Mariyinsky Palace

This beautiful palace sits on a hilly back of the Dnipro River in downtown Kiev Ukraine.  Blair and I had a hard time capturing a photo of this building without hundreds of military soldiers around it.  They were expecting protesters, so they called in the military to guard this and many other spots in the city that day.  Let’s just say it made for an interesting day within the city.

This is the official ceremonial residence of the President of Ukraine.  It was originally built between 1744 and 1752 for the Russian empire royalty.  It also serves as the residence for Governors-General in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Sadly, it was burned down by a number of fires in the 19th century but was reconstructed later using old drawings and watercolors as their guide.  In the early 1900s, it was part of an agricultural school and museum.  It was badly damaged in World War II and restored again in the late 1940s.  Today it serves for official functions for the Ukrainian President.

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Stained Glass

I really need to get out and take more photos.  I have all kinds excuses, which I’ll spare listing for you.  Some of them are real and some I’ve just let get in my way.  Basically, I have a mental block right now.  I need a photography kick in the butt.  I need to get outside, get in an abandoned building, get out of bed to catch a sunrise, put my drone in the air and/or just find a beautiful spot to capture.  Something to get me motivated.

Today’s photo is one I took a while back at a classic Pittsburgh spot.  This beautiful abandoned cathedral is one of my favorites.    

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Donkey

I hope you have a great weekend.  Today’s post is from Bonaire.  They have this really cool Donkey Sanctuary on the island.  For a small fee, you can drive your vehicle through the property.  The donkey’s come up to the vehicle by the hundreds.  If I remember correctly, there are over 700 of them in the compound and it seemed like every single one of them came to see us.  This little guy just loved us.

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The Burgh

Most of my photos are extremely colorful.  I usually push the limits of color because that’s the way I like them.  Tonight’s photo is toned down compared to my normal.  I took this photo with my drone a few months ago at sunset.  Downtown Pittsburgh is a beautiful spot.

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Salt Pier

What can I say about this beautiful spot that you can’t get just by looking at it????  Probably just the basics.  This is the Cargill Salt Pier on Bonaire.  This is one of the unique scuba diving sites on the island.  We dove this a few times on our trip.  The coral and sea life surrounding the pier legs was great.  And the entire island was amazing, pretty, and just a divers dream.

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Athens Alley

I’ve had this photo sitting on my hard drive waiting for its time to shine.  I guess tonight is the night.  I took this photo in some random alley in Athens near the Acropolis.  Probably about a five-minute walk away.  I just liked this spot and the view down this little back alley.

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St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery

This amazing facility is still functioning as a monastery in Kiev Ukraine.  It is located on the Dnieper River in a beautiful portion of the city.  It was built in the Middle Ages by Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych.  Unfortunately, the original cathedral was demolished by the Soviets in the 1930s and was reconstructed in 1999 after the Ukrainian independence.  Blair and I climbed bell tower in the surrounding walled structure to get this photo.

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Hotel Pool

Keeping my streak alive for 5th post….another “water” photo.  This one is from our hotel pool in Long Beach California.  It wasn’t a very pretty location during the day, but it beautiful at night.

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Water Safari

Keeping with my recent theme of photos involving “water”, I have another one for you tonight.  This is from our 2017 South Africa trip.  Along with the normal game drives and safaris, we did a water safari, which ended at sunset.  I took this photo of another boat doing the same thing.  Enjoy the warm orange glow.

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Need A Chair?

This is my 3rd photo in a row featuring “water” as the main element.  I didn’t plan to create this trend, but I’ll keep it going tonight. 

I took this photo four Mexico trips back (I think....).  I love these quiet mornings on the beach before 99.9% of the other guest are awake.  I usually have the entire environment to myself and I can have any chair I want!!

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Pripyat River Crane

Today’s post is another photo from our Chernobyl trip.  I took this photo along the Pripyat River of an abandoned river loading winch.  As you can see, it is starting to fall into the river.  We happened to be here early in the morning at a beautiful time. 

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Fort Pitt Bridge

I took this photo of sunrise in downtown Pittsburgh a few months ago when I was out with Brad and Blair.  I used my DSLR camera to capture this, but I also took a ton of photos with my drone that morning.  I still take more photos with my DSLR camera, but increasingly I take more and more photos with the drone.   I hope your weekend has been great and that you enjoy what’s left of your Sunday.    

