photos

01
Dec
2014

Gatlinburg TN Photos

LeafPhotos from my trip to Gatlinburg, TN are finally posted. The foliage was less than colorful, although I suppose green is a color. However, it was a fun trip. We spent a lot of time walking around downtown Gatlinburg visiting various stores and tourist destinations, dining at great restaurants, sampling moonshine and just people watching. We also took the aerial tramway up to the Ober Gatlinburg ski resort for their Oktoberfest and spent a day visiting the Gatlinburg Craftsmen’s Fair. We spent one morning in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg’s slightly more obnoxious and touristy neighbor. The trip was rounded out by some time in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Check the photos out here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
19
May
2014

New photos from Havre de Grace, Maryland

Concord Point LighthouseLast year I visited Havre de Grace, Maryland for their annual seafood festival. (View those photos here.) This year I went back to revisit a nearby restaurant that sells amazing crab cakes that we discovered last year. While down there we also made a second visit to the great waterfront promenade/boardwalk along the area where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay. We climbed the Concord Point Lighthouse and also made a side trip to tour the Susquehanna Museum at the lock keeper’s house from the old Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal. The weather was beautiful, the wildlife was plentiful and this little town on the bay made for a relaxing and fun day. The photos from this year’s visit are now online and ready for your viewing pleasure. Click right here to check them out.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
13
Apr
2014

Two Albums of Center City Christmas Photos

RiverRink

I posted 2 new albums from the Christmas season. They’re a little late, but 2014 has been a busy year so far.

For the better part of my lifetime (20 years to be exact), every Winter the Grand Plaza at Penn’s Landing is converted to become the Blue Cross RiverRink. I’ve seen it on TV over and over, but have never visited it. I would likely pose a severe danger to myself and others if I strapped on ice skates. However, this year, they built an entire village around the rink called WinterFest. So we went and checked it out. It was a lot of fun. With the amount of trees and decorations they brought in, you’d never know you were on Penn’s Landing. Check out the photos and a video right here.

This year we visited a newer Christmastime event in Center City Philadelphia, The Christmas Spectacular on the giant video screen in the lobby of the Comcast Center. It was kind of neat. It’s good to see some of the money I give to Comcast every month given back to the community. You can view the photos and album here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
14
Oct
2013

What I did on my summer vacation… in photos

I just posted four new albums of photos. They are all a result of my summer trip to North Carolina.  Our trip was slightly disjointed with stops independent and unrelated stops in more than a half dozen cities spanning three states. As a result, the photos are broken out into separate albums.

Our vacation was primarily based around visiting cousins on both of sides of my dad’s family (the Torettas and the Gattis) who live in North Carolina. Photos from the Raleigh-Durham and Pinehurst areas are right here.

After leaving North Carolina, we stopped in Charlottesville, Virginia and visited Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier. Photos from that part of our trip can be found in their own album here.

Continuing north, we stopped in Maryland to visit The Maryland State Barbecue Championship and Festival in Bel Air and the Havre de Grace Seafood festival. Between sampling the amazing food at each festival I took photos that you can view here.

Our final stop was in Rising Sun, Maryland to visit the Plumpton Park Zoo. Besides visiting this cool little country zoo, we also stopped and visited the dairy that makes the amazing ice cream that we found at the seafood festival. The Rising Sun photo are here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
28
Sep
2013

Conowingo Dam Tour Photos

Conowingo DamMy family and I have been driving over the Conowingo Dam coming and going from my uncle’s house for many years. I never knew too much about it. While at the Havre de Grace seafood festival we signed a petition in support of the relicensing of the dam. As a result we were notified about an open house and tour being held down there. It was a fun day and the tour was extremely interesting. I’d never been inside a hydro electric plant before and really knew very little about the history or workings of the Conowingo plant.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
24
May
2013

Photo Upgrade Complete

For all two or three of you out there who are interested or will notice, I’ve finally completed the upgrade of all of the photos in the photos section of the site. All of the photos now have larger thumbnails and larger full size versions. I’ve also retouched any of the photos that were not previously retouched.

This slow 3 year long project is a precursor to cross-posting most of my photos to Flickr. Check out the upgraded photos right here!

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
01
May
2013

Jim Thorpe WinterFest and Yeungling Photos

Inn at Jim ThorpeOne advantage of being stuck at home all last week was that I caught up on a lot of reading and got caught up on posting photos. I posted 2 new albums from the same trip.

The first is from the WinterFest in Jim Thorpe, PA. It features ice carving, chainsaw carving, concerts, Mug Walk, shopping and all of the fun that goes along with a small town winter festival. Check it out here.

On the way home from Jim Thorpe we stopped at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville. it was a very cool tour. Check out the photos from America’s Oldest Brewery right here.

We also stopped at a restaurant in Hershey that has inspired me to started writing some reviews for Yelp, UrbanSpoon, etc. More about that to come soon.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
09
Dec
2012

Michigan Photos

Grand HotelIt’s taken way too long, but I finally got around to getting the photos from my summer vacation posted. This is one of the problems with having an iPad and iPhone. So many people have already seen these photos that there aren’t enough people pestering me to see them. However, I know that there are many people out there who don’t see me in person and haven’t gotten to see these photos.

For those of you who don’t know, our trip took us to Mackinac Island, Frankenmuth, The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Holland, Petoskey and a tiny little airport called Pellston Regional. I’ve also included a few short videos from the trip. It can all be found right here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates