In the ballpark,

but not a homerun.

Remember my Kelby Photowalk entry from early October?

He did the judging, picked a Grand Prize winner.

Wasn't me.

Also picked 10 Finalists.

Still not me.

And finally, 15 Honorable Mentions.

Again, not me. :(

But its not all that bad. It's very subjective, and one judge makes all the picks. 

If there was a bird flying by, reflected in the glass on one side, THEN maybe we'd have a winner!

This year, there were 614 images entered in the competition from all over the world.

And my entry came in at #41 for 'likes' by people looking through the entries. 

41 out of 614 isn't too bad. I'll take it!

I'd post a link to the site, but you have to log in just to look at the images for some reason.

As for the contest, maybe next year...

K-01 WG

 Huh?

Time to upgrade my Pentax K-01 mirrorless DSLR. With a custom made wood grip. WG!

The Pentax K-01 is a very good, if quirky camera. With horrible ergonomics due to Pentax's unfortunate decision to let it be designed by a 'famous' industrial designer. It feels and handles like holding a brick. I planned to do something about the clunky design for some time, and I finally did.

The basic body. This is the ugly duckling. How to make it a swan...

My initial idea was to stick on a rubber grip extension on the front, along with a smaller one on the back. Bought some stick on grips. But never put them on. They'd both need a lot of cutting and trimming. While it would probably work, I kinda shelved the idea for a while.

Just recently got back to it. But, using wood! Much easier to work with. So using some high grade plywood for a base, a piece of a large dowel for the front grip and a piece of scrap wood for the side. Along with some small screws and some Gorilla glue. And a lot of sanding and rounding off of corners. Finished with some walnut stain and matte urethane. I think it ended up great!

The small bolt in the bottom screws into the tripod socket to hold it on. Cut a slot in the bolt head with a Dremel so it could be tightened and removed with a coin.

The finished product! I now have a considerably larger front grip to hold on to. Plus a place on the back to rest my thumb against. This is a pretty good result, for making it out of scraps. The only thing I left out was a hole in the grip. In the first photo you can see the small red IR receiver port. For the handheld remote shutter. I could have drilled a hole in the wood but I didn't. The remote would mostly be used if the camera was on a tripod. And the wood grip has to come off to do that.

It feels pretty good, and is MUCH easier to hold. The wood is slightly slipperier than the rubber-like body of the camera, but overall a great improvement. The wood finish will wear over time, but that's just to be expected.

If Pentax made this camera body with a larger front grip and a back thumb grip, it might have been a much more successful camera for them than it turned out to be. And they'd still be making a mirrorless camera. Which is one of the hot markets for cameras these days.

A flip/swivel back screen (a personal preference of mine) and a more professional, less Playskool finish to the controls wouldn't have hurt at all either!

Walk Five

This year Scott Kelby held his Worldwide Photowalk. But due to Coronavirus, they changed it. Instead of joining a group in selected cities, and wandering around with that group for a couple hours taking photos, now it was a solo event. Anyone could join it (for a small charity donation) and do their own walk, anywhere, at their own pace. But all on the same day. It actually opens it up to a lot more people, though you do miss out on the group aspect of it.

I entered it, and wandered around several location to snap photos. Most of the pics just end up as random snapshots, but a few can always be considered a bit better. I narrowed it down to three contenders for this year. Plus a couple extras.

This shot is under a large river bridge, with concrete supports. Depending on where you were, there was quite a bit of graffiti. This wasn't one of my three favorites. But its very close to the first of them...

This was one of the three. And its actually in the first photo. When you continue on towards the river, you come to this point. Where the supports have this neat repeating affect across the river. But on to the next almost...

A straight up shot standing under a large high voltage power line. That's a lot of metal framework. High powered, but still not the ultimate selection. That goes to the next photo...

Here's my pic for the Photowalk entry. A nice perspective shot on a glass walled room on the side of a local building. Not exactly perfect in proportions. But overall for the day I felt it was probably my most interesting shot. 

Have to see if I win any prizes in the competition. I seriously doubt it.

Closing off with a late in the day sunset panorama. So long to the day of the Photowalk!

Post-walk awards update - All the winners were picked. Grand Prize? Nope. Runner Up (10)? Nope. Honorable Mention (15)? Nope. But, I got enough likes from participants to be a bit over 93% in the list of most liked of all the images entered (about 615 total entries). I call that a success! 

Creepy Crawly

It's summer now. The snow and cold have left us for a while. And in their place, we have greenery and wildlife of all kinds. Some big, some very small.

Here's a few I've captured with a macro lens.

A tick! That I found crawling on me. It didn't last long after this photo was taken. Wasn't a very cooperative subject either - wouldn't sit still. There's been a fair number of these pests around this year. I've found more on me than I like. All on the move, not settled in for a snack. Fortunately.

Ants. Lots of ants. There have been large numbers of them crawling all over these flowers as they got ready to bloom.

Look at those cute puppy spider eyes! Actually a very tiny spider, working on a meal from the looks of it. This was my most cooperative subject. Just sort of sat there while I got in for the closeup.

Amazing the details you can see of something when its enlarged a little!

Aaaaaaaand

It's winter again.

That was fast.

As soon as spring and the birds returned, winter decided to say "Don't you, forget about me!"

Very windy and snowy and cold. Feels like mid winter. :(

Fortunately it's not. And in a few days the snow will be all gone and we can get back to spring.