Miscellaneous

Snowy Back Yard

I had the picture of the snow coming down from last night. For today, here is picture of what the back yard looked like this morning. As I said, it wasn’t a huge snow storm but it was enough to cover everything. Although the county can’t clear all their streets in anything like 24 hours, many still had a good bit of snow on them. Not enough to keep us at home, but a few more inches and it gets a bit iffy on the hillier places in the neighborhood, especially when the temperature is right at the freezing (or melting) point. No trouble getting to work, though.

Sautéd Octopuses

I bought these tiny octopuses and last night I cooked them because I wanted to try stuffing them with sausage and sautéing them but they turned out to be too small to stuff properly. I’ve also got some frozen squid that I think are going to work better. Since these didn’t work out last night, I figured I should eat them for breakfast. They were quite good, sautéd in olive oil with chives sprinkled over them. Not everyone’s idea of a lovely breakfast bit I enjoyed them.

Falling Snow

We had our first snow fall of 2014 today. It wasn’t a blizzard, by any stretch, but it was more than was foretold by the weather prognosticators. I opened my garage doorway and set up my tripod and took some pictures of it this evening. The light was interesting. Sometimes, when it is snowing, it seems much brighter out than on a normal night. It wasn’t so noticeable, tonight, but the light was quite yellow, a consequence of being from fairly yellow street lights in our neighborhood. This photo was a 15 second exposure but with several (actually, about a dozen) one-eighth power flashes that lite up the snow as it fell. Without the flash, the falling snow would have blurred into nothing.

Christmas Lights Shining On The Wall

Welcome to year four of my photo-a-day life, this is day 1,100^*.

To start the new year off, here is a photo of Christmas lights, shining on the wall in our front hall. I had the camera on a tripod and had to be careful to keep the string of lights out of the picture. The circular shape on the right is the shadow of the end of the bulb, which I think is pretty cool.

Codex Washingtonianus

For quite a few years now, I have taken Dorothy and her friend Karlee downtown sometime between Christmas and the New Year. We had talked about going to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore this year but we ended up scheduling our trip for Monday (today) and the Walters is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so that was out. We decided to go to the American Art Museum instead. We parked at 10:45 only to find that it doesn’t open until 11:30. So, we walked to the Freer Gallery across the mall. We were particularly impressed with the Peacock Room and I really wanted to see the Washington Gospels, also known as Codex Washingtonianus (the smaller and darker manuscript in this picture). It is the third-oldest Greek parchment manuscript of the Gospels in the world (late 4th–early 5th century). Also on display is an early 5th-century Greek parchment codex containing the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua (upper right in this picture). I was totally amazed at the quality of these two documents, which were quite readable (well, if you know Biblical Greek, anyway).

Pension Building

From the Freer Gallery we walked back to the Pension Building, which now houses the National Building Museum. The building itself is a treasure regardless of what’s kept there. The huge faux marble columns are great and it’s just a nice room to sit in and rest after walking for a few hours.

From the Pension Building we walked the two blocks west back to the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, which also has a nice covered courtyard in the middle. All in all, we had a great time. It’s an outing I look forward to every year and it didn’t disappoint.

Metro Station

Dorothy went downtown with some friends today and I picked her up at the Metro station when she returned. I brought my camera, hoping to get some pictures of them as they walked back to the pick-up area. I was trying out different exposures but didn’t really have time to get it right before they came out. Also, I didn’t have my tripod so my choices of places to rest my camera were limited. The picture I got with them in it was too long of an exposure so even though they walked through the frame, you cannot see them. This one was a shorter exposure and it just blurred the people in it nicely.

Lake Bernard Frank

We took another walk in the woods today, heading down towards the lake and then turning the other way. This took us along the stream and then the lake, which was nice. It didn’t feel like as long of a walk but, according to Cathy’s pedometer, it was just about the same distance (3.5 miles). I carried my camera and one extra lens and took a few pictures. This is a small stream emptying into Lake Frank. The stream is in shade all the time so there is still ice on it, while the lake (which is a pond, of course) has thawed. It’s supposed to get colder again, so we’ll see if it refreezes soon.

I like the sinuous line of the creak leading into the pond. It’s perhaps a little blue, but that’s the color of water generally, particularly when the sky is so blue and is reflecting off of the water. The ducks were not going to let me get close enough to take pictures of them. It was pretty muddy down near the water, in any case.

Ice in a Bird Bath

After some quite remarkable warm weather, very unseasonable but welcome, nonetheless, it has turned cold. If I forget to check the outdoor thermometer before I come downstairs in the morning, I often take a look at the bird bath on our back patio to see if the temperature has dropped. Apparently it has, because ice has formed across the surface. It’s just a thin layer so far, but thick enough to mean it’s properly cold again.

Clementines

Getting Clementines to be associated with Christmas is something of a marketing coup, I guess. Christmas does coincide with their availability, of course, which certainly helps. I wish they would sell boxes that were about half the size, since the last few sometimes have gone bad by the time we get to them. Better yet would be bags so that you could see if the fruit on the bottom was bad. I find it interesting that I associate the red plastic mesh with Clementines, as well. When they are good, they are very, very good.

Creek Bed

It was a wonderfully warm day today. I’m posting this five days late and it’s gotten cold, but on the 21^st it was amazing for December. Cathy and I went for a nice, long walk in the park today, enjoying the quiet woods. I stopped for pictures now and then, naturally, and this is one that I like pretty well. This is one of the many creeks that drain into the small lake (which is actually a pond, of course), just northwest of our neighborhood. I love reflections, especially on water with ripples. I also like the colors of wet rocks.

Tori with Stained Glass`

Every year the group I’m in at work has a silent auction at our holiday party to benefit a local charity. This year, a coworker asked if I would mind if she made a stained glass window of a photograph that I took of a black-eyed Susan. I told her that I’d be delighted and so she did. She donated the artwork in our auction and it generated (I think) the most vigorous bidding of any item sold.

Here’s a picture of Tori, who ended up getting it. In addition to the stained glass window, which I think is lovely, she got a card with the source photograph. Kathy, you did a wonderful job with the glass. Thank you so much for letting me play a small part in its inspiration.

The original photograph can be seen on the HartleyPhoto web site here along with other photographs that I offer for sale (some of them will look familiar to anyone who follows this blog..

Christmas Lights Through Glass Bricks

I went to pick up Dorothy at her friends’ house this evening. Before I went in, I took some pictures of the Christmas lights they have on the front of their house. They were mostly out-of-focus pictures that turn colored lights into glowing orbs, overlapping to form a Euler diagram. They are something of a cliche picture, but pretty for all of that. I came in and visited with Maureen and Julia for a little while before it was time to leave and get Dorothy home.

As I was about to go out of the kitchen door, I noticed the colored lights shining through the glass blocks in the front wall and realized that made a much better photograph than the simple out-of-focus lights. I’d like to take more but of the few that I took, this one is my favorite. A few others have great patterns but are not as good for one reason or another. I may try again the next time I’m there.

This is definitely one you’re going to want to click on to see the larger version.

Sand Dollar

In 1982 I worked as a contractor at the National Weather Service, contributing in a small way to the forecasting of storm surges due to hurricanes. I was in Texas for a couple weeks surveying the coast in support of our forecast model for a few large sections of the coast, basically looking for situations where the coastal terrain was significantly different to what was recorded on topographic maps. We were on a barrier island at one point and came across a huge number of sand dollars, all washed up on the beach. I collected a few and they have been in a ceramic jar ever since. This is the sand dollar at the top of that jar.

Paprika

Obviously this isn’t really a picture of the surface of Mars. It’s just a little pile of Hungarian paprika on the counter. It’s almost the right color, though, for a Martian landscape. Actually, it was a bit hard to correct the color cast that my camera’s auto-white-balance set. There isn’t anything here that should be white, which is what I usually look for when correcting color shifts. Anyway, I thought I’d share the picture, even though it isn’t worth all that much, artistically or otherwise.

Dorothy and Trees

We went out this morning to cut Christmas trees for ourselves, my mom, and brother. We usually go to Pennsylvania for a tree and visit “the farm.” In the past we cut trees there but they are all to big at this point, so we go on from there to Seven Springs Tree Farm and cut our trees there. This year, we thought we’d head north, even though the forecast was for a significant snowfall. As we came down the hill into the Frederick Valley, the temperature dropped from 36°F to 31°F and the snowfall because significantly heavier. Since we still had a long way to go and it was getting steadily worse, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned around. We ended up cutting the tree at Butlers, which isn’t nearly as much of an outing, but we got our trees.

Green, Red, and Yellow Peppers

I took a quick trip to the grocery store this evening to top up our supplies of milk, eggs, and bread, plus a few other things. I’ve been taking my camera with me everywhere I go for almost three years now and in general, I’ve gotten used to having it. The grocery store is one of those places I still feel a little self conscious about it but there are lots of things to photograph there, so once in a while I’ll take a picture. This evening’s is of green, red, and yellow bell peppers. One of the few things I don’t like the taste of and try to avoid if at all possible, but they sure are pretty.

Sashimi

Cathy and I went out to dinner this evening. Since she asked me to pick the restaurant, I opted for Niwano Hana, a Japanese restaurant in Rockville. Cathy had tempura and I went with the deluxe Sashimi Assortment. As you can see, it has a pretty wide selection of fish and was as good as it looks (or better, if you don’t like the look of raw fish). Anyway, I enjoyed it, as well as enjoying an evening out with my beautiful bride.

Snow on Black-eyed Susans

On Sunday it snowed, then yesterday we had freezing rain, covering everything with a coating of ice. This morning, just after I got up (to find that school was canceled again) it started snowing. I don’t think they needed to cancel school today—late opening would have been enough, but then that’s not up to me. I went out into the yard and took pictures of the snow. I’d say we had between two and three inches. These are black-eyed Susans growing in our front garden, with a little bit of snow added.

Snowfall

We had our first real snowfall today. The forecast was possibly a little more dire than the reality but it actually did snow and it make the roads quite slick for a little while. I heard of two people that I know who had accidents and we saw another. We came home by a less windy road than normal and didn’t have any trouble but on at least one occasion I had to rely on my anti-lock breaks to get the car stopped in time. It wasn’t terribly cold, right around freezing, which is when snow is the most slick, of course. Beautiful, too, of course.