Photography, 11/23/18

Long time, no post! I haven't abandoned this blog, I've just been uncertain how I want to continue in the long term.

But in the short term, how about a few pictures? When I say "a few," please understand that means an odd assortment from the past two years, completely out of chronological order. So with no further delay, for Pete's sake (by the way, who's Pete?), I give you EVEN MORE of the mediocre shots you've come to expect to see here!

A few animals

spider web, sparkling with morning dew

There's nothing there to show scale, but this turtle is one of the biggest we've seen near home. End to end, the shell was probably 18 inches long. It was inexplicably pacing up and down our fence one morning. It was there quite a long time before it wandered elsewhere.

Same turtle. With every lap, it stopped, stuck its head through the hole in the fence, then continued pacing. Nope, still not going to fit through there!

What is that bright yellow object in Mr. Squirrel's paws?

Bingo. And none of my other sunflowers kept their heads much longer, either, once Mr. Squirrel discovered that first one.

Just one more animal story today. Please bear with me (ha ha!). But anyway--who's that in the window? Neighbor cat?

No, but it turns out the neighbor cat was involved. This jackrabbit kept coming up to the glass and looking in, then darting back across the deck, then returning to the window and pawing and looking in again. I finally went outside and found the poor thing had been cornered. It was just looking for a way back out that didn't involve our next-door stalker, who was crouched on the other side of that same hole in the fence that the turtle kept exploring. I ran off the cat, the rabbit shot through the fence and across to the street, where it disappeared into the woods. Weird, right? Who ever heard of a wild rabbit begging a human for help?

Parks and preserves

We've seen a number of interesting outdoor areas in the past couple years. They always net me a few nice photos--not brilliant photography, just peaceful, pleasant shots.

at Camp Moonyah, VA

also at Camp Moonyah, VA

at Chesapeake Arboretum, VA

at Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve, NC (though these are not the famous hemlocks)

at Hoffler Creek Wildlife Preserve, VA (though these are not the wildlife)

at Dismal Swamp State Park, NC

also at Dismal Swamp State Park, NC

at Lone Star Lakes Park, VA

also at Lone Star Lakes Park, VA

Birthdays

I've given up doing separate posts for each birthday. It's just not going to happen. It takes so long to do one, and after all that time invested, every post still reads the same. You and I both know it's the pictures that tell it best, so here are a few birthday pictures I didn't post, without all those extraneous words!

That's plenty for one post. Hope it was fun!

Photography, 8/5/17

Well, I guess it's well past time to blow the dust off this blog! Obviously, a lot has happened and kept us busy in the last year...too much to try to catch up, but let's start off with something easy--just a collection of photos.

You may think my photography hasn't advanced much, and it's not your imagination. I still haven't managed to even get all the way through the user manual for my camera, let alone take that actual photography class I have so often spoken of. There just isn't time for a class yet, and as for what I HAVE read of the manual--well, I don't have the guts to try it out too often. Usually when I'm taking pictures lately, it's in the course of a story for the paper, which means I need fast candids before the presentation/event/performance/class/whatever I'm reporting on is over. There's no chance to redo if I don't get it right, so I leave the camera on auto settings the majority of the time. Sad, but true, and something I still really do hope to address. One day. It just isn't priority right now.

But still, there are pictures now and then worth sharing--especially since I do use the camera now and then when I'm not working and have a little more time to try this and that. Here are some I've set aside because they came out good or interesting or weird or just help to tell a minor story that happened over the past year. It's a rather scattershot collection, but enjoy where possible!

Just one example of the hateful cabbage butterfly caterpillars that completely overran our garden beginning in Spring 2016...and continuing through that whole summer, too, long after all the cabbage, kale, and broccoli were gone. (I'm glad to say, we have seen very few of them this year. Whew!)

A 3D puzzle we spent a Spring 2016 weekend putting together. Pretty intricate!

What's that under the big red Mom-mobile..?

...THIS guy!

Another backyard wildlife encounter. This was on the back deck, but every so often one of these tiny crabs wanders up from the creek and, inexplicably, we actually find them INDOORS.

I've tried and tried to capture a good moon picture. This is one of the better attempts. (more on that to come)

One of the gorgeous Asiatic lilies in my back yard flower bed. It looks fabulous, but I'm always glad I just happened to have planted it at the far end of the yard. When it's in bloom, the stink is overpowering--not flower-y, perfume-y, but just stink. Blechh!

One of my favorite pictures in this group--a layered colony of fungus growing on a dead tree we saw on one of our walks through the preserve last summer.

A single cucumber, a single small watermelon, and a single handful of beans--that's the whole of what I got from last year's garden once the aforementioned hateful caterpillars found it. And again, hallelujah! They did not return this year.

An enormous snapping turtle--another preserve walk find. Look at the moss and grass growing on its back!

 

As always, I love dragonfly pictures--and this time, for the first time, I got a fairly clear shot of a damselfly, too!

Did I mention, those original hateful cabbage butterfly caterpillars were soon joined by several other species of equally hateful ones? This one is commonly called the cross-striped cabbageworm, if you're interested...and yes, it's voracious.

I love this one--taken at around 5am, not a sunset, but a moonset!

Two more moon pics I really like--taken on the same night, just a few minutes apart, with different settings.

A day at the beach, in short panoramic

Same day, same beach--pelicans!

Sunset just outside of downtown Suffolk, near Constant's Wharf. I don't know why, but I like that lamppost.

Same evening, nearly same location, a few minutes apart

Our favorite birdseed raider

That takes care of the piecemeal photos from most of the last year. There are others that go with specific kid stories or events or categories--but they need separate posts. More later!

Photography, 5/29/16

Now that I have this fancy new ("new" in this case means 6 months old to me, a couple years old to the previous owner) camera, I'm shooting all the time. Which means I always have dozens of unsorted photos sitting around waiting for attention. It can get complicated sometimes since I have "just because" photos I take to practice using this or that setting or technique, and then the family photos which need to be sorted and backed up in a very different way, and finally the photos I use for work, which get treated in yet another manner. My photo files are never really all caught up.

Anyhoo, that's all to say some of these are a couple months old but still worth sharing. In this post, I'm just concentrating on a few experiments in the "hows" of taking pictures. There's a whole lot I still haven't mastered--heck, there's still a big portion of this camera's manual I haven't yet made it through reading yet, let alone done practice shots with. So, grain of visual salt recommended!

Zoom
I continue to be impressed with the clarity I get when I zoom with this lens. Even when I go past the limits of the optical and into the realm of that more vague-estimated-simulated digital zoom, there's still often something worth keeping.

This bird is a greater yellowlegs we spied on the edge of the local salt marsh. The bird is probably a hundred yards beyond the bird blind I was shooting from. (You'll see this photo again in another post. More on that another day.)

Wasp on azalea just before the spring bloom. I love how those mechanical-looking insect details stand out even though I was sitting six feet away. Wasps are scary (oww) but so fascinating to watch.

Turtles at the neighborhood lake...

I spy...at least a dozen in this little cove.

...and some creatures we thought at first were tadpoles. I zoomed but really couldn't see them well while there. Later, after I got a look at the picture full-screen, it's pretty obvious they're not tadpoles. An online pictorial taxonomy suggests these are "predatory diving beetles."

Lighting
As with the older camera, I'm still quite challenged getting a good picture indoors. But I think I'm beginning to make some significant progress. Indoors--especially with incandescent lighting--is definitely not a time to rely on the auto settings, as you can see.

auto

auto

auto

auto

versus...

manual

manual

manual

manual

Just nice
A few photos that just came out nice, no particular feature or theme.

cherry blossoms

HUUUUUGE old tree at a local park. You can't see it here, but the trunk is so broad, I could only get my arms halfway around it.

daffodils, rose, azalea

Peekaboo!

A story told in zoom
Nice sunshiny morning...

Ooh, cat on the fence behind tree. Zoom in a bit...

Wait, I don't know any white-faced cats around here. Zoom more...

(Should I have been alarmed to see this guy out in sunshine? Aren't possums nocturnal? And are we all caught up on our rabies shots?)

Another picture story, without the zoom
What do you do when you pull some weeds from the spot you want to plant your new blueberry shrubs, and find a couple of perfect, crisp lettuces left behind over the winter?

I can't speak for you, but me? I decided it was time for a lunch break.

Speaking of growing...our first home-grown produce this year was radishes. I'd never grown them to eat before, but they were so fun and tasty (roast them, really!), I don't doubt they'll become an every-spring tradition now.

And as always, we went to the local you-pick farm for fresh strawberries again this year. Mmmmm!

Not a photography category at all
As in my last photography post, these last few are pictures that are not good quality (taken on a cell phone, actually) but capture store-shelf products that induce in me a certain appalled consumer gag reflex. Seriously. People buy this??

I love, love, love eggs, including boiled. But I would have to be on the brink of utter starvation before I'd consider buying a box of rubbery, slippery pre-shelled ones.

This is a consumer-gag two-fer: Take an unwise artificial flavor idea, and pair it with packaging in the most unappetizing, un-foodlike shade of green imagable.

It's a whole, uncut, perfectly unscarred pepper. So exactly what contaminant is this plastic bag protecting me from? (And if it's such a threat, why does no other uncut produce in the store require such armor against it?)