Killing Time

Seeing stuff like this always makes me wish I had the decorating gene. I don’t. Boy do I don’t!!! I see nice stuff in the store but never think it might look nice in my house. I see nice arrangements in other people’s houses and never think to try to do something similar in my house. I go shopping for food regularly but never think to go shopping for anything else. I suppose I could hire someone, but i never think to do that either. Hey! At least I have matching lamps in the living room for the first time in my life.

It only took 2 years, but we finally found Spunkmeyer’s favorite TV program (I suppose it didn’t help that the TV was never on before we moved to the new place). Sunrise Earth on HD Theater really gets him looking around trying to find the other birds and watching the screen, and even vocalizing some himself. In the program we watched today, his favorite segmets were the Terns at the ocean and the hot air balloons in Vermont. Anyone who has spent any time where there are lots of birds knows that they are usually awake and singing loudly well before sunrise, and the birds on Sunrise Earth are no exception. So just for the fun of it, I threw together a little time lapse movie of Spunkmeyer watching his show. It’s recorded on the DVR so he can watch it again.

Now that we’re all moved in, I hope to get back to my usual programming. Have no fear – there’s plenty of photography in the pipeline just waiting for me to sit down long enough to process it.

Okay, so I’ve been spending way more time out with the camera instead of sitting in front of the computer, and a whole month has passed. I can’t say I’m all that disappointed. But since the subject is Green at I ♥ Faces this week, here’s a little green.

why my shot didn’t work. I might have avoided this very simple mistake if I had been able to read G. Dan Mitchell’s post on Monday instead of today, but that just gives me another excuse to go out and try again. (A real burden, I know).

So what happened?  Well, I had been dragging my husband all around the North Coast of Ohio all day looking for likely places to hang out and do some serious photography as the weather warms up, and towards the end of the day, in hopes of finding a spot to catch both the setting sun and the rising full moon about a half hour later, we finally arrived at a place that looked good for also trying out the digital view camera.  So I got that all set up, and did a 6-shot sunset view (I see one corner where I must have messed up the focus a little when I shifted the standard.). 

Unfortunately, the eastern view was completely clouded over, so we started to head south, stopped for coffee, and by the time we arrived at a reservoir where I knew we wouldn’t have any trouble being after dark, I set up to try the same thing with the now mostly clear full moon and its reflection over the mostly frozen lake. The shot of the moon itself was about as perfect as I think I can do. But I made exactly the mistake that Dan talks about in his post.

Rely on your histogram to check exposure – not on how the shot looks in the display. If the shot looks like what you see at night, it most cases it will be way underexposed – and, as a result, you’ll have a very noise image and you may end up with artifacts like banding. Instead, use an exposure that produces a balanced histogram curve – or, “expose to the right” as many of us like to say.

I looked at the LCD screen to check the rest of the shots in the series. I didn’t look at the histogram. The rest of the shots were totally useless. On the other hand, I did get to see a little bit more about how well my Nikon lens, Bender 4×5, and Canon XT play together, which is pretty nice. And I also got to experience what it’s like to lug a surveyor’s tripod up about 50 steps and back down again. I’m sure glad I don’t smoke anymore!!

Compare that one with a similar full moon shot at the same location a few years ago taken with a Sigma 28-80 zoom at 68 mm.

So far I’ve been very pleased with the time that I’ve invested into the Bender kit. Now I wish I would have done it sooner.

The day was also nice for just strolling around and getting a few snaps. I did get to see another bald eagle not too far from the place where I saw a juvenile in September 2007.

A view of the marsh . . .

And another trail at another marsh . . .

Because sometimes you go out intending to do one thing and end up stumbling onto something else – like an icy waterfall:

or an over-protective goose:

All in all, it was a great way to break in the new boots.

It’s a new week at I ♥ Faces, and this time I actually have a few minutes to submit a few pictures.

Kids – this one was taken while she was swinging on the porch swing looking through the back of the swing.

I call this one “A Century of Smiles.”  This lady was 101 years old at the time.

And for the pets, who could fail to fall in love with Spunkmeyer at his perkiest, chipperest self.

I was listening to Salman Rushdie on NPR this morning, and the radio host asked him what it would take for him to believe in any sort of God. He stated, “He’ll have to show up.” I’ve said the same myself. It’s interesting to me that the entire weight of the New Testament rests on the fact that He has done just that. For a long, long time I dismissed those claims, but then He showed up in a very personal, undeniable way in my life. At that point, there was no more “god of our many understandings” as Gene Robinson addressed him. There was just that great eternal Presence who quickly convinced me that I wan’t in control of nearly as much as I liked to think I was.

I remember one of a number of jaw dropping moments when we arrived at John 10 in our ladies Bible study. Even though I had read the Old Testament book of Ezekiel before, I had never realized that God had said that he himself would one day come and rectify the situation of a priesthood that was corrupt and abusive. When Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd,” he was making an extraordinary claim. And he was making the claim that God did indeed “show up.”

Tonight I got home and found a Scientific American article in my feed reader about a group of Darwinian theorists from a number of disciplines, including my own of anthropology, who have gotten together in Edinburgh Scotland to discuss the evolutionary orgins of religion. It’s interesting to read these things and remember my own state of mind when I would have agreed with the sentiments expressed and look at the reasons that I no longer can. When someone, like me, whose entire world view is structured around the idea that there is no such thing as God because he has never shown up suddenly begins to run face first into this God who wasn’t there, it calls for a paradigm shift.  Paradigm shifts, both scientific and personal, happen when the observations no longer fit the theory and a new one has to be developed.  The psychological explanations of the article’s author are fine, but they don’t explain physical phenomenon that occur when God “shows up.”  

Still a fascinating subject to me.  I’d like to see some of these guys have their own paradigm shifts.

Don’t ever ask a visual artist what color snow is. They won’t say “white” and leave it at that. I stumbled onto this question on another web site last month and have been thinking about what color snow is ever since. An example. This morning there was an absolutely glorious sunrise. I took a series of shots (nothing spectacular – they’re just quickies out my window before the moment passed. I don’t see a bit of “white” snow in either picture below.

Color swatches from both images:

The roof in the first picture – definitely not white.

An area of pinkish looking snow in the second picture – also not white.

An area of bluish looking snow in the second picture – more nonwhite snow.

I’ve seen other colors of snow too. The only time I think I’ve ever seen truly white snow is on a blindingly bright, clear blue sky day at high noon with no trees or anything else around to reflect a different color into my eyes.

So what color is snow? It depends . . . .

On our most recent photo outing, Angie was unable to go because of the launch of I ♥ Faces, but Jean and I took a trip to Glass Axis in Columbus, Ohio.  This was actually a fascinating trip for me, and will probably be worthy of another visit(s).  I recognized all kinds of kiln equipment and stuff from my high school days in the pottery shop, but this was a whole new world.  Lots of fire and heat.  I had read on the web site that the shop is not heated and wondered about that, but now I know why.  No heat is needed.

As far as my photo resolutions post, this trip hit on a number of issues mentioned there, particularly taking pictures of people I don’t know.

Head on over to the Gallery to view more images from Monday’s outing.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day: