Keynote

In this year's da Vinci Day's theme of transformation, OSU women's basketball coach, Scott Rueck, gave a very uplifting keynote speech. I was there at LaSells Stewart Center on Friday night to cover the event. Coach Rueck started with a blank canvas and a row of paints on the stage. He used them as a metaphor for building OSU's basketball program, almost from the ground up, when he came to OSU a couple of years ago. Adding elements to his painting and relating them to the foundations of his team, the message broadened beyond basketball to life in general. We are all artists in a sense and we must decide what goes on our canvas, he said. When he finished his painting, the story of how he defied expectations and built a winning team was complete. How he got there, and and the lessons he learned and brought with him was truly inspiring... and I'm not a basketball fan. It was a pleasure to meet him and he was kind enough to pose for me with the finished painting after the speech.

da Vinci Days Setup

I took somewhere around 2000 photos over the da Vinci Days festival weekend in Corvallis. That is not to say that they are all keepers. A few hundred will be though. I still have many to edit and there will be several more blog posts, I'm sure, with shots from the festival. This shot, I took early in the afternoon on Friday before opening. I was there to grab some shots of the setup, but I loved the look of the banners across the bike path through the park. Stay tuned for much more to follow from da Vinci Days!

Car Show

On Saturday, the "DARE to Cruise for CASA" car show took place in downtown Albany. I'm not a huge car person, but I do like seeing classic or cool and unusual cars. I dropped in for about an hour or so to check them out and take some pictures. Here is a picture of a Cobra that I liked. The rest of the car show pictures should be up on Flickr soon.

Dog Goggles

I took this picture in the back yard a few weeks ago. There was a dog next door that always became very interested in us and our two little yorkies whenever we were outside. He/she found this perfect vantage point to check us out. If I got too close to the fence, the dog would spook, run away and/or start barking. So, I shot this with a telephoto lens in less than ideal light which is why it's a bit grainy. However, I think it still works. I like that it's not overtly obvious what you're looking at, but it pops out at you after a second of viewing. The family has since moved away.

4th of July in Albany

I went downtown to catch the fireworks display on the waterfront in Albany. The area was packed. My plan was to take shots of the fireworks from some distance away on the Ellsworth st. bridge. A number of people were also there to watch the show and a few others with cameras and tripods. I staked out a spot with about 30 minutes to go. I didn't want to carry too much gear out on the bridge so I only brought one lens with me. As it turned out, It wasn't quite wide enough to capture exactly the shot I wanted, but I got close. Most of the exposures are in the 5-6 second range. I used some pseudo HDR techniques to enhance them where possible and I ended up with about 5 shots that I'm pretty happy with. Here is one of them.