More from Sidney Fun Days (late July)

More photos now up from the festival in Sidney Illinois in late July.

Sidney Fun Days Festival - Parade Photos

Every summer the small town of Sidney Illinois, population <1200 puts on a two day festival rightfully dubbed "Sidney Summer Fun Days". The main event takes place on Saturday afternoon and kicks off with an Auto Show, and a parade that snakes it's way through the small town. I decided to spend the hot afternoon downtown to shoot the parade festivities. I've only had a chance to go through about half of the photos that I shot, but here is a small sample from the afternoon.

Western Kansas Tornado

Here are a few photos from the storm chase in western Kansas on May 22 2008. We observed 4 tornadoes over the course of the evening.

Late Night Moon Fun

Was bored tonight so I wound up deciding I wanted to go for a drive. I didn't get more than a few blocks before I decided that I wanted to play around with the railroad crossing here in Sidney. I was originally pretty upset about the high level clouds that kept wanting to move through the area, but with their fast motions I decided I could use them to play with the moon.

I spent about an hour walking around the tracks trying to get different angles on the railroad junk under the quickly moving clouds back lit by the almost full moon.

April 25 2008 Storm Chase - Central Illinois

A line of severe storms crossed the state of Illinois on Friday April 25th bringing a swatch of strong to severe winds along with it. I went as far west as the Havana/Jacksonville area and followed the storms back east home to Champaign stopping periodically ahead of the line to shoot some lightning along with the gust front of the storms. Unfortunately most of the lightning was embedded inside the precipitation so capturing bolts was pretty rare. Here are a few of the better shots from the night.

Moonlight Fun

Another great day outside, and the first in a long time with clear skies so I wanted to make good use of it again. At first I was upset about the nearly full moon being so high in the sky, but then I decided I wanted to use it to create some fun shadows, and an almost daylight appearance with stars in the sky. It certainly creates some interesting combinations.

I headed out not long after sunset and as I often do, just picked a direction and started driving. I'm not even sure which road I was on as I'm not as familiar with areas in southwest Champaign County as I am others, but I managed to pick up a two lane divided road and took that west for several miles. By several I mean, likely 15 or so. Then I hit a small farm road and headed south, where I took the first two photos.



I took this at the first stop. The lights in the background are from Champaign. I took a good amount using that shed in the background and the row of trees, but didn't like any for whatever reason. They all had some little thing wrong that kept me from uploading them. Maybe I'll head back to that spot another time. The moon is up and to the right in this photo.


I had to throw myself in there. I have a ghostly appearance because I was not in the frame for the entire time. This is mostly because I'm an idiot and for whatever reason forgot about the timer function, so I was starting the photo and then running into the frame. Later on in the night I accidentally set the timer and had an "oh duh" moment.


This is east of where the first photos are taken. I headed south on that first road and then took a left on the road you see in the left side of the photo. I think this is my favorite from the night. I'm going to misspell it, but you can see my favorite constellation, the seven sisters, or Pleides between the two trees. It's the really tight cluster.


Same spot, just vertical. I like that there are more stars visible, but something about it bothers me. I think maybe I should have had a little more sky, and a little less field. Maybe closer to the old 2/3rd's rule, rather than the 1/2 I have here.

I was surprised, it actually felt like it got warmer through the night. It was not a cold day, but it was certainly brisk at times. I was worried that once the sun went away and I got out in the open it would really get cold but I found myself to be pretty warm and not even having to bother with gloves.

Night Photography Run

Spring temperatures finally returned to the area, and even though the sun had set, I wasn't ready to be done enjoying the outdoors. So, I did the only logical thing, and grabbed the camera and went for a drive. Gas had just jumped up to $3.39/gallon so I wasn't looking to go terribly far so I just started heading east down Highway 150 through St. Joseph. I wound up making a loop across the eastern half of Champaign County and spent maybe 3 hours out there. I didn't take a ton of photos, but really just spent time enjoying the fact that I was able to be out enjoying the nighttime again without having to take a break to warm up every 5 minutes.

Below are a few of my favorites from the night. (March 12 2008)

Snowy University of Illinois

Another strong storm system trekked across southern Illinois tripping Winter Storm Warnings all across the Ohio Valley. Up north in central Illinois we were left with only a couple inches of the white stuff. After sitting around for a while watching the snow I decided to make use of myself and headed out to the University of Illinois campus to take in some of the scenery being covered with the at times, heavy snow. Of course, during most of the time I was walking around the snow had let up considerably. The winds of course, did not so it was again another brief outing. I started near the Engineering Quad north of Green Street.



Soon I ventured south a couple blocks to the intersection of Green Street and Wright Street. Below are a couple shots of the Alma Mater and Altgeld Hall. There was another photographer walking around the same area at this time.





After spending a chunk of time in this area I ventured further south to the Quad near the center of Campus. I ran into the other photographer in this area again, as we both nabbed a few shots of the Quad, and surrounding areas.

Eclipse Minus the Moon

With the lunar eclipse moving in over the area I had planned on doing some night photography tonight. Of course wouldn't you have it, a clipper system moved in earlier in the day dropping temperatures considerably. I had already been out once today, and now the temperature would be a good deal cooler, and I'd have no warm sun rays. The eclipse was set to peak around 9:30 CST so I headed out the door around 8:00.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to head so I just started driving east back in the direction of Homer Lake, where I had been earlier in the day. I found a decent spot with not too much light pollution and a decent view of the sky with some not so bland topography.

With the lens I'd be using, getting some really good shots of the eclipsing moon would be hard so I decided to enjoy the eclipse myself and let others capture photos, while I focused on getting some shots of the night sky in general. Temperatures now were near zero so everything had to be done in quick bursts between sitting in the car and warming up. I was wearing double layers of everything but that didn't seem to do a lot to combat the cold which was really biting.
The first two shots above are looking south down the country road that I had pulled off on south of Ogden. The constellation Orion is visible in the top shot.



The red glow in that top photo is actual from Danville, which is a good 30 miles away from this location, and not related to the sun. The Big Dipper is pretty evident in that same shot. Below that is another zoomed in shot of the Orion constellation. If it were warmer I'd have tried to get a little more artsy or tried more with Star trails.

This was about as bad a night for night photography as I can think of, unless maybe we added in some sideways precipitation. I couldn't take anymore of the cold and was thoroughly frozen through so once the eclipse hit it's peak I headed back home to warm up for the night. Congrats to everyone who nabbed actual shots of the Moon, unlike myself.

Snow Covered Homer Lake

After a very busy beginning to the week I was finally left with some down time Wednesday afternoon so I decided to head out and get some shots of the freshly fallen snow. I had not been over to the Homer Lake area in a while so I decided that'd be where I'd go first.

Light snow had fallen earlier in the morning and had left a nice dusting across the area, and with the always fluctuating temperatures the lake had no idea what it wanted to do with itself and was a mix of thick ice and flowing water.

After walking around the northern peninsula for a while I decided to venture down a trail leading around the southeast corner of the lake. There really wasn't a lot to see down on that end, and with temperatures hovering in the single digits I was ready for a break from the cold. The trail was frozen solid, and covered in a thin layer of slick snow and I almost bit it a couple of times which could have potentially been bad in a couplp\e of spots where the trail goes right along side the lake. Once I got back to the car I warmed up for a bit and then drove around to the west end of the lake where I found another trail and got walking again.