The finest junkyard ever!

Yesterday I headed on out to the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum at 2040 North Santa Fe Avenue in Vista, California.

Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum

View Larger Map

Museum is an understatement. I do believe it is the largest museum I have ever been to. The grounds just went on and on and on and on….
55 acres, or just 45 acres fewer than the San Diego Zoo.

The museum’s collection highlights the era from the 1890s to the early 1960s. This is not your typical museum because a more-than-expected number of equipment is in operating condition, and it was quite fun to see unique and even one-of-a-kind tractors roaming around the ground, as in the two pictures surrounding this paragraph. There are about 1,000 volunteers who maintain, restore, and operate the equipment in the collections.

Along with antique steam engines and farming equipment, there is a
N-scale model railroad exhibit (Short Track Railroad building; open every Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), a wagon exhibit (California Barn), farm equipment (Harvester Barn), a working blacksmith/wheelwright shop (blacksmithing is taught and demonstrated every Saturday, beginner through advanced), the Steam Tractor Barn, Steam Engine Row (I was mesmerized for over an hour), a mini train providing rides, Gas Engine Row, and a weaving exhibit using historic looms.

N-scale model railroad exhibit

1901 Ford Model A

Weaving a rug

There are over 20,000 items in the Museum’s collection, providing billions and billions and billions of opportunities to get unique photos.

I will have lots more pictures to share, and if YouTube will cooperate (keeps crashing this morning), even some cool videos.

If you love history and you’re ever in San Diego, put aside a day to visit the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Fly softly, and carry a big stick

Earlier this year I found an area where there were six pairs of nesting ospreys. I watched one pair building their nest and got some great pictures. Here are three:

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Trust us!

Many years ago I consulted with a company that was big on teamwork and team building. Each year there was a weekend conference where all sorts of team building took place. Sometimes we could opt out of individual exercises, like fire walking, which I opted out of because we had to sign an injury waiver. Ha!

One of my favorite activities was standing on a platform and falling backwards, trusting that ten of your co-workers standing below you were going to catch you.

(Yeah, right. I’m going to trust those jerks to catch me?)

This great blue heron reminds me of that activity:

Just fall backwards! Trust us! We’ll catch you!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Clear the runway!

I love pelicans. They look so gangly and awkward. Just like me!

When I came to San Diego in April 1993, pelicans were nowhere to be found. About five years ago I noticed that pelicans were appearing in San Diego. Lots of them! Huge numbers of them. I thought, “It’s about time pelicans discovered how nice San Diego is but I wonder what took them so long.”

Several months ago an article in the newspaper confirmed that San Diego was being overrun with pelicans and no one really understood why. Doesn’t matter to me…. as long as they are here and let me take photographs of them.

Here is my #1 favorite, so far:

Coming in for a landing

The sad thing about my #1 penguin picture is that I took it with a Point & Shoot camera several years ago. The camera was set on its “home inspection setting,” so all I have is picture that is 800 x 712 pixels, quality enough for the Internet and nothing else. 😦

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Dancing with the….. uh, birds?

Contrary to what it looks like, these two are not dancing:

Instead, I was out early one morning taking pictures of birds. I couldn’t get anything better than a butt picture. I would walk towards the birds, hoping they would fly off left or right. But nooooooooooooooooo! They turn around and take off directly away from me, providing me with great pictures of bird butts.

Solution? A young kid and his mom were also walking around the lake. I talked to mom and asked if it was okay if said kid walked around behind the birds and then kind of walked the birds towards me. Kid was happy as a lark, so to speak. I gave mom $5 for said kid’s manual labor. Hmmm. Wait! $5 for 10 minutes. Wow! I’m in the wrong profession!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Just one little kiss….. purty please?

I’ll leave it to avian101 to identify the birds.

Just one little kiss…. Purty please?

Ha! You missed!

Not in public! Let’s get a room.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Interesting, but not me

I spend 30 minutes each day, each program, studying Adobe Photoshop CS6, CorelDRAW x6, and Corel Photo-Paint X6. Photo-Paint is where I recently learned how easy it is to create animated GIFs.

One photographic technique that seems to be all the rage right now is HDR (High Dynamic Range). HDR takes advantage of all the things that digital cameras and photo editing software programs can do to create some interesting images. Personally, I don’t like 98.27810287523478734821% of the HDR work that is out there. I think people take it to the extreme which then simply creates art, and it’s an art that I don’t really like. I don’t like Thomas Kinkaid‘s work either.

The essence behind HDR means that I should be able to improve pictures without overcooking them by going to the extreme. However, HDR typically requires that you take at least three pictures, one exposed properly, one underexposed by one stop, and one overexposed by one stop. Some people take up to nine pictures at various exposures. The theory is that each exposure captures different information which is then combined to create one picture with the best of all exposures.

What happens if you only have one picture, like from the days before HDR? Funny you should ask…. I was wondering the exact same thing!

I took one picture and then overexposed and underexposed it using Photoshop CS6 to create the set of pictures that I didn’t originally have to start with. I didn’t know whether or not this tactic would lead to anything interesting, but I think it did, not that I necessarily like it. Fine tuning might allow me to really improve some of my older pictures.

Following are the set of pictures I used for this experiment. Remember that I only had the first picture to start with, creating the other four pictures from the first picture directly in Photoshop CS6.

Properly exposed

Underexposed one stop

Underexposed two stops

Overexposed one stop

Overexposed two stops

The underexposures allow you to obtain more detail in the bright areas. Look at the silver sphere in the upper right corner. See the difference?

Overexposures allow you to obtain more detail in the shadow areas. Look at the two plants in the lower left corner.

Combining all the pictures allows one to get a more even spread of light throughout the picture. Taking it to the extreme creates surreal pictures like what Photoshop CS6 gave me:

Finished product created by combining the above pictures

Now what I want to learn is how to control what Photoshop does while combining the many images because the finished product there is too surreal for my tastes. Interesting, but not me.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around….

….does it make a sound?

What if a public event has a “free expression zone” for protestors but there are no protestors, do you hear a message?

That was at the entrance to the San Diego County Fair, and with 1.5 million people expected to attend this year, you would think at least one protestor free expressor would be in the protest zone free expression zone protesting expressing something, like maybe aliens at the Fair, or pornography at the Fair, or…. or…. or…. So many things to express. Maybe they were abducted by those aliens?

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

I’m thinking that if you have a dog, you don’t need this

It pays to always have my Canon 550D just inches from my hand so that as I’m driving, I can snap a picture, like this one:

Really? There were no dogs in line to get themselves washed, but I do hope this business succeeds. I’ll have to check a few times later in the summer to see if all those sandy, salty dogs from Dog Beach just down the road go here to get all cleaned up.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Ah to be young again….

When I was doing so much flying and traveling (1994 to 2001; I quit on 9/11/01 — another story), I discovered that the upscale hotels have a lot of interesting art. Here is one that I discovered recently right here in San Diego:

Funny thing is that I took the picture but have no idea where I was at the time, just the general location, which doesn’t really help me since the general location is about fifty square miles. Oh, well.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!