WildOats

Last week while surfing the web I saw a few articles about the moon. Apparently the moon would appear really big on Friday. The reason was that the moon would be closest to the earth at that point. The closest point all year.

So Friday came along, and it was cloudy all day. I didn’t think it would clear up, and I wouldn’t be able to get to see it all. But for some reason as the evening came along, the clouds started to give way.

After the sun set I went outside, to see if I could see anthing. At first I didn’t see the moon. I looked all around and couldn’t see it. It was clear out, I saw some stars, so I kept on looking. Then as I looked beyond some trees, there it was.

It actually was bigger and brighter than it normally is. At first it was a yellowish color. But as the night went on, and the moon rose higher into the sky, the yellow color turned to a more natural whiteish-gray color that we normally see.

Anyway, after seeing the moon, I ran back inside to get my camera, and see if I could get a shot of it. To get a nice close up of it, you really need a huge lens. I don’t have a lens like that. Lenses like that cost tons of money, and weigh a ton as well. But I took the pics anyway.

It came out ok. I cropped the picture some, in order to make the moon bigger. But when you do that, you start to lose sharpness in the photo. It starts to look blurry. So I couldn’t blow the shot up too much.

Anyway, here’s my interpretation of the biggest moon seen this year.

The other day it was nice out, so I went for my after noon walk. On my way I decided to walk over by a canal that’s next to my complex. At first I didn’t see much. Just the water in the canal. Nothing special, nothing really going on. So I hung around for a few minutes and pressed on.

On my way I noticed something on the ground. It was a tannish grayish kind of thing. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was on top of some mulch. So the contrast made it stand out. I started to walk towards it.

It kind of looked like a turtle. But I thought it was an odd color. Most turtles I’ve seem are kind of dark. This seemed to be too light. As I got closer I also noticed that it hooked hollow. I was seeing light coming in through this thing.

Then I got close enough to actually get a good look at it. It turned out to be in fact a tortoise shell. But the turtle itself was gone. I guess the turtle must have been turtle napped, and the house left behind. I walked around the thing and looked into it. Looking inside I saw something odd in there. I looked like a vertebrae. I don’t know if turtles have vertebrae or not, but that’s what it looked like anyway.

I grabbed a shot of this thing. So I’ll leave it up to you. What do you think it is?

I guess almost every time you take your camera out to take some pictures, you’ll have some obstacle to overcome. When you stop to think about all that’s involved, it’s almost amazing you get anything useable at all.

I mean just think about all that’s going on when you take a picture. You have to get a decent exposure. That right there is a balancing act between your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. That alone can stump you sometimes. Of couse when you adjust just those 3 things, you also at the same time as a consequence alter other things and not even know it. When you change you aperture, you’ll also whether you know it or not alter your focus. When you change your shutter, you effect how much camera shake you will get. When you adjust your ISO, you also alter how much noise or grain you see on the picture.

All that doesn’t even begin to take into account your subject. Where you are, your lighting, or any other weather conditions like wind. That wind is always messing with me. How close you can get to your subject yada yada yada.

Well I was out shooting some pictures the other day, and had one obstacle to overcome. This time it was lighting. There was some wind, but it wasn’t too bad. My main problem this time was the lighting. I saw an orchid growing on a palm tree. But the tree was getting shaded by a building. So this made the exposure difficult to manage.

To overcome this problem you have to somehow allow more light into your camera. You can open the lens up to let more light in. But when you do that, it decreses how much focus you get. So I didn’t want to open up more than I already had. You can also use a slower shutter speed, so the opening is open longer. But when you do that, you get more camera shake showing on your picture. Which means it will be blurry, so I didn’t want to slow my shutter speed anymore. Well you can also raise you ISO, which makes your sensor more sensitive to light. But when you do that, your picture comes out all noisey. I didn’t want to do that either.

Well I got around this by throwing more light up onto the orchid. How do you that? Well I used the flash on the camera. The problem with using your flash is that it looks off. You blast the flash and everything gets that over exposed white out look. So to get around that, I started to dial down the power of the flash. I wanted to get more light onto the orchid, but at the same time, balance it with the ambient light. So that way, it isn’t too obvious that I used a flash. Overall I think it’s ok. I guess I could have used a little less light. But I don’t think it was over blasted with light either.

Here’s what I managed to get.

Last weekend I made a trip up to visit Chuck and the family, for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I had a great time as usual. I got to spend time with some great people. Chuck even cooked a whole Thanksgiving meal. Which was great, Chuck’s an awesome cook.

While there I got to hang out with Stone and Szabo too. They really are good pets and I love seeing them. The kitty is a little more scarce. He comes out for a while, sniffs you, lets you pet him, and then goes back to his hiding spot. Only to resurface later as he’s making his rounds. He’s gotta make sure everything is still good with his kingdom after all.

Stone hangs around a lot more with everyone. He likes the attention. He also likes to play fetch. He likes it when you play tug of war with him too. But no matter what he’s up to, he always looks so cute.

While we were out with Stone on one of his “I gotta pee outings”, I got to snap a picture of him patrolling around and sniffing stuff. I had my iPhone with me, so I tried to use that. Up till now I’ve only used the camera in my iPhone a few times. And when I did use it, it was only on plants and stuff. But when I used it on Stone, I really noticed how hard it is to use on something that’s moving around.

So anyway, here’s stone patrolling around. Don’t bother him, he’s on pup patrol.