Testing a New Lens

I just got a new lens for my Nikon D300. It's a zoom lens with a focal length of 42 mm to 450 mm. Here is the first picture that I took with it. Looks like I'm in a boat just off shore but I actually took the picture from my lake home across the lake from the house in the picture. The lens has image stabilization so that the picture is quite sharp even though the camera was being hand-held and shot at 1/60 of a second.


The next morning I was awakened at 5:15 a.m. by birds singing as loud as they could. So I got up to see what was going on! As I looked down the hall and through the patio door, I saw the full moon about to sink below the trees across the lake. The moon was actually above the tree line when I first saw it but as you can see from the photo that by the time I took the picture, it was already sinking behind the trees. Only 90 seconds had gone by. I did not realize that the earth was turning that fast. By the way, I hand-held the camera and shot at 1/8 of a second with an ISO set at 2000, and the picture is still fairly sharp with no noise. Normally I would not shoot a picture in that manner; I must have still been half-asleep.


Only 90 more seconds and I took another picture of the moon. See how quickly the moon is sinking below the trees and how much brighter the scene is from the rising sun.

Spring in Cental Minnesota

Sunday afternoon was such a nice day that Liz and I decided to take a walk and look for some spring flowers. We walked along this path and saw some rhododendrons on the right side.


Here is a close up of the rhododendron blossoms.


These flowers have leaves that look like tulip leaves, but the blossom is certainly not that of the traditional tulip blossom.

Take a look at these bright red tulips! They were growing everywhere in this section of the garden / park.

Here is a wider view of the red tulips growing in this field.


On our walk, Liz and I came upon a rock garden with all these different types of flowers. It was quite impressive!

Liz liked to pause during the walk in order to gaze at the many flowers.

Brenden's Final High School Concert

Liz and I travelled to River Falls, WI, to see grandson Brenden perform in his final concert, just before his high school graduation. Liz was quite happy to be there, as you can see in the photo.


Brenden's father, Rick, is happy with Brenden's performance.


Rick looks over to see what Kathy is doing.


Kathy is talking with her father.


Brenden waits for his turn to go on stage.

Brenden plays a guitar as well as a saxaphone.

Young Sons

John was about four months old when this picture was taken.


Another view of John.


John's mom decided to have a common (for that era) picture of her baby. With some creative cropping the picture can appear on this blog.


John's older brothers, Rob and Rick, join the photo shoot. Rick helps John maintain his balance.


Rob and Rick liked to climb into the playpen with their baby brother.


We rented a house on the southside of Minneapolis. On Sunday evenings we would have a supper of hot chocolate, toast, and cheese.

John was always a happy person, except when he first woke up. But once he got is bottle of warm milk, he was fine.

Rick and Rob liked looking at catalogues.