Day 1 - To Wisconsin

We started our journey out the last remaining bit of Ohio at a bright and early 0800, from there it was through Indiana and Illinois, to our stopping point for the night in Wisconsin.

The journey through Indiana was a bit rainy and uneventful. We also went through the time change from eastern to central time, which threw off our initial lunch plan, since when we planned to have lunch at 1100 EST became 1000 CST and places aren’t serving lunch then. This resulted in us having a later lunch then usual due to having to make it through Chicago before finding a place to stop. I must say that I was rather disappointed though with the crossing the border between Indiana and Illinois because there is no welcome to Illinois sign, it just welcomes you to Chicago. The drive through Chicago was congested, construction filled, and all around big city driving. Once we made it through the city, we discovered Illinois doesn’t really like to identify where there are food exits off the freeway, we did eventually find something. (Google maps is our friend.) Though after we found a place for lunch and got back on the road, then they started showing the food stops, it always seems to work that way. Stupid Murphy’s Law.

yes it was raining

Now when we entered Wisconsin there was a welcome sign, and they believe in highlighting all the food exits. Also entering Wisconsin ended the toll roads for us, because I-90/I-94 became toll free at that point. The drive through Wisconsin was mostly just your standard drive, though we did stop at the MouseHouse cheese barn. We saw the sign along the road and figured if we are in Wisconsin we should stop and at least look at cheese. From there it was back on the road to our hotel for the night and dinner. We had dinner at the Milwaukee Burger and had the cheese curd sampler. You must have cheese curds in Wisconsin; it is the law. The place was good, a lot of the burgers were covered in lots of cheese. Jim got the blue berry burger which was a burger on a blueberry bun, with blueberry jam, cheese, hash browns, an egg, and bacon. It was a big burger, he didn’t finish it. Dinner ended our adventure for the day.

Tomorrow we have at least a 9-hour drive ahead of us to the middle of North Dakota.

Comments

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode. I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs. I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work. But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated. While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing. I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year. I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023. I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot . I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos. I started with a fashion grey seam...

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations. I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience. For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions. I used ISO 100 and 400. My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog