I do not profess to know what the issues were and I certainly don’t know who the players were. What I do know is that a colorful mural with a positive message has been painted over. But I happened upon it before the latest brush reduced it to a long gray wall. There are several versions of it on my site. Hint – they fit real well on the 5×30 panorama print. Note: the original mural was about a half of a city block long – quite large.

I’m not sure why but so much of my photography seems to revolve around water lately. Beth and I had the opportunity to accompany the teen group from Living Water Community Church on a day on the river. The river was the Deschutes and it involved a fair amount of white water. After arrival in Maupin, Oregon at 9:30 AM (after a 2+ hour drive) the group got their rafts, life jackets, and instructions and the fun started. Beth and I were joined by John S. to photograph the fun and games from the river bank. I wasn’t about to get into one of those rubber rafts on that river!

I planned on shooting the event with my 70-200/2.8 IS and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try a 2X converter with it also. That knocked the f2.8 to an f5.6 but with the sun and water it was not a problem. I ended up shooting most of the day at f8.0. The 2X converter performed very well but proved to be too much lens on much of the river, the 200mm being sufficient to cover most of the situation.

At any rate, it was great fun with a great group of folks. No pressure, wonderful sun on an amazing landscape, great colors on the river, and near ideal light. Laughed all day just watching the fun everyone was having. And I was with Beth doing what I love to do – taking pictures.

These are not all of our group but the opportunities were just too much for this photographer to pass up.