Thankful: Part 1

: Granted, this isn’t the best “photo”, but I think it serves as a great example for how beautiful less attractive things can be from above. The trailer park in the upper left and the mucky water of the retention pond get overshadowed by the symmetry and balance of the different elements of the park and street layout.

In my last post, I mentioned we went to Florida for Thanksgiving. Well, Florida is not too shabby a place for some aerial photography, so I thought I’d take the quad along and see what would happen. I’m really glad I did, as I was able to take some really fun shots.

Our first stop in Florida was to see some long-time friends near Orlando. We drove down, without stopping anywhere for the night, in our Toyota Sienna minivan. I’ve affectionately named it the Batmobile. Partially because it is jet black with tinted windows, a sunroof, and is probably the baddest looking minivan I’ve seen, but mostly to make me feel a little more manly about having, well, a minivan. The drive went really well, until about the last hour and a half when I was excited to get some sleep, but the kids had other plans. Basically 90 minutes of pure torture on VERY little sleep. So I was extremely thankful when we finally made it to our friends’ house. I’m not sure I could have been held responsible for my actions if it went any longer.

Anyways, we had a blast visiting with them and I got to take Brian and our friend Chris out to the lake for some flying. I should also mention that I was experimenting with a circular polarizer for my GoPro on this outing and it gave me some… interesting… results. Shooting towards the sun caused the shots to be much hazier than normal.

P.S. There was a steampunk convention going on right next to us. I flew over to say “hi” and I think one of the younger steampunkers and his croquet ball had other ideas, so I didn’t hang around too long…