kid in a candy store, and I coulda stayed for a couple of hours if I wasn't providing lunch for the local chigger nation in my flip flops and shorts.  I got mauled... again.  But those few minutes were worth it.








Finally, this was closer to home back in Dallas just around the corner from the house.



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