About three years ago now, I bought my first high quality camera as a Christmas present to myself... a Nikon D40.  And on the anniversary of that event, I like to post my favorite pictures that I've taken during the year.

You can see my previous favorites for 2008 and 2007 as well.  Happy New Year everyone!

Last Sunday I headed out to Holy Hill in order to see what kind of fall colors were out, and I was not disappointed.  Not only was Mother Nature providing a beautiful show, but there was a concert by The Bone Deans on Highway 167...

You can see all the autumn colors in this second slide show:

I was down in Valparaiso Indiana a couple weeks ago, and made a stop at the Taltree Arboretum. It was a gorgeous plains area, with lots of natural flowers.  Here are some of the pictures:

A few weeks ago, not long after the Milwaukee Air Show, I went up to Oshkosh with AB, Hohner and Egg for the EAA.  The weather sucked, consisting mostly of rain, the threat of thunderstorms, and low clouds... but the company with me more than made up for the weather.  Unfortunately, the weather did make photography difficult, but I managed to capture some good shots, including some fun nose art.  Here are the results:

Yes, it was a couple weeks ago, but the backlog still exists.  Here are the pictures I managed to capture from the Saturday Milwaukee Air Show.  I found a perfect spot just east of the North Point Water Tower.  The Thunderbirds were using that tower as one of their reference points, so we got a lot of fly overs.

Yes, that's right... I still have more pictures that I have yet to post.  It's a slow process, but hopefully you all think it's worth it.  Here are some random pictures from my recent trip to California with Ally that didn't fit into any good category.  They are from all over the state... enjoy:

Several weeks ago, the lovely MsAlly and I were out in California and part of our adventure included some wakeboarding on Lake Nacimiento with family and friends.  Here is a slideshow of pictures taken from that day:

Earlier this year, Santa Barbara had it's third fire in two years.  This last fire covered a fairly large area in the mountains above the city, and even encroached into many neighborhoods.  Many of my favorite areas to hike and climb were scorched.  You can see a map of the evacuation area, along with the fire perimeter on Google Maps.  During my trip to California with Ally a couple of weeks ago, we spent a day in Santa Barbara and went up into the mountains to survey the damage.  Here are some of the pictures of the burn area:

I'm continuing to work through my backlog of photos, and today I've got some pictures from the 3rd of July fireworks down at the lakefront.  The lovely Miss Ally and I had a front row view down by the War Memorial, and I set up my tripod.  Here are some of my favorites:

You can click on any of the images to see a larger version, and you can see plenty more of the fireworks from that night in the Flickr set I created with all the rest.

So lately, I've had enough time to take lots and lots of pictures of various things, but haven't had nearly enough time to actually go through and edit them, or post them some place that is publicly available.  Starting this last weekend, I finally started going through my backlog, and have started posting them to Flickr.  The first batch was from a June Flickr Photowalk that centered around the North Ave. street festival:

I'll be posting more from my backlog all this week (including photos from California and the Milwaukee Air Show), so stay tuned!

Saturday, the lovely Ms. Ally and I joined a host of other bloggers out in Janesville for the Southern Wisconsin Airfest, featuring the Blue Angels.  It was a gorgeous day, and the Asian Badger did good by us all with a VIP tent that put us directly at “Air Show Center”.  Basically, all the action was centered around our tent.  And while I was there with my still camera, Jimi was there with his video camera shooting this great video.

The day started out with an opening jump by the Army Golden Knights along with the Navy Leap Frogs:

You can see all the jump pictures in this Flickr set.  But of course, we weren’t just there to see jumpers.  They also had some great acrobatic pilots including Susan Dacy, Mike Wiskus, and Patty Wagstaff:

You can see all the acrobatic pictures in this Flickr set.  They also had an F-16 doing some amazing close passes, along with a P-51 Mustang as part of a Heritage Flight.

And of course, what air show wouldn’t be complete without a jet powered truck?

But of course, the real reason we were there was to see the Navy Blue Angels!

There are plenty more pictures in this Flickr set to enjoy.

A couple weeks ago, I head over to 128th Air Wing where they had an aircraft display in honor of Armed Forced Week.  Here is a slideshow containing some of the photographs I took.  And as always, you can head over to this set on Flickr where you can view full sized versions.

Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day everyone!

As many of my readers know, I've taken up amateur photography over the last few years.  I have always had a presence on Flickr, and of course I post some of my work here occasionally.  But within the last several months, I have decided to take things more seriously.  I am printing and framing more of my work, and have begun to have some of my photography displayed locally.  As part of that decision, I have also created a new domain where I am featuring the photography which I display and sell, so head on over and take a look.  Besides the gallery section, there is also a blog where I will post information on any shows I have.  I would also appreciate any feedback you may have.

A couple weeks ago I went out with the Cream City Flickr Group for a walk around some of the more run down areas of Walker's Point.  You can see the entire photo set here, but you can also see a slide show of my favorites below:

So what do you do when you have an old laptop, and plenty of time on your hands?  If you're  me, you tear apart the laptop and turn it into a custom WiFi digital picture frame.  You can see all the pictures, and the details on how I did it in this post over at my other blog, The Coding Monkey.