A FEW PHOTOS AROUND THE PARK POND THIS AFTERNOON
A blustery weather front traveled through our area late Thursday afternoon & early evening leaving us with a large mass of refreshingly cooler air. The rains & hail skipped around us so we were OK but did hear of some damage south of us. Sunrise brought us a mighty fine clear looking & feeling good day.
I AM GUESSING THIS IS A ‘NORTHERN CRESCENT’ BUTTERFLY
Spent most of my morning on the end of my pruning shears, weed whacker, & Swede saw. Lot of scrub trees & branches needed to be cleared back from a neighbor's house plus our own yard was in need of some trimming as well. Didn't take me long to burn up my allotted number of Senior energy units for the day, but managed, with a couple snoozy breaks to get most everything done. I'll haul it all away in the morning when it's cooler. And, some of you vintage car buffs might like to check out Geogypsy’s VINTAGE CARS AT THE GRAND CANYON.
DEER PARK LODGE has the last of it's 3 summer beach weddings Saturday. Unlike the other weddings, this one is a late afternoon affair with about 80 guests. Not sure if I will make it over to this one. I kind of enjoy standing in the background snapping off some fun candid photos. For MY TAKE ON CANDID PHOTOGRAPHY just click the colored link.
I BELIEVE THIS DRAGONFLY IS CALLED A ‘WIDOW SKIMMER’
Have had a few comments & questions about my Hummingbird header photo so here’s a little technical info on that particular picture. The close up of the Hummingbird was done with my tri-pod mounted Nikon D40 DSLR camera coupled with my 700mm telescope lens. 1/640th of a second shutter speed. Manual focus with no aperture setting available. With that lens I have to guess at the exposures. ISO 800. I had noticed this Hummer returning to the same flower a few times earlier so I set up my camera, pre-focused & determined the correct exposure by firing 3 or 4 test shots on the flower itself & then waited for the Hummer to fly into the frame. All's I had to do then was hit the button. Trying to follow the Hummer around in flight is just about impossible. Kinda like trying to photograph Bats in flight at night. I haven't been successful at that one yet.
HERE ARE 3 MORE HUMMER PICS PLUS THE TELESCOPE-LENS I USE
And, while on topic I may as well answer another photo question. A reader says, "Your pics are soft and very warm to the eye. How do you do that”? Well, there are a number of contributing factors. Time of day is the big one with early morning & evening light being much softer than the harsh contrasts of a sunny high noon day. However, the Hummingbird photo was done on a bright, but tree filtered sunny afternoon. There was shade in the front yard but it wasn't too dark so the lighting was on the soft side with many flowers & plants diffusing any direct sunlight. By using a telephoto lens the depth of field is very narrow, meaning everything in front of & behind the Hummer is going to be out of focus giving the background a soft fuzzy look. Those orange splotches you see in the background are 'out of focus' day lilies. And, I always ‘tweak’ some my camera settings. Also want to mention photo editing here as well. Any photo editing program is all important to the finished photo product with it's many tools for softening, tinting, cropping, coloring correcting, retouching, & sharpening, etc. Many 'throw away' photos can be saved by creatively using such programs as Picasa 3.9. If you don't have it.....go get it. It's free & it's easy to use:)) PICASA PHOTO EDITING PROGRAM It's the only photo program I edit my pictures with:))
It is the warm nights I like best about the hot days & a walk on a warm summer's night under a full canopy of stars had been one of my favorite all time things to do. And, I have been missing that. A walk at night was something Max & did for years. Even through the winter months I would dress warmly & we would head out the farm lane & down the country road where we lived at the time. Did this for years & it was on these starry nights I began to grow my interest in Astronomy. Bought myself a good Astronomy book complete with star charts. What an enjoyable time I had on those warm summer nights about a dozen years ago teaching myself the night sky. Wasn't long before & I knew where most of the Constellations, Planets & many of the stars were. On our nightly walks I would often point out to Max many of the star patterns overhead such as Orion, Scorpios, Draco, Sagittarius, Hercules, & Pegasus, just to name a few. Max wasn't quite as enthusiastic about the night sky as I was & had a tendency to keep his head down exploring along the roadside ditches & edges of the fields. But, no matter our individual interests, we were just a couple happy guys to be out for an enchanting walk in a night time world so much different from the light of day we lived our waking hours in. When Max died a little over a year ago our long standing traditional night walk was broken & I just slipped into kind of a nightly lethargic computer routine. Starting tonight I hope to reverse that & begin introducing Pheebs to the wonderful night sky just as I did Max, oh so many years ago when he was about Pheebs age. The wonderful night sky I have been missing for way too long……….. back in the days of the way we were.
GROANER’S CORNER:((
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- Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.
- Home is where your pet is:))
- "If having a soul means being able to feel
love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals
are better off than a lot of humans."
(James Herriot)
- The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.
stargeezerguy@gmail.com
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