Laughing Frog Images Galleries Archives - Page 2 of 3

Sunrise Done Different

Posted on March 3, 2015March 1, 2015 by Kurt

Most of the time you see a picture of a sunrise, the photographer is looking at the sun…

Always having to be different, the Frog presents an alternative way to capture a sunrise. Look the other way!

While on vacation in Hawaii (before you East Coast folks start, it’s closer to me than Boston is right now…) on the island of Kauai, I awoke to a very bright day (which is easy to do when you’ve traveled west).

I looked to the east, and the sun was hidden by a cloud layer. No shot there…

But, as I looked to the west, well, here’s what I saw:

The mountains were in shadow, the clouds were lit by the sun, there was a faint rainbow, and the moon was still out!

Being 2015 and all, I did what most anyone would do – I grabbed my phone to take a picture! I would have grabbed my camera, but the phone was closer and the rainbow was changing (for the worse) before my eyes as the sun rose behind me.

This image is straight from the camera’s raw file (Nokia Lumia Icon), and was cropped to a square image and converted to a jpg for posting and sharing.

I tried to play with it a bit in an editing program to bring out the rainbow, but as every action has a reaction, and the reactions were not favorable, I decided against that train of thought.

You can find the image here on Laughing Frog Images.

Thanks for looking!

Sometimes you need a little luck #2

Posted on February 12, 2015February 8, 2015 by Kurt

Getting images of seals on a beach in their basic form isn’t all that hard.

After all – they’re seals. And, they’re on a beach. As I said, the basics aren’t hard.

Getting those really memorable photos of seals on a beach isn’t technically hard – it’s not much different than getting an image of a seal on a beach. You generally just need to capture a seal doing something on the beach other than sleeping. But that’s the whole point of why they’re on the beach. To sleep.

Starting to see the challenge?

So, you sit there and focus on a seal and wait. Or, you scout the seals and, using your best seal sense, try to figure out which one is going to do something photogenic and focus on that one and wait. At least until you figure out your seal sense isn’t quite as good as what you thought it was. Then, you start to scan the seals thorough your lens, because you know that’s going to work!

As either and/or both your feet and butt get sore from waiting, you realize that there’s only one thing that is going to work for you. Sometimes, you need a little luck.

That’s what finally happened here when I caught this guy/gal moving in mid-nap. A little luck had come my way. I swung the camera around (Casio Exilim EX-V8) and captured this image. This is a crop of the original – I had a pocket digital with me, and not my DSLR.

There are a lot of potential captions for this image – and each of us has our own take on that. We can all relate to having a peaceful sleep ruined by things like an alarm clock, or someone making a loud noise.

There was noise, and this guy/gal wasn’t all that happy. I’m not sure if I saw the seal version of flipping someone off before the eyes were again closed and it was time to visit Sleepy Town once again.

(Yeah, I know, that was an incredibly bad groaner, but if you’ve been following along on the blog, you shouldn’t be surprised by now!)

You can see the original image here in the Galleries on Laughing Frog Images.

Most everyone out there knows someone who deserves this on their coffee/tea cup – and we can help with that!

Thanks for reading.

Speaking of turkeys…

Posted on February 10, 2015February 8, 2015 by Kurt

As I was writing the Turkey Train post, a classic scene from a classic television show came to mind…about turkeys.

Working that into the post just wasn’t going to happen with the theme and the flow.

But I just have to share this…

Anyone out there remember the ensemble sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati”?

There’s also the eternal question of Jennifer or Bailey? Wait. That’s a separate topic. Maybe a dissertation or study. Back to the topic at hand…

So what does this all have to do with turkeys?

You’ve got to take a few minutes and click here (whatever did we do before YouTube?).

After you’ve seen it, you’ll know why it didn’t fit into the Turkey Train post…

This laughter is brought to you by Laughing Frog Images.

Please be sure to visit the image galleries and remember to visit when you need a unique gift, or when you just want something great and unique for yourself.

UP on the ex- Western Pacific

Posted on January 25, 2015January 19, 2015 by Kurt

The former Western Pacific Railroad traverses through the Feather River Canyon between Portola and Oroville, CA. This is breathtaking and relatively unknown scenery.

The WP was taken over by the Union Pacific over thirty years ago, so I never got to see the line as WP. As close as I can get it to the real thing is the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola (check out that gallery here), which is well worth visiting if you’re in the area.

The WP that I have come to know is under the Armour Yellow of the Union Pacific, and it’s still a remarkable line to photograph.

I had started to put some of my images from the former WP into the UP, and came to the realization that they might well get lost in there. They need to stand on their own! So, there’s something new on Laughing Frog Images – the UP on the ex- Western Pacific Gallery.

I tend to get less than ideal weather in the Feather River Canyon, and the photos reflect that. However, life isn’t always blue skies and sunshine – and I’ve never been one to put the camera away if I’ve made the journey and the time to photograph something. Sometimes, I’ve felt that the sun takes the same time off that I do, but digital photography has made that much easier to deal with than it was in the days of ISO 64 Kodachrome!

