David Neikirk

Black Friday - Madness & Mayhem for the Crazy Brave

Black Friday was madness and mayhem but I had fun. Watching people fight over towels and pillows what could be more entertaining. I have only done Black Firday at Wal-Mart I have never had the desire to camp out in a Best Buy parking lot. I just enjoy meeting and talking with people who are also brave enough (or dumb enough) to go out on Black Friday and be a part of the mayhem. For the most part the people are all just out for a good deal but some like me are just out to be a part of something crazy and exciting. As a kid I grew up standing in line at Kings Island waiting for a ride on a roller coaster. Black Friday is much the same except the line doesn’t move for hours and then all of a sudden the clock strikes twelve and in 30 seconds the ride is over. If you are lucky you come off the ride with a wireless inkjet printer or f you are super lucky an X-box 360. Sometimes you come away with only having the opportunity to have met someone you would not have otherwise met. I never got the name of the man or the woman next to me in line but I found out that my daughter is friends with this man’s granddaughter and that the woman next to me has to children who she home schools.  They used to be at a Christian school in Fairborn but now she is homeschooling them. She is divorced and living with her mom, both she and her mom are doing college online and they wear out their printers printing their books for their classes. Stand next to a person for 2 hours and you can learn a lot about them if you just listen.
    It is fun to watch people go crazy over cheaply priced stuff. People stood in line for hours to buy movies for $1.96. It was so crazy people were filling shopping carts with movies and finding a less busy spot in the store to look through the 100 or so movies they threw in their cart without looking at them. Then they would walk away with less than 10 that they truly wanted. The other 90 or so left in the cart for someone else to deal with. Yes, I was guilty of this but just to be straight about it, I wasn’t the only who did this and it was from the others that I got the idea. I did at least return the ones that I didn’t want back to where the movies came from.
    My wife thought I was dumb to go out, she stayed home and relaxed in my La-Z-Boy while I took my 3 daughters out for the fun. When she found out that I was writing about it, she now thinks I am crazy. Crazy maybe, dumb I don’t think so but everyone has a right to their own opinion.
    As I said earlier I have only done Black Friday at Wal-Mart I have never had the desire to camp out in a line for 24 hours to get a great deal on a TV. I have often thought about doing an all night shopping trip going from store to store and mall to mall but have never done it yet. I guess my desire to sleep is stronger than my desire to stay out all night shopping, who knows what the future holds. My oldest daughter recently wrote a paper at school depicting me as a person who lives on the cuff making decisions on a whim so you just never know next year you may see me at four in the morning drinking a Pepsi and hanging out with the crowd at Old Navy or American Eagle, just to save a buck on a pair of jeans. I guess I have a reputation to live up to with my daughter!
   

Grace Covenant Church

To Write or Not To Write is still the Question!

Well I am still not 100% sure what I am going to do about this blog but I want to fill everyone in on my job situation. As I mentioned in the last post I was recently laid off after coming back from a 4 1/2 month long trip doing missions work in Africa. At first I was disappointed and upset but after having some time to think about it, I realize that it is a blessing. I had not been happy with my job for a long time and wanted to quit anyway. With the economy like it is I was afraid to quit, I always thought any job was better than no job. The problem with that way of thinking is that it is just plain not true. Now that I am unemployed I can see that I was wrong, I can now look for a job that I will enjoy. It might not be easy but some times you have to work hard for the things that you enjoy. Some one thought that I was really down in the dumps after reading the last post and I just want to ensure all of you who read this that I am not. I am looking forward to what adventure God has in store for me at this time. Hopefully it will involve photography.

Photoman

To Write or Not To Write, That is the Question!

Well I guess it (the title) isn't really a question it just sounded like a good title. It has been a long while since I made a real blog post on this blog. I have been doing a lot of traveling over the past 5 or 6 months and while doing so I have been keeping another blog. If you would like to see where my family and I have been and why please feel free to check out this blog http://empoweringghana.blogspot.com. Anyway this will help you understand why I have not given much attention to this blog lately. I must confess that when I started this blog it was just for fun and I had no real intention of doing much with it. After a while I decided that I wanted to try and do a daily blog, so I started writing and posting photos to this blog on a daily basis. Well this took much of my time and often I didn't really know what to talk about so some of the posts were (in my opinion) lame. I decided that since the blog was taking so much time to just do it on a weekly basis. As you can see that has not worked to well, not doing it daily it became very easy to forget to do it and my blog has fizzled out. I really enjoyed the blog and I am thinking about doing it again on a daily basis but am still not sure if I am up to it. Tonight however I just felt like writing so I decided to write a post, unfortunately there will not be a photo to accompany this post. If you go to my other blog that I mentioned you will see that I have been in Africa doing some missions work, that is all I will say about it if you want to see more and learn more you will have to visit http://empoweringghana.blogspot.com. Anyway we had to leave Africa about 6 weeks earlier that we had planned. When I got home I asked when I could start back and was told anytime I wanted but if I came back earlier than I had planned, everyone in my department would have to take time off unpaid to make up the difference of my salary for those 6 weeks. So not to hurt everyone else I decided to try and stay off as much of the time that I could. When a friend of mine found out I was home he said I could go to Florida and stay in his condo on Siesta Key, his treat. Well I was off work and I had promised my son that I would try and take him to the beach when I got home so I said okay. We left on Saturday, on Friday I got a call from work telling me I no longer had a job. I was also told that since I was still on leave I did not qualify for the severance package that they were offering to the employees that were being laid off. What a way to treat a person, the people who told me I could come back whenever I wanted were the same ones who told me that it would hurt everyone in my department, they were also the same ones who called me two weeks later to tell me I no longer had a job. It makes a person wonder if they knew then they were going to lay me off and was their way of tricking me into staying on my leave of absence so they wouldn't have to give me my severance pay. Well I don't want to dwell on this any longer so I am going to close this post.

Photoman

Oh Yeah this is gonna hurt!

It has been a while since I made a post on here, to be honest I have been so busy getting ready for our trip to Africa that I forgot about this blog. I was Skypeing a with my friend Jeff in London tonight and he bought up one of my other blogs http://empoweringghana.blogspot.com and then he asked about this blog. Since he reminded me about it I figured I may as well make a post. So here it is, earlier this year we went to the zoo and while at the children's petting area, we saw this scene. The 2 goats were really going at it, almost gave me a headache just watching them bunt heads.

Photoman

Our Upcoming Missions Opportunity

Click on the top picture to learn more about out trip.

Photoman

Test Video

Dragon Flight

I shot this image while at Myrtle Beach this summer. It was our first time visiting Myrtle Beach and we had a wonderful time. The weather was hot but it was nice to be at the beach every day. One day I was walking along the beach when I came upon this kite. It was flying high and when I followed the string to see who was flying it I found it tied to a post. The colors looked awesome against the blue sky so I thought I would share it with my followers.

Photoman

Music before Photoshop

I thought I would share this image with you so that you can see what the image looked like before I took it into Photoshop and worked on it. I love it both ways but I often like to have my images look more like a work of art than just a great photo. I wanted to give you a chance to see what I started with as well as the end result which I submited in my last post.





Photoman

Music after Photoshop

It has been a while since I have posted anything to my blog. I apologize for this and I hope to get back to posting things on a more consistent basis. This image is one I made of my 3 girls standing in a field playing music. I wanted it to look more like a painting or color drawing than a photograph so I took it into photoshop and this is what I ended up with. I am very pleased with the result, I hope you like it to.

Photoman

Test

Does anybody know what this guy is?

Thanks Earl for identifying this guy.

According to what Earl found this is an Assassin Bug, that may explain why he was behind me when we found him. I think he was sizing me up for the kill.

Photoman

We found this gut the other day and at first sight we thought it was a spider. Upon closer inspection we realized it only had 6 legs not 8. I have never seen a bug like this before that day so I decided to bring him home to get some pictures of him. My wife was not happy but she was just as interested as I was. She just didn't want me to bring him home. I didn't have my macro lens so I didn't have a choice if I wanted to get a good close photo so I found cup and a Kleenex tissue and a hair band and brought him home. Long story short I got this photo and was hoping that someone might know what kind of bug it is. If anyone knows I would love to hear from you.

Photoman

Blue Tailed Skink

I am not sure what this guy is really called but I do know that he or she is a Skink. I call it a blue tailed skink for obvious reasons but I don't remember what it actually is. If anyone knows please let me know. I found this guy at the same castle where I saw the dragonfly. Unfortunately he is not eating any bugs or anything exciting, I hope you are not too disappointed Earl. Lunch hour must have been over or maybe the dragonfly was diner and I scarred it away, oops!

Sorry Todd, still no pictures of the castle of the campground but maybe you will find your way there yourself. They use the castle for weddings maybe you should check it out. Matter of fact they were setting up for a wedding while we were there. Really cool location for a wedding the two teenage girls I was with both said that is where they want to get married. I guess it is very romantic. If you look at the dragonfly post there are links to the website for the state parks that show some pictures of the parks but they do not do the parks justice.

