A long time coming

I have gone back and forth from writing to photography multiple times, and I realized limiting myself to either one would be wrong. I may never be another Stephen King or Ansel Adams, but I enjoy both and feel I'm decent at them. I am proud of many of my pictures, and I've been told my writing is enjoyable as well. All this to say I've finally finished a writing protect thanks to a challenge my brother linked me here. I was able to write a short story of over 4000 words, create the cover for it, and post it on kindle in less than 6 hours. It certainly won't be the next To Kill a Mockingbird, but I enjoyed writing it, and feel it turned out pretty decent. I would love feedback from anyone that picks it up, you can get it here for kindle. Any reviews would be greatly appreciated, even bad ones. And while you're checking out my book, you should pick up both of my brother's books here and here.

Puppy pics

I'm unable to do much this weekend to be able to get some pictures so I decided just to get some of my Beagle puppy Keky playing around outside.

An old picture

I took this one a few years ago at the garden of the gods in Colorado springs. I took this with a pretty cheap camera and it's one of my all-time favorites.

Work photos and more

One of the jobs my company has is to run a Hands On Training Exercise, or HOTEX. This is where we demonstrate the capabilities of military weapons and vehicles, primarily the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, or BFV, and the Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle. We had one today and I was able to get quite a few good pictures during it. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to put a lot of them up on here, but I can show a few of them.

This is of the Stryker shooting the .50 caliber machine gun.

This is a section of BFVs maneuvering into fighting positions.

This is an infantry fireteam setting down covering fire for another team. These are the only ones I can post from today.

This is from a few months ago, and also what I use as my background on here.

This is Atlanta, GA at night. I'll try to post some more this weekend. I'll set another goal of five more pictures by Sunday.

Flat Rock Park

As promised here are some more pictures. I took these at Flat Rock Park in Columbus, Ga. I'm not sure about all these so any critiques would be great. I'm very open to advice as I'm just starting out with my photography. So please let me know which ones you like/don't like, what changes I should make, etc. And I would love more followers so I can find my target audience.

These last two I just changed the settings to see which I liked better. Which one does everyone prefer?

Had a hard time getting a good picture of the white heron, but this was the best.

I like the way these roots look. Not sure how good a picture it is though.

Thanks for any feedback.

Aerial Photography

Something I have been considering lately is to get into aerial photography. There are many quadcoptors on the market nowadays, and it's not that difficult, or expensive, to make one either. Some of the RTF (ready to fly) models come with cameras already built in, but they're typically not very good quality. You can get some great kits that come with good camera mounts, but most only allow for smaller cameras like the GoPro camera, which would mean more money spent on the camera. I could build one that would allow me to use my current camera, a Nikon D90, but I would have to spend upwards of $3000. I do not have any experience with flying a quadcoptor, so what I think I'll do first is build a cheaper one, around $200, just to get experience flying it. I found a great site about it at oddcopter.com, and I have options after I get used to it to attach a smaller camera if I want to go that route, or, if I have enough expendable money, I can always build one of the high-end kits. Right now I'm waiting on my tax return to start this so I have time to do some more research, but I'll post on here as this project progresses. Hopefully I'll have some aerial photos to post on here by this summer, but in the meantime I'll be getting out this weekend to start taking more pictures around here, and I'm setting a goal to post at least 5 more pictures on here by sunday evening.

Just a few of my first pictures

The first pictures I have decided to post are images I took while on vacation in Washington, DC with a good friend of mine. I also used a picture I took while on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle range for my background.

This first picture was taken at Arlington National Cemetery.

These are some of my favorites from an amazing night we walked all over DC. We had so much fun, even when we had to rush back to the hotel when it started raining. For anyone looking for a great trip to take some amazing pictures, or just a place you should go at least once in your life, I would highly suggest Washington, DC. None of these are touched up except to resize.

Just the start

As I said in my blog earlier today I'm now focusing on photography. This is my first post dedicated to photography only.
I'm currently trying to find my style. What do I want to focus on? Nature, animals, people, buildings? Being in the military the pictures I take for work obviously focus on our training, but that is not what excites me. I want to find something that "gets my artistic juices flowing" so to speak. I love being out in the woods and nature in general, especially animals. I would love to find a great place close by that would give me a chance to capture wild animals in their own habitats, but that can be extremely time consuming. As I start to find my focus I'll post more, and include some of my early work. Any comments, critiques, tips are appreciated.

Another, even bigger, change

I have realized a couple things lately. One, my brother is a much better author than me. And two, I'm a much better photographer than writer. Considering these realizations I have decided to focus on my photography. It helps that I am now my companies photographer too. I will still be doing things within the writing community, but it will revolve around my brother's writing. I have been helping him since he first started, and I really enjoy just being able to give him my opinions. He's finished the first draft of a novel and has got pretty far into the second draft. I believe that he will be a very popular author once he releases this first novel. He has a blog at http://drivelingon.blogspot.com/ where he sometimes posts about it.