The Aurora Ice Bar is located in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska.  It is just a little bit south of the Arctic Circle.  The resort is open year round for your vacationing pleasure.  They say it’s a great place to see the Aurora Borealis.

The Aurora Ice Bar is kept at about 20 degrees inside a specially designed building, so you can even enjoy it in the summer time.  We were there in August, but the nasty warm weather never bothered us.

The entire bar and stools are made of ice.

The bar is open during the tours, and many of the tourists tried their Apple-tinis.  You can see the glasses – they’re also carved from ice – lined up on the shelves behind the bartender.

The building is filled with ice sculptures.  They have a xylophone made of ice that is playable.  There is a workshop at one end of the building where you can watch current sculptures being made.  The artists there have sculpted jousting knights, ice fish, and the Coca-Cola polar bears.  They never seem to run out of ice up there.

We were only there for an hour because we had lots of other things to see, but we did look around at the two ice bedrooms, complete with an ice outhouse.  (No, the outhouse isn’t ever actually used.)

As you can see from these photos, I was in snapshot mode.  The bar wasn’t on our original schedule, so I was just carrying the camera and one lens.  I was really set back because I didn’t have my flash.  I hope to get back there someday with better preparation.

So, if you’re ever up near the Arctic Circle, looking for a drink, stop by for lots of fun.  Tell them I sent you….

http://photoshopworld.com/

The 3 days of classes are grouped into tracks focusing on lighting, photography, lightroom, creative design, video, the photo business and of course, Photoshop.  The workbook itself is the size of the phonebook and contains the material from every single course and session.  Since there are over 100 classes, you can’t hit them all—trust me I’ve tried.

Each year they have a theme, last year it was fashion photography, but this year in DC in an election year…it’s a new party!  Oh yes there are parties at PSW.  Just what you need after 12 hours of classes!

I can’t begin to tell you how much you will learn by attending.  My head hurts for days just trying to remember all the tips, tricks and cool techniques. To top it all off there is the Expo floor.  Industry leading vendors such as B&H, Midwest Photography Exchange, Wacom Tablets, Epson Printers, MPIX printing (they print all my images), Nikon and Adobe all have booths with great deals.  Last year the Westcott Lighting people brought in live models, and the crowds were 7 deep trying to snap the interesting costumes and makeup. 

It is not inexpensive, that is true, but it certainly delivers in value.  The longer you wait the more the cost goes up.  Come see us in DC this year, heck, come and visit.    This will be my 6^th PSW and I learn more each time.

The beginning of the trip was for family history purposes.  My mother wanted some photos of places she lived when she left Wisconsin.  New London, CT, had changed quite a bit, but we found a couple of the houses, including the one I spent my first months in.  It isn’t a special image, but, since the genealogy programs of today allow you to import photos, it will find a purpose.

The photo theme of the trip became buildings.

As you can tell from the image, the clouds were gray and low.  If you get into this situation, you want to minimize the amounts of sky included in the photo.  This can be a good time to focus on parts of the building you find interesting.

We moved up the coast to Cape Cod for a couple of days.  The Cape has lots of scenery to keep a camera busy and mine was.  I enjoyed both sunrises and sunsets, and the good thing about Cape Cod is you catch both with beautiful water scenes.  We found one of the famous beach houses facing due East towards Martha’s Vineyard.  A small spit of land allowed me to catch a shot without getting wet.

One evening, I was out by Yarmouth as the sun was setting.  There are lots of small inlets that shelter the boats.  The warm light from the golden hour gave the scene a great look.  The photo may seem cliché to some, but I really like this one since it captured the light the way I saw it.

Of course, when we got up to Boston, my buildings theme got more difficult.  Those are some big buildings!  How do you capture those?  Skylines are always nice.  You can take vertical panoramas, like the church I posted in Tuesday’s blog.  Or just shoot part of the building….how about a photo of a building, reflected in another building?

All in all, it was a good workout for me.  We had a great time, and I got lots of buildings.  Of course, that isn’t the only subject my camera found.  I ended up with hundreds of photos that weren’t buildings, including this cute, little girl having fun on her trike.  You need to get out there, too.

A phone camera discussion on a photoblog?!  Sure; why not?  Phone cameras are ubiquitous.  Everyone has one, and they are using them.  Probably including you.  I was a late-comer to using my camera phone and still don’t use it often.  However, I’d rather use a Droid camera than no camera.

For many folks, phone cameras are their only cameras.  Unfortunately, most of these photos never see the light of day.  People rarely download them and everything is lost the phone is damaged or when it’s time for a new phone.  Don’t let this happen to you – download your photos.  Then, you can put them into a photo-management program like Lightroom, Aperture, or whatever else you prefer.

