So this past weekend, my girlfriend and I spent Saturday at Thunder over Louisville, which was held on the Ohio river.  We had planned this trip a couple of months ago, but couldn't get a hotel room anywhere near Louisville due to them all being booked up for this festival.

I did some searching around on Flickr and on the web for information and pictures of Thunder and while I found a lot of air show and fireworks pictures, I couldn't a whole of useful information about the event.  I searched many times through the official Thunder website, but I couldn't find a map of the event.  I think it would have been helpful if a map of the festival area was available for download.  We were able to find the lawn viewing and food areas by following the crowds, but it would have been very helpful if we could have downloaded something before driving down to Louisville.

And now a few words about properly packing for the weather.  We checked the weather when we left and didn't see a problem with temps in the mid 50's in Louisville.  So, I brought a windbreaker and wore a short sleeved shirt. When we arrived in Louisville, it felt a lot chiller than the mid 50's.  We had totally overlooked the   wind coming off of the river.  Yes, it was probably about 10 degrees colder where we picked our spots close to the river.  Let me put it this way, the wind was brutal and kept us cold throughout the day.

The overcast skies also prevented the air show from being a normal air show.  The planes were unable to do any stunts and could only do slow speed passes.  The other downside to the overcast and cloudy skies also meant that the modern planes blended in very well with the dark clouds.  It made photographing them very difficult as they all appeared as silhouettes in the sky.  I think I have some decent pictures of the jets and WW2 warbirds, but I'm just not certain. All in alll, it was great seeing an F-15, F-16, F22, C-130, C-5,
 C-17, A-10, B-2, a few Corsairs, P-38 and so much more.  The coolest part of the air show was seeing the F-22 and P-51 perform several formation flybys.

The fun part of the evening started for me after the sun went down.  I was anxiously awaiting the start of the fireworks show.  Before the start of the fireworks, I moved closer to the water to get better pictures of the fireworks.  Did I mention I was cold sitting on the lawn?  I was much colder down by the river and was seriously questioning my sanity in moving down the river's edge.  After looking at my pictures, yeah the cold was worth it !

Looking through all of the pictures online led us to believe there would only be fireworks shot off from the bridge and from the barges in the middle of the road. What we didn't see were the barges near the Indiana side of the river.  Both barge locations and the bridge set their fireworks off at the same time.  When I started shooting and seeing the results, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing in the screen.  This was by far the best fireworks display I have ever seen.

Despite the crummy weather, I think we had a good time and are already looking forward to a possible return visit next year.  The wonderful fair food (loved the tacos!) played a part in making a cold day much better.  How about some pictures?

I took about 150 shots of the fireworks and of the planes that were lit up and flying in formations (and one plane was dropping fireworks) prior to the start of the fireworks show.  I was able to make some good light trail photographs thanks to the well lit up planes.  I'll have to process and post those pics soon.  All of the fireworks pictures were shot in manual mode and I used the Bulb mode on the Canon 30d for the shutter speed, the aperture was set to f11 and the ISO was set to 100.

Here are a few pics:

Blue Memorial

Blue Memorial
Originally uploaded by indykaleu


This is a shot of the Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial along the canal in Indianapolis. I have made several shots of this memorial in the past and haven't done much to those pictures in terms of processing.

This time I wanted to do something different and while editing the RAW image, I decided to tweek the white balance and see what I could get with the image.

The above image is the result of changing the white balance to Tungsten and further 'cooling' the picture by also changing the temperature of the image.

I'm very pleased with the photo and the experimentation in processing the image.

December in review and a look forward

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted here and a lot has happened, especially in the month of December.  Beyond the obvious (Christmas), I went zip lining with my girlfriend at Rawhide Ranch in Brown County, Indiana.  The zip line operator was Team Effect and it was a blast!  It was our first time zip lining and we did 7 hops across the ranch.  Later that night we spent some walking around the small town of Nashville, Indiana where I made this picture:

The above picture was taken along State Road 135 and shows some of the local shops, their Christmas lights and going through the picture was a large pickup with a lot of lights.  A different take on Christmas lights I think.  I almost forgot to mention all of this was my birthday weekend.  We also stayed overnight at the Brown County Inn.  It was a great weekend and I had a lot of fun.  After coming back to Indy, we went to the Pacers Fan Jam where this picture was made:

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2011 Indiana Pacers Pacemates!  After the fan jam was over, we went to Monument Circle for a meetup of the Indy Flickr meetup group. Unfortunately only two additional members showed up for the meetup.  However, I did get some great shots of the Monument Circle lights and some very different photographs than my previous attempts of the lights.  Here is an example:

So, it was a busy weekend and was by far the best birthday weekend I have had.  No complaints here. In addition to the weekend in Brown County, we saw the Guns n Roses concert at Conseco.  I was a little concerned about how the music would sound with the new lineup ('new' even though most of the 'new' members have been in the lineup for several years), but they delivered in a big way. Close your eyes and all of the classic GNR songs sounded great.  I didn't know much about their Chinese Democracy album and wouldn't have recognized the songs if my girlfriend hadn't told me when they were playing. I may post more about the concert later, but suffice to say, a fantastic 2 hour + show!   Speaking of Rene, how about a great picture of her?:

We ended up the month with a fun NYE party at her friend's house and thankfully we made it home in one piece!

2012 is shaping up to be a very busy year.  Later this month, Rene and I will be volunteering at the NFL Experience for Super Bowl 46 here in Indiana.  We also plan on attending as many of the related events as possible, weather and traffic permitting.  February brings us Valentines Day (our first one together!) and the Van Halen concert and then in March we will be volunteering at the Big 10 basketball tournament and I will working the Div 3 NCAA swimming championships.  Whew, what a way to start the year!

More to come....

Hooters Greenwood

Hooters Greenwood
Originally uploaded by indykaleu
Time for a little change up from the night time and long exposure pictures? How about some pictures from Hooters? I was at the Greenwood Indiana location on December 1st for their 2012 calendar signing event. These three beautiful women are all in the autographed calendar now hanging on my wall. I made these photographs with my Canon 30d and the Vivitar DF-383 flash.

Here is a full body shot of the women...why oh why didn't I ask them to stand in front of the table?  Arrgh.  Oh well, they will be at the downtown Indy Hooters next week.  Perhaps a better picture will come out of that date. 

 

I normally don't like to be in front of the camera, but I think I made a good exception on this night. 

Via Flickr:
I was at the Greenwood Indiana Hooters on Thursday for their 2012 calendar signing event.