Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays

Hoping each and everyone of you has a wonderful holiday and a happy, healthy & safe New Year!

La Luna Bella!

One of my projects was to get some shots of the moon.  Sounded simple enough, but it was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  There were MANY failed attempts, but things progressed and I got better.


I didn't like the "flashlight in the sky" look, and you'll see in the following pictures, it's mainly what I had...at first.  These are all RAW, I didn't want to re-touch or enhance, but I wanted to see the details of the moon, you know, like you see in the magazines.  So I read up on the subject and practiced.


I warn you, these are not at all pretty...

As good as the camera is, it's only as good as the person taking the pictures... I wasn't any good at moon shots, that's for sure!

It's more than just point and shoot.  

I needed to read more.  :)

Just a white dot in the sky...

I got the north star in this one...

I had the wrong lens with me when I took the shots above.  Another lesson learned, always be prepared.  After that, I started traveling with all of my lenses.

You can see how it does look like a flashlight...  maybe some clouds would help...

Better, but still not what I really wanted....

I tried another way, these shots taken in winter just before the sun came up.

Those were a lot better I think, but again, still now what I was hoping for.

Some of my first "orange" moon shots.

This next shot was my pride and joy.  The colors and the cloud formations around the moon were wonderful and I got it all in one shot.  The rest were deleted because the moon was misshapen.

So, while the "flashlight in the sky" look is acceptable and I did get a few decent shots, I would not be happy until I got exactly what I wanted.  Back to the books I went.


I did learn that I needed to get off the Auto and try Manual settings, finally.  I also needed to get a tripod, all of these were taken free hand (which explains the weird shapes in most of the pictures) and I saw how that would not always work.


Tune in next time to see the results.  :)

Small subjects.

I wonder how many of us, in our wanderings, just pass by things without ever noticing them.


I was working on something in the yard and decided to take a break.  I looked over into the garden thru the fence, to see if anything new had bloomed out and something on the fence caught my eye.  It looked like a twig and I was about to knock it off the fence, but something stilled my hand.  What was it about this twig that caught my eye?  Then it moved.  HAH, it was a walking stick.  I'd never seen on up close like this before and after that one movement, it froze again.  I waited to see if it would move and of course it didn't, so I shook the fence a little and it spread it's front legs a little.  Once the shaking stopped, it froze again.

Break time over, I realized I needed to get into the garden to finish up my task.  In order to do this, I was going to have to move the fence and this little guy was going to go flying off somewhere.  So I figured it would be nice to move him to a spot, he'd be a little safer in, and by that, I mean safe from me.


There's a good sized bush growing wild next to the fence, so I moved him there.  He seemed to wave one of his arms at me, as if to say thanks.  Either that, or he was cursing me out for moving him to a spot he had no desire to be in.  (shrug)

Making my way into the jungle that was once a garden, I almosted walked right into a spider's web.  This spider had made it's web from the fence to one of the cherry tree saplings that my daughter gave me, and also had a web set up on the fence.  That's where I spotted it.  It was a really fat spider, I've never seen one so round before.  It looked like an ingorged tick or something, it was so round.

I tried to see if it would stretch out a bit more and wiggled the fence, but it didn't move a bit.  Oh well, onward into the jungle.


Just a few steps away was another spider.  This one was more like the garden spiders I was used to seeing, only it was curled up.  I took a few pictures of it, hoping it would move, but it didn't, so once again, I shook the fence and it shot up into the leaves.  Great.  Not sure if you can make it out tucked up in the leaf house it seemed to have made for itself.  Smart spider.

The last small subject I came across on my way out of the garden.  I went to move a branch out of the way and saw something orange in all the green.  Taking a closer look I saw this...

There are so many little things out there that go without being seen.  Good for them I guess.  I'm trying to make it a point to be a little more observant so as not to miss anything.  Who knows what I'll see next summer.  :)