Today’s phone cameras are actually pretty good.  They sport higher resolution than the first digital cameras of just a decade ago.  Hold them steady, in good light, and you have a camera that doesn’t require a separate bag; keeps you inconspicuous in a crowd; and you can keep in touch with the family at the same time.

Like all tools, you need to understand their limitations.  Their sensors are very small, which means you’re going to have some noise unless there is lots of light.  They have wide lenses, making images with a wide depth of field – not the best for portraits with blurred backgrounds.   Since they have fixed lenses, they can only zoom digitally, which reduces the image data.  And – oh, no! – they produce JPGs.

Experiment to learn your phone camera’s characteristics.  My Droid camera seems to be a little contrasty; noisy in low light; and always has a wide depth of field.  I adjust my shooting to minimize its disadvantages.

Since abstracts are more about shapes and colors, you can shoot without worrying too much about the disadvantages of your phone camera.  In this shot, there are windows from three different eras.  The wide depth of field keeps everything sharp, and the nice light just after sunrise gave me some interesting color.

The distortion of the wide angle lens and the digital noise keep me from shooting many portraits.  There are times, however, when the phone camera is all I have.  You have to take the shot.

I tend to shoot snapshots of things to come back to – you know, when I have a “real” camera.  I don’t have a real good track record, though, of always returning, and, even if you do go back to a previous scene, it will probably look different than what originally caught your eye.  Which means I may work on an image I’ve taken on the Droid to enhance it some.  Camera phone photos deserve post-processing, too, ya know.

Here’s an example of what I mean – this image is right out of the camera.  It’s in Boston, where the modern Hancock Building sits right next to an old church.  I like the way they designed the building.  It reflects the old, and the reflections reduce the impact of its size, so close to the much smaller church.

The wide angle lens distortion is visible in the slanted buildings.  I don’t like the fluorescent signs.  The building is in shadow, so it’s a little dark and a little too blue.

When I took it into Lightroom, I was able to crop out the splotch of light on the sidewalk and one of those signs.  That helps, but I had to lose the edge of the Hancock Building.  I warmed up the color balance and put some more light into the shadows.

In Photoshop, I cloned out the signs, so my new crop gives me back the edge of the building, giving more dimensionality and more reflections.  I adjusted the perspective to reduce the building lean.

I wouldn’t trade my Nikons for the Droid camera, but being caught with only the Droid is not a reason to despair.  You can do just fine with your camera phone.  Your post-processing skills can help enhance the results.  This last photo is a panoramic merge of three photos.  As we always say, learn your tools and go have fun.

I had to make sure that nothing else would be scheduled for that weekend so I blocked off the time on the calendar on her iPhone. Big Mistake!  When they say “they like surprises”—don’t buy it. I got hounded, harassed, wheedled, coaxed, and begged to reveal the secret destination.  I tried in vain to throw her off the scent.  Hints of Charlottesville, the beach and other locations in the area, fell like the leaves dropping from the fall trees.  “What if I don’t have the right clothing?”—Don’t worry, I said, there is nothing else around.   Nope, not good enough, finally she wore me down—good thing it wasn’t classified information.

After spending the day in Antietam, we wandered the six miles to Boonsboro.  Ms. Robert’s is really to be commended.  The Inn is lovely. She kind of has a monopoly on business in the little town though.  Her husband owns and operates the bookstore and her son runs Vesta, the town’s pizza restaurant.  Small towns do have their challenges as well.  When we asked our very young server, which she recommended, the lasagna or the spaghetti, she replied—“I don’t really know about this I-talian food”. The lasagna was fine.

Now because I had done my homework, I know that Ms. Roberts’ latest book was the first of a new trilogy which was set in the very Inn in the town itself.  I arranged for an autographed copy to be placed in the room.  The original painting for the cover hangs in the front hallway.

The most amazing thing about the place, was not the lovely antiques, the beautiful library and fine breakfast, nope it was the fixtures in the bathrooms.  Every review of the place mentions them, but until you experience them, you have no idea.   Let’s just say that we are saving our pennies to buy our own.

And the seat is heated...

On Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast, we headed out of town to visit the original Washington Monument; not the more famous one in DC, but the one erected in 1827 by the townspeople themselves. This simple stone structure has an incredible view as it sits atop South Mountain.  It was a gorgeous day and a much needed, very delightful weekend, and all less than two hours away.  Take time and explore the area around you—there are plenty of local treasures hidden in plain sight.