After a long, long, time we have finally got some new photos up!  But, we decided to get a third party gallery software to publish our photos with rather than our own - it just wasn’t flexible enough and easy enough to use.  Which made it slow for us to work with it so we didn’t upload photos as often as we should.  After some looking around we decided to use Coppermine Gallery 

There are currently 18 photos in our September 2008 gallery that I took on our move from San Antonio, Texas to Port Angeles, Washington.  Most of the photos were taken in the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.  I added two panorama photos there that I took just outside the visitors center at Carlsbad Caverns and the other one was taken in the Mojave desert in California.

There are also 11 photos in the October 2008 gallery which I took on a trip up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park.  The view was breathtaking, but the visibility could have been a bit better.  But we had a great time up there.

I hope to add some more photos this weekend but we’ll see how it goes:)

 –Arnor Baldvinsson

I have just uploaded another big batch of photos!  I added a total of 115 photos for November 2007.  There are two big categories of photos this time.  One from our trip to Corpus Christi, visiting the Texas tall ship Elissa as well as the beach.  The other big one is from our trip to the air show at the Randolph Airforce Base here in San Antonio.  Our son-in-law Matthew Lewis, who is doing his instructor training there at the moment, and Sarah showed us around and everybody had a great time there (at least I did;)

In addition to those two categories, there are some photos from Halloween and just some fall shots.  I was going to go to the Lost Maples park this fall, but the weather has not cooperated.  We did not get a cold front to trigger the changes in the foliage, so basically the maples just went from green to brown instead of red.  So I’m not sure I’m going to go out there this year.  I got some really nice shots there last year but was hoping to get another shot at it before we move to Washington state next year. 

This summer I attended a Plácido Domingo concert here in San Antonio.  Few weeks later I was contacted by the event coordinator, Outside the Box Events, asking about the photos that I took and had up here on the website.  I can see that they have put one of the photos to good use on the portfolio part of their website.  You can see how they used it at http://www.outsidetheboxevents.com/clients_placido.htm and you can see the original here http://www.itakefotos.com/showfullimage.php?image=358  It’s cool to see my work in public and I’m proud of being able to provide the very professional people at Outside the Box with an image that they could use. 

It’s been a long time since I wrote to the blog!  Too long!  I went through some rough time this summer and fall and didn’t feel like working with the camera or photos very much.  But in the past couple of months I have taken quite a bit of photos and have processed quite a few.  However, that has not translated into a lot of photos being posted on the website!  Now I’m trying to make amends and in the past couple of weeks I have uploaded around 150 new photos to the site!

These new photos are from all over.  There is a section in October from a birthday party for Kattia Tea, the daughter of our friends, Chuck Tea and Lorena Guerrero.  Another section from a trip we made to Italy, Texas, to take a look at dome homes manufactured there.  Very interesting concept in home design.  We also made a daytrip to the Padernales State park and to the Enchanted Rock park.  Jenni Brit, the mother of our super-cute grandson, asked me to take some pictures of the supercuty and how could one resist! 

I have some more photos to process and upload from November, including some from Halloween and a trip we made to Corpus Christi to tour the tall ship Elissa that was in Corpus for a few days.  On that trip we also went to the beach and I have about 40 photos processed from that trip.  On November 17 we hosted Jakobs one year birthday party and obviously the camera was close by!

In November we started putting up free wallpapers that we have cropped down to the most popular monitor resolutions.  You can find them on the website by using the Wallpaper link.  Our first wallpaper photo was taken just about a year ago in Sue’s aunt’s backyard in Idabel, Oklahoma.  We will be adding more free wallpapers in the future for anyone to use:)  Enjoy:)

Better late than never I guess!  I’ve added 25 photos for May and June 2007. 

These photos are actually mostly from our neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas.  This spring was wet and wildflowers bloomed like never before.  Next weekend, June 24, I will be joining other photographers from the TexasPhotoForum in down town San Antonio and we are going to take some photos down there.  Last month we went to the San Antonio Zoo and there are some photos in the May section from there.

