I participated in the walk in my (current) hometown of Durham (NC), which was led, just like last year, by Brian from BMC Portraits.

A nice day in downtown Durham, the above photo was taken near the American Tobacco Campus and the Stadium of the Durham Bulls. I leave it to the eye of the reader to figure out how we managed to have those two gentlemen participate in our photo walk!

If you are interested, a collection of the pictures taken by the participants can be found in the Flickr group “Durham Photowalk 2010“.

The contest was the “Bag O’ Goodies” contest over at DIYPhotography, please check it out:

I took the following picture during my favorite part of Triathlons, the cycling section:

Even though this picture is in no way unique – it was my childhood dream to one day be in San Francisco and take a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge during sunset. Last week I was in San Francisco during a business trip, and so I took the following picture:

We walked around the Arboretum of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, took tons of pictures of beautiful flowers and majestic trees. Then, on the way back to the car, I discovered a dark alley with some trash cans:

What can I say – it must have something to do with my heritage. For some mysterious reason I find garbage, fire ladders and dark alleys a more interesting subjects than pretty flowers…

The following is a picture of a fence on the ferry from Charleston (South Carolina) to Fort Sumter, the place where the first shot of the Civil War was fired:

My wife and I made a trip to Charleston (South Carolina) for some kayaking and just plain enjoying life in a new place. As things go – it’s all fun and games until She sees an opportunity to go shopping, which leaves me in turn with some extra time to take pictures.

One day I found myself with some spare time in front of this water fountain, and created an impromptu assignment for myself: HDR is the big rage, and people either love or hate it. Especially the kind of over-processed HDR images that have an unrealistic grunge look to them.

Now, I couldn’t care less about this discussion – if you like those kind of pictures you like them, if you don’t then you don’t. It’s up to you. At least that’s my take.

I still wanted to see if I can create such an HDR image, so here it is:

For full disclosure: I used the trial version of Photomatix Pro to create this image, hence the watermarks on the picture.

One of the usual stops was of course the National Mall, and the Korean War Veterans Memorial was as touching as ever. The following is a picture of one of the statues at the memorial:

One of the many nice experiences was a walk through a bamboo forest, which was amazingly dark with just some sun rays shining through.

This picture of my wonderful wife was made in the coastal region while hiking up to a waterfall. I like the dreamy feel of this picture, so I also entered it into my gallery at the Sierra Club.

Duke Kahanamoku, full name “Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku”, is usually credited as the creator of the sport of surfing as we know it today. He has a statue at Waikiki Beach on the Island of O’ahu: