Photography
Canon EOS T5
Not shown: The bazillion and a half other filters, lenses, doublers, macros, tripods, bags, flashes, extra batteries, extra SD cards, straps, cable releases ...
Olympus Tough
What this little fella lacks in extra gear / zoom, etc, it makes up for in being able to take some serious hits. I wouldn't take my EOS caving or climbing, but the Olympus has done both.
Seeing through lenses
I can remember heading off to some summer camp in middle school and being given an old disc-film camera. When I was in college, my dad and I went to a pawn shop to find a decent used SLR. Since then, I have upgraded twice, both times to a Canon EOS Rebel. While the Rebels half-size sensors aren't as detailed as those in (e.g.) as my dad's Canon 5D, I find the Rebel more portable for hiking, and not too obtrusive when being a tourist.
I also have a very portable and durable Olympus Tough that I bought back when I took a trip to Mammoth Caves and needed a camera that could survive the intro to caving trip. My Olympus is exactly what is says: Tough. Besides caving, it's been rock climbing with me. It's rated to survive a 7 foot fall. I can tell you that it survived a 15 foot fall onto rocks, followed by bouncing, spinning, and further bashing its way down another 15 feet. (It was in my carry case, but that's still not bad!) The only thing I haven't done with it is test its waterproof rating.
Lastly, don't underestimate the power of your cell phone. It might not have all of the controls of my Rebel, nor the durability of my Olympus, but it's always around.
All of the pictures on this site are mine. This page has the highlights and more creative pics.
Solar Eclipse 2017 (Pittsburgh, PA)
While we couldn't get the time off work, school, etc, my buddy, his daughter and I were able to camp out for the afternoon in Schenley park, Pittsburgh. I'm not a fan of animated jpgs on a page of static pictures, so here is a link to the album, which includes an animated combination of shots I took.
Flaming Mandala
What happens when you take someone with a background in chemistry and an interest in photography? He burns metal salts and makes strange pictures of colorful flames.
For a while, I belonged to a camera club where we submitted four pictures a month, one of which was in a category called "Creative". Creative pictures could be done with all in camera effects, or all photoshop effects, or some combination. This one was one of my combinations. The flame colors were saturated a bit in photoshop, but were otherwise real. The Mandala effect was made by taking three of the pictures and duplicating in PhotoShop.
Trippin into Providence
This is done not with a lot of photoshopping, but rather just with a 30-second exposure while my camera was mounted on my dash and I was driving to Providence. (Ok, maybe a little saturation adjustment in PS, but that's about it.)
Moon Shot
If you've never tried it, taking a zoom picture of the moon is actually pretty tough! Not only does the dang thing move on you (fast enough that you'll notice through a decent zoom lens on a tripod), it's actually really bright, while space (this may shock you) is really dark. The good news is that, once you account for the brightness in your camera settings, it usually means that the picture is fast enough that you don't get motion blur.