The BNSF has trackage rights over the WP, and that will be a separate gallery as well. I contemplated that idea for a while, and for similar reasons, decided to make that its’ own gallery.

At some point in time, there are two more galleries coming that are related to the WP. These will be of the eastbound and westbound trips of the 2014 Feather River Express as viewed from the train. (Yeah, I know, I promised those a while ago, but they’re still works in progress!).

Enjoy!

BNSF Pasadena Sub Gallery Added

Posted on January 23, 2015January 19, 2015 by Kurt

The BNSF Pasadena Sub Gallery has been added to Laughing Frog Images.

The current Pasadena Sub is actually owned by Metrolink – the Los Angeles regional commuter rail system. The western half of the Pasadena Sub is now part of the Metro Gold Line, a light rail commuter line. Freight service from San Bernardino to the MillerCoors brewery in Irwindale is provided by BNSF.

Back in The Day, the Pasadena Sub was a prime passenger route for the Santa Fe – all of the name trains that stopped at Pasadena passed over the subdivision.

The Pasadena Sub local freight was handled by two to four GP-30/GP-35 units before they were largely retired. I though it was cool to be photographing some of this action with my 1.2 megapixel digital camera way back when that was the cat’s meow. And now… I want to smack myself upside the head, because the usable print size of those images is about 4″x6″ on a good day… I included a few images from the early days of digital to look at, if nothing else. I do have some slides to find and scan, but for the most part, my quality stuff of the Pasadena Sub doesn’t include the Blondes (Santa Fe’s blue and yellow version of the Warbonnet applied to locomotives in the latter part of the 20th century).

Of late, the power has been ex-Santa Fe GP-60Ms that were children of the reborn Super Fleet and delivered in the classic Warbonnet paint scheme in the early 1990’s. They were built for speed to handle priority intermodal traffic from Chicago to Los Angeles and Richmond. And now, most of them are serving out their time on local and regional freights on the former Santa Fe lines.

I decided to break out the Pasadena Sub and give it its’ own gallery owing to the many shots of the GP-60M’s in their Warbonnet paint. If you get a Santa Fe leader, and work the angles right, it could be 1995, and not 2015…

Despite the fact that I live in close proximity to the Pasadena Sub, I don’t get to photograph it much, as it’s a weekday-only operation for the most part, and I have this thing called work…

Enjoy what I’m able to share with you of the BNSF Pasadena Sub!

PH&D Collages added!

Posted on January 19, 2015January 19, 2015 by Kurt

For the 30th anniversary of the end of the PH&D as we knew it, I created five PH&D collages as viewed through my lenses and captured on Kodachrome from 1982-1984.

Four versions of the PH&D collages were donated to and auctioned off at the December 2014 meeting of the Port Huron and Detroit Railroad Historical Society to help them in their fundraising efforts.

Now, all five are available on Laughing Frog Images in the Port Huron and Detroit Color Collages gallery. Any of them will print in full in 2×3 format – any other ratio will result in cropping.

As with the main Port Huron and Detroit in Color gallery, half of the profits from this gallery will be donated to the PH&D HS.

If you don’t purchase a PH&D product from Laughing Frog Images, please visit their page, and consider joining or making a donation to assist them in bringing Alco S-1 #52 home!

Main Gallery Page Enhanced

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Kurt

One of the nice things about having some time to breathe is that you can actually sit and look at your website and say to yourself “what can I do to make it better?”

So, I did that. It’s been a while since I could really sit down and devote some time to the site.

And, knowing that exploring and reading can be dangerous, I proceeded accordingly and figured out that I could add a slide show to the main gallery page. So, I did!

The slide show is a collection of this-n-that, at least one image from every gallery in a random order. Trains. Planes. Rivers. Foliage. Maybe even a bear… Or an alligator…

It’s nice – because you don’t have to dig through galleries to find something if you’re not looking for anything in particular.

It’s nice – because you might see images you might not have known about or considered.

It’s nice – because seeing for yourself is the best advertising.

And everyone has wall space. Or needs a mug. Or needs a unique gift for someone. Or deserves to spoil themselves with something they want.

If you see something you like in the slide show, just click on the image and you’ll be taken to it. To restart the slide show, you have to go back to the main gallery page.

Check out the new main gallery page for yourself!

“Likes” and “Shares” are as always appreciated.

Don’t forget to backup regularly!

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Kurt

While you’re out and about supporting small businesses today like your local camera store or local computer store, here’s a suggestion for your shopping list: an external hard drive or two.

Don’t forget to backup regularly this holiday season and throughout the year!

Why am I reminding everyone of this?

Well, funny you should ask…

You might have noticed that we haven’t added any new galleries lately. There’s a reason for that… The Frog’s main computer is with the computer doctor now (Visceral Concepts also fixes those contraptions) because it has a case of gray screen. It turns on – Windows says it’s starting, and then it all goes gray… Likely a hardware problem, as a Windows problem usually is indicated by a case of blue screen. Neither one is usually good.