Photoman

Dragonfly

I took this photo of a dragonfly while we were on vacation at Myrtle Beach State Park in South Carolina. We were visiting Huntington Beach State Park which has its own castle. It isn't a castle like you are probably familiar with from Europe, it is a Moorish style castle named Atalaya. It was very interesting to visit and while walking through the courtyard I saw this dragonfly who decided to pose for me on this wooden bench. This is as close as he would allow me to get before he took off. I highly recommend Myrtle Beach State Park for those of you who like camping.

Photoman

Panoramic 6

O.K. here is my latest installment in my Panoramic series. It is not the best one that I have done but I really like it. This image once I stitched it together measures just over 11" high by just over 85" long. I would love to print this image to see it but it would be over 7 feet long so I probably won't print it. I was in a very big hurry when I shot this and I didn't have a tripod so I had to hand hold the camera for 9 exposures. Since I was in a hurry I neglected to hold the camera in a vertical position. This would have allowed the image to be taller but it would then have added probably at least another 6 exposures to get this view. Anyway if you look at this image at full resolution you can see a couple of places that the stitching is not perfect, but I only spent about 30 minutes on this image and I will probably not spend any more time as I don't intend to print it. I did want to share it with my blog viewers, I hope you like it. Oh yeah, this is the Cumberland Gap and you are actually looking at 3 different states in this image. Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Most of what you are seeing is Tennessee to the left of the image is Virginia and to the right is Kentucky. I was standing in Virginia when I shot this image. As we walked back to the car we came across the Virginia/Kentucky state line. My girls were excited to be able to stand in 2 states at the same time.



Photoman

I shot this image while we were camping at Caesars Creek State Park, I was practicing shooting from different perspectives. This is one of my favorite shots. I really like the rocks in the foreground the angle of the dock in the image and the vast space of the blue sky.



Happy Independence Day,



Photoman

Stainless Steel

I was asked to shoot for the first annual Friends of Israel banquet in Dayton Ohio a while back, while I was there I came across this image. I call it stainless steel because that is what it is a stainless steel table top with really cool lines swirled into the steel from a grinder then polished to a nice shine.

On another note, I am sorry that I have not been keeping up with my blog. I am really thinking that I am going to have to go back to a daily blog, otherwise I just don't think about it enough and I don't keep up with it. So don't be surprised to see a daily blog again in the future.

Photoman

Rainbows of Rock, Tables of Stone.

I mentioned in a past blog post that I was submitting some of my photos to a publisher for a possible book cover. I am excited to say that they chose one of my images for the cover of their book and it is available for purchase. It is only being sold in stores locally but it can be ordered by anyone via the web or at your local bookstore. If you click on the title of this blog it will take you to the publishers website where you can see the book and order it at a 30% discount until Sept. 1st. I am not the author of the book I just have one of my photos on the cover.

Photoman

Summer Wishes

I couldn't wait to post this image, I really like it a lot. It could have something to do with the model as I am partial to her but I just love this image. This is not the same dandelion from yesterdays image but it was one of the ones that I found that day. It was not quite as big as a baseball but it was very close in size. I call this image Summer Wishes or Wish Upon. I hope you enjoy it.

Photoman

Dandelion Sunday

I took my camera to church with me this past Sunday as after the morning service we have our small group fellowship time and this was our last official time to get together before we take our summer break. I wanted to get a few photos of the group as we had a cookout. While we were checking out the church garden I found this dandelion flower that had gone to seed. I have seen many dandelion balls in my time but never any this big before. This things was the size of a baseball, I had to take a few shots of it. So I thought I would share this one with my loyal followers. I have another image from the set that I will share with you later.

Photoman

Barkcamp State Park

I am sorry that it has been a while since I have posted in my blog. I have been extremely busy with family lately. We recently had our first camping trip of the summer and we camped at Barkcamp State Park, another park in the Ohio State Parks. It was not our first choice it was pretty much our only choice. We waited to long to make our reservations and being a holiday weekend we were lucky to get a reservation. This old barn is in the park and it houses the nature center. This is probably the most scenic part of the park as the barn is surrounded by a couple of very old log cabins, a well and an old outhouse. I hope you enjoy the picture, I will try and blog again soon since I have not blogged in a while.

Photoman

We Tried

My friend Earl and I tried to get some photos of Bald Eagles this week but we couldn't get close enough to get a good shot of them. I will not give up but I don't know if I will be able to find a way to get closer to their nest. They have built their nest in a restricted area and it is being heavily patrolled as many have already tried to get into the area to get a closer look at the Eagles. Some have already been arrested, so I don't think I will attempt to sneak onto the property. I am going to have to try and find someone who knows someone who can get me in the legal way. In the meantime I will share this image with you.

