Tag Photography

Hawk Island Park, Lansing, Michigan

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Located within the City of Lansing, Hawk Island County Park is a lovely gem of a park that offers year-round recreational activities. These photos are early fall photos, though, so you get to see flowers and greenery and such.

I took my new camera (a Canon Rebel SL3) out for a spin on September 7. I wanted to see what I would get from my 18-55mm and 55-250mm lenses, and Hawk Island Park seemed like a good place to do it.

A photograph of the lake and trees and boardwalk at Hawk Island Park in Lansing, Michigan.
I wish the sky had been a little less cloudy. I’ll go back sometime and photograph this area on a sunny day.

One can climb to the top of the tubing hill and get a nice view of the lake and the landscape.

Throughout the park, there are all sorts of flower and wildflower gardens.

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Road Trip: Georgia/Alabama, 2014 – Part 3

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Here are a few more photos from this Southern adventure.

My sister’s cat, Phoebe, is amazing and cranky all at the same time. She adopted my sister, literally — she got in the car and wouldn’t get out.

Toe beans.

I ran a half marathon the last day I was in Alabama; amazingly enough, I finished second in my age group and (if memory serves) seventh overall.

That’s all for this trip! If you enjoyed these photos, you can find the rest of the highlights here and here.

Road Trip: Mobile, 2017 – Part 3

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The last full day in Mobile featured a fun 5k and some more sightseeing.

Ben Mee branch, Mobile Public Library

This is one of the best-ever backdrops for a race finish.

The Government Street Presbyterian Church is one of the myriad historic sites in Mobile.

All good things come to an end, and we had to take our leave of Mobile and make our way back to Michigan.

This sign needs to be everywhere.

My hotel waffle-making skills are strong.

It’s also nice when someone else makes the waffle. Yes, I had waffles twice in one day. #sorrynotsorry

One does not simply walk into Waffle House and make a breakfast taco. Wait, one totally does that.

No matter how well they treat him, Wembley fears cat-sitters. He was very happy that we returned home.

That’s it for this trip! If you missed the previous parts of this series, you can check them out here and here.

Road Trip: Mobile, 2017 – Part 2

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A visit to the USS Alabama (BB-60) was the centerpiece of the road trip. Literally, it’s the thing that was on the schedule first. My father, who as a young child donated to the effort to bring the Alabama home to Mobile, had never seen the ship in person. That had to be corrected. Here are a few photos from our visit to Battleship Memorial Park.

 

A panoramic shot of the USS Alabama

 

Three of the Alabama‘s 16-inch guns

Sight for a 20-mm machine gun

Looking toward the bow from a perch several decks above the main deck

The superstructure of the USS Drum

If you’re curious about part 1 of the photos from this trip, click here; for the next part, click here.

Road Trip: Mobile, 2017 – Part 1

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I’m way behind on a number of things; one of those things is in sharing photos. I’m 2-3 years behind on that stuff, so I’m trying to dig out the backlog. This post will share a few of my favorite photos from the trip that my wife and I took to Mobile, Alabama, in May 2017.

Pretty much every trip south for us hits a Waffle House early. We don’t have those in Michigan, so Waffle House is a must-visit location. This one is in Daleville, Indiana.

Waffle House, Daleville, Indiana

The next highlight of the trip was in a little commercial strip in Athens, Alabama. Here, we found Joe’s World Famous Pizzeria. In most cases, the phrase “world famous” is a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s not really the case here. Joe Carlucci has won multiple world pizza championships and hold a couple of Guinness world records for his pizza skills. Joe left my wife and me feeling like we were his long-time friends, and prepared amazing calzones for us. He shared a number of stories from his pizza-making adventures, and treated us to cannoli for desert. We look forward to our next visit to Athens.

The man himself: Joe Carlucci performing his wondrous craft

Legendary calzone (well, half of one)

Our first day proper in Mobile featured a walk around downtown Mobile and a trip to GulfQuest, the national maritime museum of the Gulf of Mexico. Given that I enjoy photographing ships and neon signs, both of these destinations worked well for me.

GL Calmena

Naman’s Department Store neon sign

Hoffman Furniture Company neon sign

For the next parts of this series, click here and here.

What I See When I Run: Whovian Edition

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For a few days, flooding has kept me off most of the Lansing River Trail. There was a bit of trail near downtown that didn’t flood, though, and I visited it during my 11-mile run on Saturday.

Along the trail, starting at Impression 5 (a museum) and extending south(ish) toward Potter Park Zoo, there are markers that represent the planets (and Pluto, which was no doubt considered to be a planet when these markers were installed) in our solar system, spaced to scale how they are generally spaced in the solar system. It’s a nifty way to make walks along the trail into educational opportunities.

All of that leads to this photo, taken along the trail near the marker for the fourth planet.

My friends who enjoy Doctor Who will understand and appreciate it when I say that these are, obviously, the waters of Mars.

By the way, I am not looking to pick a fight with folks who aren’t down with Pluto’s having lost its status as a planet. Personally, I’m neutral on the issue; I’m not planning to visit any time soon, so I just can’t get worked up about it. If you firmly believe that it should be classified as a planet, I won’t argue with you about it.

 

What I See When I Run: The Grand River Overflows Its Banks

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When you get a lot of snow, and then you get unseasonably warm temperatures and lots of rain, your rivers, creeks, and streams run out of capacity to hold it all. Unfortunately, that’s happening in Lansing right now. While I was out running tonight, I took a moment to capture the scene along the Grand River in downtown Lansing. I didn’t get to cover much of the waterfront, as plenty of the non-motorized trail along the river is already underwater. Nonetheless, I did get an image to share.

There’s a non-motorized trail that runs along the waterfront by the Lansing Center (the building at the right, for those of you who may not be familiar with Lansing, MI). The fence is immediately adjacent to the trail; based on its appearance, I’d guess that trail is at least a foot under the river, and maybe as much as two feet.

The water is still rising.