Road Trip

Road Trip

Whoo! That picture looks like a road trip - pavement stretching as far as the eye can see, overpasses periodically punctuating the desolate landscape, all things draped in the yellow glow of a sunset. For me, that was last weekend! I'm blessed with such a great life!

My family and I didn't just drive around aimlessly, however. No, we had a definite goal. We traveled the six hours to Fort Worth, Texas to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Our church's youth group planned the trip, and we decided to make it a family expedition. We stayed with our wonderful grandparents, who properly spoiled us (thanks Chi Chi and Nana!). While it was only a quick weekend trip, it was a welcome relief to the monotony of school, not to mention a wonderful chance to see an important piece of history - especially since the scrolls are typically kept in Israel. 

Faithful readers may remember how I went on vacation in August and took lots of double- and triple-exposure photographs, where two or three photos are merged into one. I called that post Sabbatical Doubles, in case you want to go back and look. In my mind a road trip presents a perfect chance to get artsy with my camera, and this trip was no exception. Sitting in the back seat, my camera pointed out the window at the wonders passing by, I snapped away. Here are some of the results:

Okay, I compiled a few photos in Photoshop for this one; it's not straight
 out of the camera like the others. But I like it!

Reminds me of Genesis 1:29:
"Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed
 that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit
yielding seed...'

Hydrant Ring

And if those weren't surreal enough, check out the next pictures. Last vacation I stopped snapping when the sun went down. Boy, did I miss out! You can do fun things with a camera at night! Take a look:

Let There Be Neon Light

Web Tunnel

Wave

Southwestern Lights

Finding Neon
See the purple light? That's actually from a travel DVD player,
playing the jellyfish scene of Finding Nemo!

Emerald City

Light Up the Night

Faux Sine

These were fun. I developed several different techniques for moving my camera to create interesting light patterns: bobbing it to music, spinning it around, and allowing the car bumps to direct the lens.

Another interesting fact about these photos is they are the first I have shot in the RAW image format. I had been shooting jpegs, mainly because I previously had no way of editing RAW files. Now that I have added Photoshop to my arsenal of creative tools, I now have RAW capabilities. Just with these photos I am convinced that shooting RAW really is all that it is cracked up to be. The quality of the images just seems better  - and they were even easier to edit. The only drawback is the increased file size. I shot nearly 2GB of pictures on our jaunt, and that was only about 250 pictures! Shooting jpegs would have hardly made a dent in 2GB. I guess there are pros and cons to everything. I think I see an external hard drive in my future...