Scattered Thoughts . . .

After our visit to the Newport Aquarium, we started our walk back across the river to Ohio.  For our route back to Cincinnati, we chose to walk a slightly different route across a different bridge.  This time we chose the Taylor Southgate Bridge across the Ohio River. Below, we have a view of the aquarium from the bridge.  The aquarium is the large blue building all across the entire center of the frame... Now we are looking northeast toward the Purple People Bridge... Kenzie amused herself (and us) by having one foot in Ohio and the other in Kentucky at the state boundary line on the bridge... As we approached the Cincinnati Reds' stadium, the ball game was in progress so we could clearly hear the announcer on the PA commenting on the game.  I think this area in front of us was the General Admission gates for the outfield bleachers.  We actually could have paid and entered at this time if we felt inclined.  The thought did cross my mind but, at this point,...

While we were in Cincinnati with Kenzie and Lukey, we chose to walk from our hotel in downtown Cincinnati across one of the bridges and into Newport, Kentucky.  Our destination was the Newport Aquarium across the river in Kentucky.  It was a really nice day albeit a bit too hot and humid.  Regardless of the oppressing heat, it really was a great day for a walk.  We each had a drink, a sling bag and three of us were carrying cameras... Once we were out of the hotel, we made our way southeast toward the Cincinnati Reds' ball field on the Ohio River... The Reds had a game on this day but we had arrived at the ball field before the crowd.  The ball field just happened to be on our way to the bridge over the Ohio River. Now we are at the waterfront park and walking toward those bridges in the distance... On our way to the aquarium in Kentucky, we chose to walk over the Purple People Bridge which is now a pedestrian-only bridge...  this bridge is half a mile long...

A s many of you who regularly read this blog already probably already read, we traveled by train to Ohio with two of our grandchildren at the beginning of this past summer.  Throughout this cross-country Amtrak journey to Ohio, Kenzie was using one of my cameras and two lenses.  She was already familiar with my little old Sony a6000 camera so that is the one I let her use on this long trip. When we went to the aquarium, she was using a wide zoom lens that has a wide aperture on this camera.  As I mentioned in a previous blog entry about this aquarium, capturing photos at an aquarium can be difficult because they are always so dark.  What made things even more difficult on this visit was that the aquarium was crowded at full capacity  making it difficult to get a clear shot but Kenzie did a great job finding interesting subjects that were nicely illuminated by light in this dark aquarium. Until we arrived at the aquarium (by foot, over one of the bridges from Cin...

W hile we were on our cross-country Amtrak journey to Ohio, Lukey and Kenzie were using a couple of my cameras.  They each had two lenses to use with their camera...  a wide zoom and a telephoto zoom.  At the aquarium, they were using the wide zoom lens with wide open apertures on each of their cameras.   Considering that both of the cameras that Lukey and Kenzie were using are about ten years old, they both did a great job in this very dark aquarium.  Aquariums are very low light which typically would lengthen your exposure time and what makes this even more difficult is the fish are always in motion which requires a shorter exposure time to freeze the motion in order to capture sharp images.  So, you need a longer exposure for the darkened aquarium but you need shorter exposures to freeze the darting fish.  Also, you need to time your shot so your subject is in some sort of light.  This is a tough place for photography and both of the grand...