When Laila got out of school I gave her a cheap camera.  After taking a few pictures with it we realized it was really bad so I decided I’d give her our old Sony CyberShot 4.1 megapixel camera.  We took a trip to the San Antonio Botanical gardens where I took a very nice picture of her  She got some pictures and got started using the camera.  She has already taken some pretty good pictures and I will create a separate page for her photos soon. 

I’ve uploaded 39 photos from our trip to Nevada, California and Washington state in September.  I still have a lot of photos to go through and sort out what I want to post.  I took over 3,100 photos on the trip, so I still have a lot to go through.  I took a lot of good photos at the Reno Balloon Races, but the problem is selecting which ones to publish. 

I got some good bird shots at the Guadalupe River park in Boerne last week.  I will post some of them this week. 

I’m finally starting to catch up with myself!  I have uploaded photos from January just about as I take them.  I have also added photos from October 2006. 

In mid January we got an ice storm that stopped everything for two days.  Schools were closed, roads were closed, businesses were closed.  Didn’t prevent me from stumbling around with the camera and take some photos.

But it wasn’t all ice and cold.  On the 21st we took a break and went to Blanco State Park and walked around.  It was a gorgeous day, cool, sunny and calm.  Among other things we saw this Great Blue Heron who tried as he could not to cooperate!  I did manage to get a few somewhat decent shots of the bird, but he did not make it easy

Next weekend I will start to add photos from our trip in September.  That is going to be a bit of a process as I have over 3,400 photos to go through and sort out what I want to post! 

I have uploaded 21 photos that I took in November 2006 in various places around Texas and in Oklahoma.  http://www.itakefotos.com/showthumbnails.php?category=32  These photos have all been processed for color and sharpness and as I get more photos processed I will upload them.  Most of the photos are taken in 3 parks, Lost Maples State Park which is about 2 hour drive west of San Antonio, Friedrich Park which is just outside San Antonio and finally in Blanco State Park which is about 45 minute drive from San Antonio.  All of those parks offer something interesting if you take your time to slow down and look around.  I hope you enjoy my photos:)

Finally, finally I get off my lazy behind and post some photos.  I’ve been agonizing over how I should attempt to organize this website for photos and come to the conclusion that I need to do this in a chronological order.  So here we go for December 2006.  Please check out the photos at http://www.itakefotos.com/showthumbnails.php?category=31

I still have a lot of photos to go through from September to November, some of them are very good, in my humble opinion.  I took over 2000 photos at the Reno Balloon races in September and have a large collection of good ones to go through.  I have also taken quite a few photos on three trips to the Lost Maples State Park in October and November.  Lot of very nice fall colors. 

Due to spamming of the blog comments I’ve disabled them.  Nobody wrote any comments anyway and the only ones I got and had to moderate were spams.  So if you want to send a comment on a photo, please email us from the contact page at http://www.itakefotos.com/contactus.php

To all my friends and family I say Happy New Year and I hope we will have a happy and prosperous year in 2007:) 

Right now we are about to leave Port Angeles, Washington and head out into our ventures around Washington state. 

We spent 3 days in Reno at the balloon races.  I got up at around 4am every morning to get to the site.  We were conveniently located just accross the street from the park where the races were held so it was only about 20 minute walk from the motel to the other side of the park which I felt was a good location.  I took around 2,000 photographs at the races and I think I got some really good ones.  The weather was great, cold in the early morning hours but warmed up as the sun came up.

On Sunday we drove to Sacramento to drop John and Amanda off at the airport.  We stopped at the old railroad museum and then we headed North to Chico.  There we visited with Sue’s sister, Martha and visited the grave of Sue’s dad.  On Monday we visitied Martha again, brought some flowers to the graveyard and visited with Sue’s friends there.  Then we headed North and next stop was in Roseberg, Oregon where we stayed the night.  Tuesday we headed for Port Angeles and arrived there around dinner time and checked into the Motel 8.  Yesterday we drove up to Hurricane Ridge, but it was cloudy and not good for pictures.  We visited the Olympic National Park museum and walked on the paths there, which used to be Sue’s backyard when she was growing up here.  I had loosly planned to drive up to Hurricane Ridge this morning, but the alarm clock in the room apparently didn’t work as an alarm clock so I overslept.  I will have to do that next time I come here - I have a feeling that I’ll be back to take photographs in the not so distant future.

That’s it for now!