Round two of the twins.

This is a much better image of the twins, for lack of a better name I have dubbed them the Whooter Twins. These 2 young owls were born this year and have grown a lot since we first saw them. I wanted to post this image since the last one was not nearly a good as today's. I was surprised that they were so close today and they were sitting next to each other as well. I was ready today I had my camera and my tripod.

Photoman

You lookin at me or me!

My daughter came in the house tonight and said, "dad I think I hear the owl" so I went for a walk with her to see if we could find it. I didn't bother taking my camera as I didn't think we would be able to get close enough for a photo op. As we were walking we walked right upon these 2 babies sitting in this tree. I couldn't believe how close we were able to get to them. I ran back to the house and got my camera while my daughter waited by the tree to keep an eye on the owls. When I got back they were still sitting there and they let me take all the photos I liked. When we left they were still sitting there. We never saw mom and dad but they were probably not too far away.

Photoman

Natural Arches in Ohio

I thought I would share with my readers these two images of naturally made arches or bridges that are in Ohio. There are many of these natural arches scattered around the state. The top image is Raven Rock Arch located in Raven Rock State Nature Preserve, the bottom image is Trimmer Arch and is located in Paintcreek State Nature Preserve. I shot the Raven Rock image on Saturday and Trimmer Arch on Sunday both days were beautiful and I enjoyed both hikes though Saturday's hike was much more difficult. Raven Rock Arch is 500 feet straight up and I mean straight up. When I got up to the top I was wore out, I was planning to just go and scout the arch and return on Sunday and shoot it. Once I got up I knew I wasn't going to climb it again the next day so I stayed and shot it then. It was a difficult climb and a difficult shoot. Once up I had to stand on the edge of the cliff to get the shot and I was on the edge for a good 20 minutes, kneeling, squatting and standing. I manged to get the shot and I was very happy with the images. I only wish I had a true wide angle lens with me but I didn't. Trimmer arch was not a difficult hike but it isn't on any marked trail so I had to go through the woods and blaze my own trail. I found out afterward that the area that the arch is in is mostly under water later in the year when the dam is raised for the summer. I was glad I got there when I did, otherwise I would not have been able to get this shot. These images and 52 others that I shot are being considered for the cover of a book on Natural Bridges in Ohio. I hope I get it.

Photoman

Wedding Album

Reconsidering the daily blog.

I would like to thank everyone who has been faithfully visiting my blog looking for a new image and maybe a good story each day. If you haven't noticed, I have not made a post everyday recently. While some of the time I was unable to get online while I was traveling that isn't the only reason. I have really been reconsidering the daily blog idea lately. Believe it or not it is a time consuming habit and I am just not sure that I am making the best use of my time when I am sitting in front of my computer everyday posting on my blog. I know that my family feel that I spend way to much time on my computer and if they feel this way I can only imagine how my Lord and Savior feels about it. Yes I am talking about God, I want to honor God in all that I do and that includes how I spend my time. So I have been struggling with how much time I spend keeping this blog on a daily basis. So for now, I have decided that I am not going to do my blog on a daily basis. I will try to do it at least once a week as long as I feel that it is still not taking to much time from my family and from my time with Him. I am sorry if this is disappointing to you but hey I would rather disappoint man that to disappoint God.

Photoman

Another shoot the Hills entry.

Here is another image that I shot this weekend at Shoot the Hills. It was another that was not good enough to win an award but I still love this image and plan to hang it in my gallery some time. As far as the Gallery that I have been submitting my images to, well that didn't work out this time. The corporate client was looking for work that was shot in a very specific area of Ohio and the gallery owner was hoping that they would like my work even though it wasn't from that part of Ohio. Well they liked it but they still wanted work from that area and another photographer who has a large amount of work from that area was chosen. He lives in the are they are wanting and I don't so maybe next time. I still have made a contact with the gallery and the owner likes my work so hopefully she will remember me and who knows maybe the next big client will like my work.

Photoman

Shoot the Hills 09

As promised, well almost anyway. I promised that I would post an image from my recent trip to Shoot the Hills yesterday and I didn't get it done. As a matter of fact, I just totally forgot about my blog yesterday. I think this is the first time that I truly forgot but I guess I have a bit of an excuse after the weekend and all. I hope my faithful readers don't forget about me. Enjoy the photo.

Photoman

Cacti

I have been out of town and I was unable to get online this weekend, I was in a very rural part of Ohio in a Photography competition and was unable to get online. I won but only in the fact that I had a great time, I will post one of my images tomorrow to share with you. For tonight another image I am hoping is accepted with the gallery I have just started working with. I hope you like it.

Photoman