My photography

I have been a lover of photography every since I was a little kid. My dad bought me a Vivitar 110 point and shoot. I use to use the heck out of that camera. Over the years I graduated up to a 35mm film camera when I took photography in High School at Putnam City West. Linda Ralls was my teacher and mentor to a certain extent. This lead to a position on the school paper my sophomore year and then the Chief photographer for the Yearbook and Newspaper my senior year. I have always loved photography. I really love black and white photography. The starkness of the images.  The tonal qualities of a black and white image simply can't be beat. As of a couple of years ago I graduated up to the big leagues and purchased a DSLR. The images from that thing are amazing.

The Devine Miss M

Vince and Marilyn

Who is that mustached marauder?

As you can see that DSLR produces great pictures. I have also become a big fan of my IPhone! My wife would say that I am addicted to it but I contend that I am simply utilizing its wonderful features to help live my life..... Do you buy that.... I didn't think so.

Anyway, one of the Apps that I use on my IPhone is a photography application called Camera Plus. 

Camera + didn't pay me for this article.... really I promise that they didn't

It is a app that utilizes the built in camera on the IPhone. I happen to have one of the very first models of the IPhone. It is the 3G. It has, I want to say, a 2 or 3 mega pixel camera on it. Compared to my DSLR it is not that great but it works for instant pics and allows me not to have to drag around my DSLR around. Anyway, this application allows you to do some pretty cool edits and stuff. I will go into that later in a different post but I wanted to show you some of the pics that I have taken with this app to show why I like it so much.

 

It is a really cool app. I have included a link to the website in their logo. So click on it and check it out. If you like it, the app is available on Itunes for the IPhone. I am not sure if it is available for any other platforms.

Enjoy,

Stay safe

Bryan.

It's a Bird..... It's a Plane..... It's ... It's...... Rain?!??!?!?

Well I woke up yesterday morning and got ready for work and knew that it was going to be the same ol day. Hot with a continued chance of hot with a smattering of dry thrown in. The TV weatherman was teasing in his lead in that we had a 30% chance of rain for the western half of the state. He would always put the disclaimer in that "it won't rain everywhere, all the time" or "this won't be a wall of water!". He was hedging his bets.... playing it conservative. In other words, he didn't want to get a slew of calls saying thanks for nothing! Well as it turns out... he was actually right. We did get measurable rain in a lot of places in the central part of Oklahoma!

(Courtesy NWS Norman)

Well as you can see in the graphic above, Will Rogers World Airport(KOKC) in OKC got 2.91 inches of rain. Wiley Post Airport about 5 miles NNW of KOKC got 1.01 inches! This just shows you how sporadic these thunderstorms were. Now where I work, we got a lot of rain and wind! We had a lot of small tree limbs and leaves in the parking lot. Elsewhere in the state, Newkirk, Ok. up in Kay County got 4.03 inches according to the Oklahoma Mesonet. (see graphic)

(Courtesy of Oklahoma Mesonet)

As you can see, not everyone got rain in the state but those who did got enough to cool it off for a little while. Another interesting thing is that we didn't make it to 100 degrees yesterday. Well until yesterday, we had gone 13 straight days hitting the century mark! So far this year we have had 22 days of 100 degrees or more with the hottest day being last Saturday with 110 degrees. 

(Courtesy NWS Norman)

What rain we got was not enough to end our drought but it was much welcomed and helped with wildfire conditions for parts of the state. We are still on par right now to be in the top 5 of driest years and that is not good.
I will leave you with this... if you get rain the next couple of days.... enjoy it! If not, you will continue to be hot and dry! So check on each other, your neighbors and the elderly. Make sure you drink plenty of water and have a plan on where to go or who to contact if you need to get out of the heat.

Stay safe!

Bryan

The Record of an unusual summer in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has many weather phenomena. We have snow, dust, ice, tornadoes and oh yeah... did I mention wind? Where do you think that Rogers and Hammerstein got the verse in the song from? Well this year has been one for the record books. In more ways than one. We have suffered through a real severe drought. In some areas there has not been any measurable rain in almost 2 and a half months! (see graphic below)

(Image Courtesy of Oklahoma Mesonet)

(Image Courtesy of NWS Norman)

The image above is courtesy of the Oklahoma Mesonet. As you can see we have a few areas of the state that haven't seen rain in a long time. Arnet, in Northwestern Oklahoma, has gone 74 days without a .25 inch of rain or more. The next one is in the Panhandle and it is Hooker. They have gone 73 days with out measurable rain. That is a long time. Had this been a different time and year we would have probably had another mini dust bowl. I don't claim to know about agriculture and soil but I can imagine that you can go for quite a good depth and not find moist soil. I have heard news farm reports that have said that this is going to be a bad Wheat year as well as other grains. You can see why when you look at the graphic.

Also, another thing that we are suffering from is a long term heat wave. Yesterday, there were records broken, more like shattered, all over the Norman Forecast office. (See Graphic below)

(Image Courtesy NWS Norman)

As you can read in the graphic it was hot!!! H O T hot!!! In Oklahoma City we broke a 47 year old record by 4 degrees... now that is hot!!! The normal high temp for yesterday in Oklahoma City was, I believe, 93 degrees. Have I mentioned how hot that is? When you are 17 degrees above normal there is no other way to say that it is.... you guessed it.... HOT!!!

Forecasts for the coming period don't show it improving anytime in the near future. In Oklahoma City, we have a ever so slight chance of rain tomorrow and Tuesday. 20% is about as good as it gets. You never know though. You might get lucky and get under one of those "popcorn" thunderstorms and viola!!! it will become bearable for about an hour or so.

Last image I will leave you with is from the NWS Norman office. This is the Temp outlook for the next couple of days.... and you can read it and yell at me afterwords....

(Image Courtesy of NWS Norman)

Stay cool everyone! Check on your neighbors and the elderly and drink lots of water!

Stay safe!

Bryan.

Walking a straight line

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone