July 4th Fireworks - Newburgh, Indiana

We took in the Newburgh fireworks Monday evening.

They were originally scheduled for Sunday but we got a couple of inches of rain late in the afternoon.

Not much to say about them. Enjoy.

Click to enlarge.

Most of these were taken at ISO 100, F11, and 8 or 10 sec exposure time.

I used a tripod to hold the camera steady.

I had a lot better luck this year. Thanks to the on-line advice I found, I set the focus to manual and adjusted it to approximately the hyper-focal distance.

Last year I set the focus to infinity. They were all a little blurry.

http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html

With the lens zoomed to 29mm focal length and F11 the hyper-focal distance was about 12.3 ft. With the focus set at that diatance everything from about 11.7 ft to infinity was in focus.

Depth of Field Calculator

If you haven't been bored to death yet, there are only a few pictures left and no more commentary.

One of my favorites.

Around Newburgh and the Evansville Zoo

Here is Margot at the Newburgh farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. Actually, the pickins were pretty slim at the market. Maybe a little later in the season will be better.

I've got to convince Margot to stop issuing instructions and just smile when the camera goes up. Seems like I catch her talking frequently.

I just noticed that if you click to enlarge any of the photos you will see a tiny camera in the lower right of the picture. Click the camera and you can see all EXIF data which gives you the camera settings for the picture.

Lots of commerce on the Ohio River.

The river is back within its banks. The flood waters receded pretty quickly once it stopped raining.

On Saturday, Margot and I visited the Evansville Zoo.

It is pretty nice for a smaller city zoo.

Regarding the EXIF data - for most of these I have the camera set on auto ISO with a minimum shutter speed of 1/400 sec and max ISO of 1600.

This is a porcupine in the Amazonia exhibit. This exhibit is brand new and pretty well done.

What that means is that the camera sensitivity will increase up to 1600 if the metered shutter speed is slower than 1/400 sec.

Some sort of ibis.

At 1600 and below the noise is low - very difficult to see at these picture sizes. At 1/400 sec shutter speed there is no need to worry about camera shake at the lens focal lengths I'm using.

Pretty flowers. Click to enlarge.

A poor picture of an interesting bird.

An interesting plant.

Some sort of duck.

A tapir.

I'm not sure what these birds are. Spoonbill somethings is my guess.

A couple more.

From here on we are back outside, away from the Amazonia exhibit.

Some sort of large water plant.

A small North America exhibit. Here is a prairie dog.

Couple of the African animals.

Peacocks all over the place.

A couple of cranes on their nest.

I thought there were pretty. Margot pointed out that they aren't very exotic. We even have some in our yard.

Some sort of tortoise. It is pretty big. At least a foot long.

A black and white bird.

Another bird in the same setting. I should have paid more attention to the species.

Another less social bird.

No way to get a clean picture of this guy as he was eating dinner - the bars are too close together.

I did get a picture of the sign for this guy. He is a Sarus crane. The Sarus crane represents a faithful marriage in Asia. He is pretty good sized. - 4 or 5 ft tall.

OK. Here is a test. What animal do these feet belong to?

Only one claw - I thought that was interesting.

It is not the emu.

The feet belong to the ostrich.

Emily's Birthday

Before the birthday pictures, here are a few of the Bonnet Carre Spillway. As you recall, in early June the Mississippi River was flooding badly. One of the protections for New Orleans is to open the spillway to divert water from the river into Lake Pontchartrain.

Here is a picture of the spillway control structure. It is over a mile long, as I remember.

As per the board above, the water flow rate is 251,000 cubic feet per second!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnet_Carr%C3%A9_Spillway

There were a few locals out fishing. These guys were seining for river shrimp. They didn't seem too impressed by their haul - neither was I.

The spillway is a pretty simple structure. The are no moving gates - just these movable timbers. A small crane is used to lift the timbers from their closed position (foreground). They are hung by a short piece of chain on the left in and placed on a horizontal support on the right end.

If you want to know more click here.
Corps of Engineer's Site

Be sure to click on the video. That must be vintage footage - the slide rule is appropriate for the time the spillway was designed.
Spillway History Video

In nearby Destrehan there is an old Catholic church and cemetery. The first chapel on the site was erected in 1722. The cemetery is just about as old.

I'm not sure how the history of the area worked exactly. Many of the settlers were immigrants from Germany. Some of whom were given French names on arrival. Labranche is a good example, at least some of the Labranches had the original family name of Zweig which means "a branch" in French.

Ci Git means "here lies"

Times change, here is a newer tombstone for a newer immigrant.

OK, finally the Emily pictures. She really likes garden hoses.

Here are a few of the party guests. Sue and Bob combined a trip to New Orleans with the birthday party.

Here is Emily with Ellen. Ellen is Emily's nanny. She does a wonderful job with her.

Here are Lauren and Emily with one of her toys. Emily wasn't exactly sure about the gift unwrapping procedure. Fortunately she had an older friend to help her.

Here are Diane, Angie and Rachel.

Mom and Dad and Emily.

Here are Grandma and Grandpa and their gift. Grandpa spent some time earlier in the day assembling the wagon.

Emily was quite the trooper, although she may have been getting a little tired at this point.

Birthday cake.

Here are a few more portrait type pictures.

I think her average time in the chair for each picture was about 3 seconds. It took three of us to wrangle the baby, take the pictures and keep her looking at the camera.

Another one.

Emily and Jacques have pretty much reached an understanding. He tolerates her toddling around after him and she serves as a frequent source of snacks.