WildOats

No….I didn’t go to find Dorothy in the land of Oz. I’m in Seattle. Yea I know. I never thought I’d be out here. Who knew?

I got here Sunday afternoon. I flew in from Vegas, and it’s been pretty crappy out since I got here. Sunday was just aweful. It rained the ENTIRE day. Oh….. and did I mention it’s cold? Well if I haven’t…….it’s cold!!!! Now you know why they drink so much coffee out here. If you don’t…..you’ll freeze. Nothing worse than being cold. Well….. unless you’re cold ….AND wet. Which just so happens to be EXACTLY what you are out here. Again…..who knew?

Monday, wound up being a better day. It was actually sunny for a while. And it looked ok when you were looking out the window. But it was cold. Then later in the afternoon….guess what happened. Yup…it rained.

Yesterday was Tuesday. I think it was partly cloudy in the morning, and the afternoon. The temp was not aweful, somewhere around the 50’s. But then towards evening….guess what? Yea….it rained.

Today I got up, and it started off crappy. Overcast, then it topped it off with ….you know what. Rain!!!

Between the rain events I did manage to get out. I’m staying right down the street from the farmers market on Pike Street. So I decided to go check it out. Plus it was about as far as I was willing to walk in the cold rain. Well…..I had to walk all the way back too remember. It was pretty cool to see all the goings on. But I really wasn’t able to manage much in the way of pictures though. Being cold just drains me of all creativity. But I did snap a pic of the market sign.

So that’s about it for now. Hope you enjoy the pic.

Wow!!! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on here. Well the reason is I’ve been kinda busy in the mean time. Since my last blog I’ve been busy doing TONS of things. I guess I just lost track of what little spare time I had.

Since the last blog I’ve moved to Sin City. That’s Las Vegas to you and me. I’m just now finally starting to settle in. But in the interim I had lots to do, and lots to get used. The packing and de-junking was the worst part. I had lots of stuff to pack up and throw out. I was running up and down my stairs for at least 2 weeks straight. At the end I was tried, and aching from all that moving crapola.

Then after I got out here to Vegas I had to wait for my stuff to start arriving. That took almost 2 weeks before it all got here. I had boxes of stuff that needed to be opened and put away. Stuff had to be arranged and organized. Yea, exciting stuff like that.

Most of the stuff got here without a problem. Then…… my camera arrived. I had decided to mail my camera and lenses to myself. I thought about taking my camera stuff with me on the plane. But you’re only allowed two bags on the plane. I had decided it was more important to take my important paper work with me instead. Stuff like my birth certificate, diplomas, car papers, things like that. So anyway I mailed my camera and lenses to myself.

When the box got here, everything looked fine. The box was in perfect shape. I had put my camera into the box it originally came in. I also put my lenses into a bigger box. Then I padded the whole thing. So when the box got here, I opened it, and everything looked exactly like it did before I mailed it. But when I went to use the camera, the thing wouldn’t autofocus. Something apparently was not working right.

So I sent the camera back to Nikon. I just got a response from them yesterday. They are going to fix it, and hopefully in about a week I’ll have my camera back. It’s been a long two weeks without my camera already. I wanted to go out and take some pictures, but I’ll have to wait a bit more.

Other than that, not much else to report. I’m just learning my way around here. Just starting to settle in. Stay tuned for the continuing story.

I was outside the other day, and saw something that kind of grabbed my attention. It looked odd to me so I had to do a double take. I stopped and looked at it more carefully.

In reality it was a plant, but when I looked at it, it looked like an owl of some type. It had the whole big eye owl look to it. And it also had these tiny brown leaves, that kind of looked like owl feathers.

Anyway, here’s what the thing looked like. What do you think? Does it remind you of an owl or what?

Seems like old man winter has decided to hang around for a while. A lot of cities up north are having tempertures into the single digits. And even worse, a lot of cities are into the minus numbers…..brrrrr.

The artic blast has even made it down here to Florida. But by the time it gets here, it’s not as cold. So we only cool down a bit. Nothing anywhere near as bad as it gets up north. Thank God.

So to warm all you northerners up, I decided to put up a picture of a nice warm sunset. I live almost on a golf course, so there are some nice views to look at. For this one, I was actually out on one of my walks. The sun was almost all gone at this point, and there were wisps of some clouds.

I like when there are a few clouds in a clear sky at sunset. When you have that, the clouds take on different colors. I think the colors depend on how high they are or something. Anyway, the colors always look nice off a blue or dark sky.

For this shot I was by a lake, and there was also a palm tree there. So I decided to get the palm tree into the shot and let it silhouette. I Also liked how the colors were picked up by the lake.

Anyway, here’s some warm colors to warm up all you cold people up north. Enjoy.

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I guess with the holidays and stuff I got a little side tracked. Also, I really haven’t had much to talk about, and I haven’t been taking too many pictures either. I’ve been pretty much working on my photoshop skills. Not that I’m all that great at it, but I’ve been learning a few tricks here and there.

The other day I was out for my walk and came across this poinsettia flowering bush. When I was a kid, my mother used to put those poinsettias all over the house at Christmas time. However they weren’t live flowers, they were the plastic thingies.I thought they looked aweful at the time.

So when I noticed this live variety, I decided to take a closer look. This was a plant that was probably 4 feet tall or so. It had green and red leaves, and the little yellow center bits. I don’t think the living version is all that much prettier than the plastic ones my mother put up.

But being that it is the Christmas season, I figured I’d go ahead and take a picture of it. The problem I faced this time was lighting. Being that it’s winter, the days are shorter, and the intensity of the light isn’t as strong as in the summer. On top of that, this flower was growing under a tree, so it was shaded.

So to compensate for the low light levels, you need to keep your shutter open longer. When you do that, it makes motion blur much more visible. I tried to keep as steady as I could, but it wasn’t good enough. The picture has some blur to it. I’m not happy with the final product. But anyway, here it is. The Merry Christmas flower.

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.

I know winter is already here in some parts of the country. But here in Florida we really don’t have much of a winter. The weather here has broken, so the temperature and humidity have come down a a lot. It’s been cooler at night, and the days are nice. So with that, I’ve been heading out for my walks, and I don’t have to wait till after sunset.

So the other day I was out walking, and the sun was already low in the sky. It was about that time when the sun is still up, but the intensity is pretty low. Also the color temperature was nice and warm. Not white, like it is during mid-day. It had a warm tone to it, which I like when taking pictures.

I noticed this flower attached to a tree. I think it might be an orchid, but I’m not sure. What I also noticed was the the flower was under the canopy of the tree, so it was shaded. But from my vantage point, behind the flower, or what would be the background still had some sunshine on it. I liked the contrast of the shaded flower and the brighter background. The background that was still pretty bright was the wall of a house.

So I set my camera with a large aperture opening to throw the background out of focus. I aimed at the flower and snapped away. There was a bit of a breeze, and since the flower was on a thin stalk, it did wave around. The resulting picture is OK, but not as sharp as I would have liked. But I can’t stop the wind.