LEGOLAND Florida First Anniversary

 

Happy first birthday LEGOLAND Florida.

We had the chance to take in LEGOLAND for the first time this past Saturday

as guests of Chad Sroiano Photoblog and his family.

Taking on a theme park with a seasoned well trained family was a challenge

A challenge I had underestimated. 

We enjoyed the day, great park, amazing Lego models.

But we were completely zonked after trying to keep up.

Always looking for a new perspective, I stuck a GoPro Hero2 on their baby stroller.

aka StrollerCam

I shot a time-lapse of the day watch it here.

 

Here are a few photos from the day.

First family

San Francisco

We also walked through old Cypress Gardens.

ISS with a Dragon on its Tail.

 

Have you ever stepped outside and watched the ISS or International

Space Station fly over?  If you haven't you should and if you have, tune

in tomorrow night and watch the Dragon chase the ISS across the sky.

I shot this sequence of shots tonight as the ISS passed overhead, I looked

 for the Dragon but it was too far down on the horizon.  Tomorrow night

they should be close enough together to see them both in the same orbit.

The photos were shot with a Canon T4i iso400 30 second exposure 

at 4.5 using a Canon EFS10-22..

Check out this NASA website to see when the ISS will fly over your house. 

After Years, Hummingbirds!

 

After years of trying, it happened in an instant.

Mrs. Getawaymoments spotted a hummingbird in our garden.

We watched for a minute and then it zipped away.

For years we had grown hummingbird friendly plants with no luck.

Our house sits in the middle of a huge housing development, a desert

of sorts.  About two miles from our house is a street called Hummingbird Lane,

so I figured there must be some hummingbirds in the area.  For ten plus

years we have waited to see a visitor, success at last.

It appears to be a male Ruby Throated, if you know send me a message.

After our first spotting, we both sat in the garden waiting for a chance

to photograph our new visitor.  My first morning shots are above, with

a sample of the shots we have gotten since. It is quite a challenge

getting photos of a hummingbird eating, especially one NOT at a feeder.

Firebush seems to be the plant that finally worked in enticing them

to come for a visit.

Stay tuned as we document these little guys in the future.

Harvesting Sweet Potatoes

This summer I decided to give sweet potatoes a bigger piece of real estate in

my garden.  I like the flowers, my wife likes the potatoes.  I grew them last year

as an experiment, we had a store bought sweet potato that started to bolt. So, like

any good gardener geek, I planted it.  We got a few potatoes but the best surprise

were the flowers.  See video click here.  This year I planted two full beds and a

corner bed with the little seed potatoes from last year.  I trained the vines up

the fence to maximize growing space. As you can see below, we got quite a

few sweet potatoes and plenty of seed potatoes for next summer.

So one left over store bought sweet potato has now become several meals

and I still have two beds to dig.

Back yard gardening is no joke, it's good eats. 

GoPro Hero2 Macro Test Shots

A couple weeks ago, I shot a video of crazy ants carrying away a dead lizard.

The video is very funny but technically it was crap...... out of focus.

It got me thinking, GoPro cameras are very good POV sports cameras but

they have no macro capability.  So I went digging in my camera heap and

came up with this GoPro Frankenstein below.  Funny thing, it works.

See the test video here.

It's a very simple temporary set-up, I used two rubber bands to hold

a small macro lens in-front of the GoPro housing.  You could use tape as well.

The little macro lens is part of a Bower Super Wide angle lens I got for

my Sony camcorders.  The macro lens unscrews from the wide angle element.

There is a permentent way to put a macro lens on a GoPro but it requires

taking the GoPro apart and screwing in a new lens.  So?  Do you have an

old macro lens in your pile of photo gear?  You may just have a way to get

 cool macro shots with your GoPro.

Crazy Ants

My garden has been under a frenetic assault by Crazy Ants.

Crazy Ants you say? Oh yeah they are crazy!  I have no idea what specific

kind of ants these are, if you know please leave a comment below.

I posted a video today, click on this link to watch.  

The video speaks for itself, there is nothing these ants won't try to conquer.

I have watched as they have taken anything dead for a walk.

These ants forage in mass and take no prisoners.  All very good

until they broke the first rule of my science project/ victory garden.

They tried to take my house.

Saturday morning we had to call in an airstrike and nuke the invading army.

Did it work?  We will see.  

The question now is who will clean up the dead lizards?