I initially thought this picture was pretty ho-hum, but with a little editing, I think it looks better. This is LP Field in Nashville. I'd never heard of it before. I don't watch football, but I have shots of this stadium, LucasOil stadium, the Browns stadium, and maybe even more. I guess they're usually among the biggest buildings in a given city, and since buildings are one of the main things I take pics of on a trip, I guess they're go-to objects!

In other news, we finally got our own internet today! We've been paying to share our neighbor's wifi for the last 5 months, but it's been inconsistent, what with losing the connection almost daily, and buffering in videos -- what is this, 2004? Ain't nobody got time fo dat!
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Tags:   LP Field stadium Tennessee Titans football footbaaaaaaaallllllll! building concrete metal red green Cumberland River fall 'autumn' who calls it 'autumn'? Not this guy.

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On the way through Michigan, Mom and I thought it would be easy to visit Nashville from Kentucky, which is initially where we were planning to go on this trip to America. So, after our first day at Mammoth Cave, we drove to Nashville. We only stayed there for one afternoon, but it was cool that we could drive to another well-known place so easily. In Canada, the bigger cities are spread out over much larger distances, so you can't really make a day trip of it, at least as easily as you can in the USA. It was a colder day than I was expecting for a city that far south, but we saw a few sights, which I'll talk briefly about in the next few photos.
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Tags:   Nashville city Tennessee buildings AT&T Building Tennessee Tower Sheraton Nashville Downtown Tennessee State Capitol train

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Although not among my best work, I'm including this shot because I think it provides a glimpse into the character of Nashville...and because I didn't get many good pictures on that trip, so I have to post what I can, hahaha.

The Michigan/Indiana/Kentucky/Tennessee roadtrip in 2011 and the Cleveland roadtrip in 2012 were both largely busts in terms of photography, and I wasn't happy on either trip...I mean I'm glad I got to see those places. However, during the 2011 roadtrip, I was on the verge of losing a romantic relationship (which I did lose a few weeks later), and during the 2012 trip, I was coming to terms with the fact that the woman I liked at that time was not interested in me. It doesn't matter now, because I've been in a happy relationship with my current girlfriend for a year and a half. But if I could give a word of advice, it's "Don't travel to a place that's supposed to be new and fun and exciting if you're feeling seriously bummed about something -- it ruined two trips for me!"
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Tags:   Whiskey Bent Saloon Boot Country bar store people keg barrel Dodge Ram It'll always be 'Dodge' Ram, not just 'Ram' cowboy hat parking meter

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I took this picture at my dad's apartment in Indiana on my trip to America in the fall of 2011. I've been looking through my pictures from the second half of 2011, and I have to say...a lot of them aren't very good, and it's concerning. I've been looking here and there at the pictures I've taken since then, and I feel like it's a trend -- that in the last few years, I haven't been trying as hard with the quality and creativity of my photos. It's partly to blame on getting a phone in June of 2011 that had a decent camera -- since then, I've had a camera with me all the time, and haven't had to bring my real camera out. So in a way, I'm less motivated to go on an actual photo mission. This doesn't mean "All of my pictures since mid-2011 are crap." I've gotten lots of great shots since then. It just means that I've looked through lots of iPhoto "events" and seen very few good shots among them -- the ratio of bad shots to good shots has gone up. That's what's concerning -- that my archival material that I draw from is going to run out sooner than I thought, because I'm skipping over the crap a lot faster than I used to. This was the only decent picture I took on my first day of that trip to America. It's close to the natural color, by the way.

Anyway, maybe it'll motivate me to get out and shoot different stuff in the future. I hope.
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Tags:   Indiana America sunset clouds trees sky sun

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When a picture sucks, just use black & white!

We saw a lot of deer on the road into and out of Mammoth Cave each day. I got out and took pictures on both occasions, but most of them were slightly blurry due to the deers' movement. This was the sharpest shot. Still a lot better than I've gotten for wild deer in Canada! I guess these deer are semi-tame, though, which probably explains why they didn't run away while people got out of their cars and took pictures of them.
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So it seems Flickr has changed over to the new 'Everything On Black' photo view. While I think it was unnecessary, as change is generally bad, I don't hate it as much as I thought I would. Probably because they modified the test version to include the whole under-photo description (or more like 'side-photo' now), rather than having to click to expand it. However, I expect to be able to see individual photos' locations from the photo page. Fix it, Flickr!
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I'm listening to a few tunes I recorded in the last month...in February I discovered how to program MIDI music in GarageBand, so I've had fun creating fully-digital music, and also making drum tracks and recording live instruments over them. It's a lot easier to be motivated to write more thorough music when I know I can add drums to it, and layer the tracks to sound like a real song...which, after talking with Ally as we drove out of the grocery store parking lot this afternoon, I've concluded these songs are. They are real. Just because there were no physical drums involved, and just because I don't have a record deal, doesn't mean they're not real. Lots of the songs on the radio are created using computerized drums and keyboards. These new songs are as real as anything I've ever done.
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Tags:   Deer whitetail deer whitetail animal chordata mammalia cervidae Odocoileus virginianus capreolinae grass road wild

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