1 Adventure

Mexican Botanica

How about this photo, huh? There is so much going on that I don't know what exactly to look at first. This is a picture of a Mexican Botanica. It is a bit stylized as the content were moved from its original location in San Antonio, Texas. A botanica is a sort of herbal shop, offering all sorts of herbs, religious items, magic potions, good luck charms, statues, and just about anything that will cure your ills. They had love potions and prayers and much that is just plain strange. This particular store is now located in the Alameda Museum in downtown San Antonio. The original store (one of the last remaining as I understand) was closed after the owner passed away.

Looking Through An Old Barn Door

Took this picture this weekend. It was around the door of a really old barn my grandparents have. It was probably 80-90 years old. The light was coming through door in the barn wall and it was quite unique and beautiful. So I got the camera and snapped some pictures. That greenish flash thing in the center, I have no idea what it was, but it appeared in half the photos. Maybe it was a ghost? LOL, I think not, but Happy Halloween anyway!

Magical Bus Stop In The Woods of Georgia

How is this for odd? On a recent trip to Jasper, Georgia, some friends and I went hiking in the woods and found this Bus Stop right in the middle of the path. No roads, or indication a bus ever stopped here. So why did someone put a bus stop pole in the middle of the woods?

A Package From Africa

Really no explanation here, it was just a shot I took yesterday of an interesting package from Africa. I liked the simplicity of the shot and the very well wrapped nature of the package complete with wax seal.

I've Been Blog Tagged: 5 Things You Didn't Know About Ben Pfeiffer

I was recently tagged by my friend Debra Mastaler in a fun little game of blog tagging in which you tag someone and they have to pass on this little blog chain letter thing. Aren't we a bunch of internet geeks? :-) I think its a great way to build a few links and learn about more about the people you know. Since I won't be posting at the other place, I am going to post from my photography blog.

5 Things You Didn't Know About Ben Pfeiffer

1. I went to college to get a Bachelor of Science in Biology. I learned how to sequence DNA, cut things open, and took a keen interest in evolutionary biology studies. I wanted to eventually become a naturopathic doctor. I love biology passionately, but decided as a career I wanted to do other things.

2. My favorite book is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

3. I have a brother who lives in Beijing, China.

4. In college in order to make money the first couple years (I didn't have any support), I imported gem emeralds from Columbia and Thailand. I sold them to people in the local area, eBay, and gem dealers. It was incredibly successful the first couple years and then there was a flood of cheaper more lightly colored material coming from the Muzo mines in Columbia effectively drying my customer base. My friends and family still like to tell stories about this. It was a fun time.

5. I was very dyslexic growing up in time when they really didn't know much about it. I was subjected to a lot of tests, and for years wrote things backwards and had trouble sounding out words. I developed a good ear for sounds and visual cues to compensate but am a retard when it comes to foreign languages (except for spanish).

I think I am going to tag - Chris Boggs, Stephen Spencer, Jason Dowdell, Rob Kerry, and Barry Schwartz

Oil Drilling Pipe Caps - Left Over Trash From Oil Drilling

With all our dependence on foreign oil, it would only make sense to point out that there is quite a lot of drilling for oil that goes on within our own borders. Most are familiar with oil pumps and derricks and the associated oil fields that dominate the Texas landscape. But have you actually ever been to a drilling site?

Since I was very young I have observed oil companies drilling land down in South Texas in varying intensities. Its really quite an amazing sight sometimes to see them in the process of drilling, leveling off the ground, putting up massive derricks to drill deep under the water table to locate oil sand and pockets ready for the taking. They put up huge lights to light up the entire drilling area at night, so they can work around the clock to the get the task done. The logistics of drilling for oil are pretty complicated, and you can tell its a very male run operation. They come in mass application, setting up a drill site, littering on the drill site, drilling, setting up a christmas tree, and finally capping, or establishing the location as part of the pipeline. Then they leave... Its a quick affair.

The above pictures are Pipe Caps for oil pipeline they put in as they are drilling. I didn't know what these were at first, until I had to look them up later. There are piles of them where I was. I was attracted to the them for whatever reason and felt compelled to take a some pictures. Hope you enjoy. I plan to take more pictures in the next couple months from what I observe. Stay tuned. :-)

Whisker Trails

Took this shot this past weekend, and really liked how it came out. The longer exposure allowed the photo to catch the whisker trails as the cat moved its head forward and backward. Since the whiskers were bright white, they picked up exceedingly well! Have a few other shots, but this one made the cut for the best of the lot. If you look closely you can see impressions of the cats eyes.

Well, I have a lot of photography to get up, its been a big question of time lately to do so. It's spring to by the way, well at least the first part of summer here in Texas so always a great oppourtunity for weekend shotting. Too much maybe. Plus I have moved to a new place over the last couple of weeks, so you should see the boxes and bags I have of paper photo sleeves from the developers. My friend commented that I probably spent a college education at H.E.B getting photos printed. LOL, probably so and worth every people and once of education I got along the way. The backlog of photos is growing and I have resorted to scaling down my photo habits until I can properly post, enlarge, and print the shots. So expect more good stuff soon.

Camera Eating Cat

This image is quite large, it may cause a delay while image downloads. :-)

Malibu Beach, California (Corral Beach)

Spent the weekend in Los Angeles on the 23-25th of July. Had a great time for such a short trip, and got to see a lot of the area down there driving around during the day on the coast. Beaches are wonderful in California, I can kinda see why so many people want to live right on top of each other just to enjoy the weather and the scenery. But they can keep their real estate and gas prices, its about triple the rest of the country. Ekk!

I also got to check out the operations of my friends who own a very interesting harry potter wands shop. I love small business and learning about how people run their businesses, so it was neat to check out such a niche area. I also give them some free SEO and internet business consulting, to get things moving in the right direction.

Sylvester the Cat

This deserves a few minutes. This cat has more personality than most dogs or much less people I have meet. Very friendly, playful, yet territorial, and claws and fangs that make you want to duck for cover. I have no idea what type of cat this is, but if my dad likes this cat, then you probably will too. Came from nowhere and decided to take up residence at my Dad's place in San Antonio. A trip home won't be the same if I didn't see the cat guarding the drive way.

That Enchanted VW Hippie Van

Ok, this deserves a story, and I am sure there are many stories it could tell all itself if it could. This is probably one of my favorite black and white photos I have taken lately. It's actually two pictures pieced together in just the right way. I wanted those that saw it to get the full picture of van. I took this picture while on a spring break camping trip to Enchanted Rock Natural Area in Fredericksburg, Texas. We had just gotten back from camping and there was this VW van from the 60's among all the modern hondas and suv's. It seemed sort of out of place, or possibly right at home. There is some irony in the slogans, made me laugh and realize how cool it was. You can even see some of the trees in the background through the windows.

On Screen Poetry

Was playing with the words on my computer screen in the camera. Took this fairly quickly using the zoom lens from across the room.

Old Tire Rims

New Lens!

After all this time I finally bought a second zoom lens. I have been using the Rebel 2000 for about 3 years with the factory lens only for pretty much all the photography I do. Some people can't shot like that, others its no problem. Personally I think it makes your more creative if you have less equipment to worry about. Cause slinging a camera plus lens, equipment, tripod, film and filters, plus whatever else you got makes for a pain in the a** sometimes.
So I tried lenses some out, and while I was there I managed to find 3 new filters, including one UV and one Polarizing filter for the new zoom lens, and an orange filter (mid range filtering) to help bring out the contrast of black and white photos. I bought a 70-300 Quantaray Zoom Lens at a great price, making it very affordable, about 80 dollars less than a Canon lens of the same quality. Haven't tried it out yet, but I am sure I will.

Night Sky in Texas

Found this cool picture in a stack of some recent stuff. If you are wondering what the white curves are, they are trails of a star, and some camera magic to get the final product. However the orange trails at the bottom I am not sure what they are exactly, or what I did again to get that effect. This was a long exposure shot, the shutter was left open for about 3 seconds in the dark testing out Kodax's new high definition film.

North Dakota Morning

Took this near the border of North Dakota and South Dakota very early in the morning around 6am. We had been on the road for about 20 hrs straight and I was itching to get out and do something other than drive, even it was for a few minutes. There was not a whole lot to shot in this part of North Dakota, except miles and miles of rolling fields of grass and sunflowers, but this neat little lake presented a good oppourtunity to catch some reflections.

Weathered and Rusted

I can't get over the colors of paint coming from these photos. This is actually a picture of a old truck side that has been outside for about 20 years at the ranch. They make fun backgrounds, and someone said they could see Jesus in the rust square of one shot. Quick someone call KENS-5, I think I see it too! lol

Jesus Curve

Through the Rail

I really like this photo I took while on the beach. It took me about 30 minutes to line this shot up right, so that the guy in the water and the rail where just at the right place. I then laid my head of the chair while pressing the camera to my face to get a solid shot.

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Past Photos

This are some shots that have been in a pile on my desk or shelves from last year or before that. I like some of these for their odd way to make me look at them over and over. And were for the most part the most interesting things I could find to shot where ever I was.