Anyway – this is about backing everything up.

I haven’t gotten to the point to where I have everything on the cloud. I’ve been doing things the old fashioned way with my images – external hard drives. The weekend before my computer died, I created two separate complete backups. All of the image libraries and galleries are safe.

As a matter of fact, I had everything backed up but one (1) file when things went south.

Yes, that one file was extremely important. Thanks for asking. It was a book that I’d been working on. I don’t know if that file is going to be recovered or if I get to start all over again. I should find that out today or tomorrow. (More to follow on the book, but not now.)

I handled it quite well. No outward signs of panic. No axe to the computer. I just stared at it for a while… The cats looked at me kind of funny, but then again that’s nothing unusual.

So, the moral of this story for all of you out there is don’t forget to backup regularly! Get a hard drive or two from a local small business, or start using a cloud service. Just don’t forget to backup regularly!

You never know when a problem is going to rear its’ ugly head.

Oh – and when you’re closing that one file that isn’t backed up, and that little voice in your head says “hey – maybe you should back that file up!” – and another voice says “it’s only one file – what could happen?” – listen to that first voice. If you’re wondering why I say that, well, I listened to the second little voice… I was almost done with the book.

Shop easy. Shop Laughing Frog.

Posted on November 27, 2014November 24, 2014 by Kurt

Shop easy this year.

Grab your favorite beverage (or two).

Sit and relax with your computer, tablet or smartphone while everyone else is fighting for a parking space, or being stepped on in line, or just generally not having fun while shopping. We’ve got 64 galleries for you to peruse while avoiding the crowds and madness!

(My helper Ella in action!)

Shop Laughing Frog Images.

We’re all about making your shopping easy this year.

Metal prints? Got you covered.

Paper prints? Got those, too. Want it framed and ready to hang? No problem.

Coffee mug? Water bottle? Check and check.

Canvas tote for green shopping? Sure.

iPad or iPhone case? Yep.

Glass cutting board? Uh-huh.

We’ve got options for you. Lots of them.

Give a great and unique gift (or, gifts!) this year without the hassles of shopping.

Use coupon code LFIholidays14 for 10% off everything through December 25, 2014.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

And, safe shopping wherever you may shop this holiday season.

Scanning 35mm Slides, Part 2

Posted on October 16, 2014October 12, 2014 by Kurt

Scanning 35mm slides – Part 2.

In Part 1, we talked about scanning a lot of slides. Thousands of them.

So, what if you don’t have thousands to scan?

You’ve got more options!

For one-off scanning 35mm slides, the Frog has a PrimeFilm 7200 from B&H (information at http://www.scanace.com). The PrimeFilm 7200 uses the same software as the Powerslide 5000 – so that was a major factor the purchase of this unit. I’m very happy with this unit – it’s got 7200 dpi resolution and can pull a little more detail out of the dark areas than the Powerslide 5000. It also scans negatives – but that’s another post.

Scans using CyberView or Vuescan software can take as little as five (5) minutes if they are run without the noise reduction and cleaning functions – but I’ve come to terms with waiting a little longer for the slide to be scanned and spending a lot less time cleaning up the final product. As much as you clean your slides before scanning, and as much as you think you do – it’s more amazing what shows up at 7200 dpi than what shows up at 5000 dpi!

The rest of this post is a review from Part 1. I was going to stop here, but since we’re talking about scanning slides from two different perspectives, I figured I’d leave it be. Consider it a review or reiteration of things to consider.

As discussed in Part 1, there are flatbed scanners out there on the market that can scan up to 20 slides at a time, as well as having the capability to scan documents, negatives and photographic prints. Some of these units can produce very high quality scans – and some simply can’t. These units range in price from $100 to $800. The main makers of these scanners are Espon, Canon, and Hewlett-Packard. Check out the reviews at places like Shutterbug magazine, B&H and Adorama for more information on these units.

There are also lower resolution units that, for lack of better words, take a picture of your slide and convert it to a jpeg image. They’re not scanners in the traditional sense, but converters. They’re inexpensive and fast to use, and they have their limitations. These units can be had from $50 to $150.

What’s right for you?

Well, the first question to ask yourself is “what do I want to do with my scans?” Your answer dictates what you need. Remember, you can always downsize your image, but you can never upsize your scan…

If you want to make 20″x30″ prints – think dpi, lots of dpi – 4800 dpi or more.

If you’re wanting to make 8″x12″ prints – 2400 dpi can work.

Just want to show them on your tablet, laptop, phone or TV? a converter type unit can work for you.

There are also slide scanning services that will scan your slides at varying resolutions for varying prices. They’re an option for you if you don’t have the time or don’t want to do it yourself.

Don’t forget to consult with your local camera store along the way!

Happy deliberating!

If you’ve got questions, post them in a comment and we’ll talk…

Subscribe to The Frog