Nice To Be Back!

Well, It looks like the "Great Yahoo Blog SNAFU" may have been corrected. We'll see how long I can continue to access my blogsite. Meanwhile, It's nice to get back online and thank you for those of you that actually sent me mail asking about the blog. Where to start. So much has happen since Christmas 07. Retirement has been both great and busy! I think I said once before, "I don't know where I found the time to go to work everyday". I'm still active with the Reserve Force as well as my Explorers. Eventhough some of the hyarchy downtown attempted to screw with me with they're small minded thinking. But we move on and what goes around comes around. The pistol team continues to do very well and we will be off to Colorado in July to let one of our shooters defend his National Championship. I had to have knee surgery at the end of March and I'm still healing from that.

Photo wise, I got a great piece of exposure with a 4 page layout in a big biker magazine called "Barnetts". [jun/jul issue #62] This shot is of a custom made "Bobber" built by Santiago Choppers in Tampa. The bike was made for Brian Setzer of the rock-a-billy band, The Stray Cats. This particular image was the 2-page centerfold in the magazine. There were 2 more pages that had other shots. Nice little feather in the old photo hat. The model is Erin Gillum, a beauty that I posted an image of in an earlier blog. I think she was perfect for this bike. An interesting note about the bike is that it was built for Setzer who could not take the bike because of some clause in his contract that protects him from injury. So, if anyone is a big Stray Cats fan, I think the bike is now for sale! Barnetts magazine is one of the top biker mags in the world. It is found in 19 countries and 11 oversea's military bases, so I'm very proud of it. I also attend a couple of bike shows. I've gotten tired of Daytona's Bike Week. It's way too crowded and it seems it's getting more and more NON-biker friendly. My favorite is Leesburg Bike Fest. Leesburg is a small town in Florida just south of Ocala...north or Orlando. It is a 3 day event and it's a lot of fun. The music, the vendors, the bikes and the GIRLS. Leesburg always has a great bikini contest.

A few of the beautiful entries for Ms. Leesburg 2008. You can see more on my website at http://www.mwsphoto.com/ , click Leesburg Bike Fest. Second on the list was the music. This year Pat Travers played on Friday night and the headliners were Skid Row on Saturday.

Pat Travers [left] put on a great show to a packed crowd. The park where the main stage was located was shoulder to shoulder with concert goers. The weather was great for the outdoor concerts. I was in the Pit with both my Canon 10d and 30d. On the 30d I had my new 70-200 IS lens. I got some great shots with that lens with the IS, image stablizing, feature, I was able to slow down the shutter a little and get some great color.

Skid Row was fantastic. They engerized the crowd and I was amused at so many teenage kids in the crowd that were singing along with Skid Row tunes written before they were born.

If you're looking for a true rock and roll showman, you have got to watch Scotti Hill (right) of

Skid Row. -------------------------------------------------------->
You can see some great close ups on my photo website. As a matter of fact, I put together a nice compilation of facial expressions of Scotti for my personal collection.

Shooting with digital camera, it doesn't take long to fire off a couple hundred, if not a 1,000 images. What a photographer needs to know is what the objective is at a concert shoot. If your just trying to get a good image for the publication your shooting for, then maybe a hundred or so shots should be enough. If your trying to chronicle the concert, then a couple of thousand shots maybe in order. Last year the headliner bands was Quite Riot. I got a lot of images of lead singer Kevin Dubrow who died a short time later. An that is the role of the photographer. To capture images that will be seen for all of history.

I had the great pleasure to attend the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington DC. Although it is a very solemn event with the candlelight vigil for our nationals law enforcement officers, there are some fun parts too. I love to walk DC and photograph those great monuments that we used to read about back in school. This year I went to the new WWII memorial. This shot of the Capitol was taken from the 6th floor of the "Newseum", a building devoted to the history of the media. If you haven't been the our nations capitol...go! It is truly

amazing ! I had a great time meeting some really

great people and I'm even staying in touch with them

via email & IM. You just never know what kind of

relationships you can build until you try.

I have been working on this blog for a couple hours

now and it's getting late, so I will leave it here, somewhat caught up. With any luck, I will keep up with the blog now that it's fixed.

Take care and

see ya next time.

Please don't hesitate to hit the comment button

and let me know what you think of my site.

MS

PS: Once again, the yahoo blog people are at it again. You may have to scroll down to get to a past entry. For whatever reason, I can not find any info on how to close this gap...though I've tried!!!