I've just returned from a brief visit to the Adirondacks, where I was able to spend some quality time hiking and shooting a ton of photos. No real goal in mind other than to relax and create. 

Somewhere along the way, it became apparent that in order to really capture some of the more breathtaking scenes, my wide angle Fujifilm 10-24mm wasn't going to get wide enough. Thankfully, some releases ago, Lightroom integrated their Stacked Panorama feature, which greatly streamlined merging images, allowing for easy panorama creation in post.

This week marked the return of Astronaut Scott Kelly from his 340+ day stay aboard the International Space Station. This momentous occasion, coupled with my own trip to the Kennedy Space Center a few weeks ago, has really reminded me of just how important exploration is to humankind. When I see all of the chaos, anger and dysfunction in the world today, I need only to look to pioneers like Captain Kelly and his brethren to find hope. 

Carl Sagan once said that, "the sky calls to us" and I couldn't agree more. 

Art, history, and science are all tremendously important fields of study for me - arguably the most important. The order of importance is nearly equal between them, but at the end of the day I believe that those three fields represent humanity's best. Each brings their own perspective, naturally, but together they ultimately coalesce into one unified snapshot of mankind. 

What we create, what we have done, and what we are striving to discover - respectively.

Last week I was invited to take part in an event in New Orleans, which I was thrilled to do. The thing that was interesting to me - besides the content of the event - was that the choice of location and timeframe coincided with Mardi Gras. Since I had never experienced Mardi Gras before, it sounded like a great opportunity to try out some street photography techniques.