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Pripyat Apartment Building

It’s been five months since we returned from our Chernobyl trip and I’ve only processed about 20% of the photos I took on that trip.  And I haven’t edited any of the videos at all.  It’ll take me years to get them all done.  In fact, I just finished editing my photos from South Africa, which happened in 2017…..  It just takes me a while. 

Why did I tell you all that, I don’t know.  Regardless, this is a photo I took with the drone looking down at an apartment building in Pripyat inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  You can see our bus and a few of us on the street in front of the building.  What a great experience.

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Trevi

We’re heading to Europe again this year and I can’t wait.  We’ll be traveling down the Danube River on one of the river boats.  It should be great, assuming the river levels are not too high or low…..  Apparently, that’s a potential real problem with river cruises….. 

Anyway, tonight’s post from a previous Europe trip.  I love Trevi Fountain.

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Flooded Factory

It’s not always great to be out in the rain, but photography in an abandoned building during or just after a rain storm can create some great opportunities like this.  It rained for days prior to our arrival and was raining while we visited.  So there were a bunch of great opportunities for reflection shots like this one.

This was an abandoned factory in Detroit Mi.

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Rhino

Its hard for me to believe that it has been over a year and a half since our trip to South Africa.  How did that happen?  I guess that’s just how it works…. As they say, time flies.

Anyway, tonight I have a photo of a two Rhinos from that trip.  What a great experience….. I’m still thankful to our guide (Henk) and all the great travelers in our group who all helped make the trip a wonderful.

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Dream Spot

This beautiful spot (Tulum Mexico) is just that…beautiful.  The beach was a great spot to hang out and just relax.  I love this photo. 

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Detroit Factory

I need to plan another urbex photo walk in the near future.  I am so ready to spend a little time in a new (to me) abandoned structure.  There is something about the exploration of these sites that I really enjoy.  I have something planned in May with a few friends, but that seems so far away.   

Until then, enjoy this photo from inside a Detroit factory.  I’m not sure what these curtains were used for in the past, but I thought they made for a striking photo. 

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Mechanical Wonder

During our trip to Mexico we stayed at Grand Palladium Resort north of Cancun…I’ve mentioned this before.  Inside the resort, there are a number of restaurants, bars and stores all of which have a different theme/design.  One of them is a Café and deli, which was designed as a urban contemporary look that included this giant floor to ceiling mechanical clock.  This clock ran all kinds of pulleys and cables that helped other objects in the Café run/move.  In fact, the mannequin on the bike in the left corner of this photo was run by the clock.  His legs pumped the bike peddles that turned the wheels.  I liked the clock and the entire Café.

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Big News: AirMagic

I don’t make a big deal out of it, but I’m an Affiliate of Skylum software.   They make some of the best photo editing software in the world.  Applications like Luminar, Aurora HDR, Photolemur, and now the brand new AirMagic.  What does it mean to be an Affiliate?  Basically, I get a discount on their software in exchange for promoting the products.  Admittedly, I’m not very good at this.  I don’t feel great about pushing products on people.  So I try to be fair…. I don’t take advantage of Skylum and I try to be transparent to all of you.  Thus I’m telling you I am an Affiliate.  And as a reminder (I’ve talked about that in the past), I’m an Affiliate with ThinkTank camera bags as well.

So why am I sharing all of this?  Well they created a super easy photo editing software application called Photolemur that I’ve been using for over a year.  It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do all the major editing for you.  Honestly, I like it and have been using it a ton.  Skylum recently announced a new application called AirMagic. 

This new software application is designed specifically for drone photography.  It works very similar (from a work flow perspective) as Photolemur.  You drop the photo or photos you took into the app and it uses AI and advanced algorithms to edit your photos perfectly.  After using Photolemur and AirMagic, the only remaining editing I do is pull them into Photoshop (…you can use your favorite software) to slightly sharpen and crop (if necessary) the image.  Note:  I’m a really big fan of sharpening photos….  So that step might not be important to you. 

So my work flow is:

1.      Drop the image into AirMagic and save the software’s final product.

2.      Pull the image in Photoshop to Crop (if needed) and sharpen. 

If you’re interested in AirMagic, they have pre-ordering setup on their website.  Please use this LINK: 

By the way, you can see a sample before and after images below that I took with my drone. 

After: Processed with Skylum AirMagic

To view a larger version, click HERE

Before: RAW image right out of the drone.