Miscellaneous

A Stream Through The Snow

It was another chilly day today. Our outdoor thermometer registered -0.3°F (-18°C). It was partly cloudy and actually snowed fairly heavily between about 2:15 and 2:30. An hour later I walked over to one of the other buildings on campus and then at about 4:30 walked back. As I often do, I carried my camera with me. The sun was reflected in the stream that runs between the buildings and I thought it made a pretty picture. I didn’t bother wading down into the snow for a better angle for a few reasons. First, the the shoes I had on, I almost certainly would have slipped on the hill and landed on my keister. Second, my shoes don’t currently keep water out very well and I wasn’t anxious to have wet feet, especially while walking around in the cold. Bad enough that I wasn’t wearing a jacket.

Fire

When it’s cold outside, and the temperature has currently dropped into the teens, it’s nice to build a fire and feel the warmth on your face. Cathy and I both worked from home today and she was in the family room. That room tends to be a bit cooler than the rest of the house so I build a fire and that warmed her up. As I was building the fire, I was thankful for an attached garage. There are many benefits to an attached garage. I understand that some people claim to put their cars in them, which I think is mostly urban legend. One thing it means for me is that our supply of wood can be got at without going outside. It’s still cold but it is dry and there isn’t any wind. The wood is also kept quite dry, so it lights very easily.

Snow Falling on the Buddleia

Yesterday there was that beautiful sunrise, leading one to think that a storm was coming. Yesterday turned out to be beautiful, bright, and clear, however. Today, it was hard to tell when the sun came up because there were thick clouds covering the sky. No red for warning. It started snowing a little before 8:00 AM here and came down pretty steadily all day. the flakes were tiny so it took a while for the accumulation to amount to anything, but it was cold enough that it only melted on roads that had been treated. This was taken out the back door in the early afternoon. I should mention that I really love the fact that I can work from home, when it’s inconvenient to go out.

Cool Shades

I had another eye check-up today. After the assistant did an initial test of my vision, I waited for the doctor to come in. While I was waiting I decided to take a picture of myself behind the phoropter. I don’t often take pictures of myself and of course, since the pictures posted here are taken by me, I don’t show up very often. The last time I was at the eye doctor’s, though, I posted a picture of the phoropter so I wanted today’s picture to be a little different. Autofocus is a wonderful thing.

United States Flag

It was quite windy this evening, as I drove home. While waiting at a traffic light, I pulled out my camera (like you do), opened my window and took about a dozen pictures of the flag flying at the Chevy dealership on the corner. I’m glad I did because I got busy when I got home and totally forgot about taking pictures. As it turned out, the flag pictures were the only pictures I took today. So, that’s what I have to share with you. It’s not bad, considering that it was night time and taken with just natural lighting (ISO 6400, 1/25 sec., f/5.7).

Tail Lights and Rain

Time for another somewhat abstract image. This is rain on my windscreen with tail lights shining through them. As usual, I was not actually moving when I took this picture. I’m not sure what I get out of this picture but I like it, certainly better than the others I took of the same thing. Maybe it’s an alien planet with a red atmosphere and a huge, bright, white sun. Maybe I just like water and red. I don’t know. Do you?

Dorothy’s Guitar

It was a busy day today. I didn’t get out of my office and then came home and made dinner. In the evening I realized I hadn’t taken a picture today so I thought I’d take a few of Dorothy’s new guitar, her big Christmas present for the year. This is the back, which I think is beautiful. The guitar is a Fender and it sounds great. The back is made of bubinga, an African hardwood from the Guibourtia demeusei tree. It is used because of the mellow sound it produces, as well as the fact that is has an exceptional strength-to-weight ratio.

Burning Christmas Tree

One of my favorite annual rituals is the burning of the Christmas tree. As I mentioned a few days ago, we kept it up a bit later this year than last but it came down today. It was a small tree so I was able to cut all but the lowest part of the trunk without a saw. I carried it to the family room, where our fireplace is, and burned it, bit by bit over a small fire I had already started. Naturally I put the camera on a tripod and took a few pictures. Getting the exposure right for flames is a bit tricky. You want the background to be black and you don’t want the flames to be too bright. On the other hand, you have to play with the shutter speed to get the right amount of blur (or lack of blur). This is by far my favorite from the evening.

Snow and Leaves

After a significant but fairly short cold spell, it’s been warmer (but still cool). Last night and today we had a good bit of rain and most of the snow has melted and is gone. Mostly there is only snow left where it was piled up when parking lots were cleared (and there are three snowmen left in a yard in our neighborhood). This picture is by the parking lot at work, where snow was piled, decorated with leaves that were scraped up with the snow.

Frosty Car Windscreen

How do you photograph cold? I guess it’s easy enough if you live in the mountains with lots of snow and ice. But what if it’s dry out? That makes it considerably harder, I think. The ground doesn’t look all that different. The trees and bushes are as bare and lifeless looking as they were when it was considerably warmer. But this morning my outdoor thermometer read 1.3°F (-17°C). That’s cold. Even if the reading is slightly off because the sensor is too close to the house (which would mean it was actually colder than that), it’s close enough to know that you want to do more than just roll your sleeves down. Yes, I admit it, I put on a jacket before going out. This photo was taken in my car while waiting at a traffic light. I like the network of little lines that have formed on the glass.

Drinking Glass Shadows

We were having dinner and I noticed the light shining through my glass, after I had finished drinking. The light source is a chandelier with a bunch of small lights, so it throws multiple shadows at slightly different angels. Because the glass isn’t perfectly smooth or pure, and because it is blue, there are bright lines in the light coming through the glass, crisscrossing each other to form these patterns on a sheet of white paper I put under the glass. Naturally, as the glass gets thicker toward the bottom, the light shining through it becomes bluer.

Misty Mountains

After taking a bunch of pictures of the shadows of the glass, I tried using a blue glass vase that was in the room. The glass is thicker and the blue is darker so no light made it through to turn the shadows blue. I suppose I could have made them blue after the fact, but this is the color they looked to me at the time.

In his picture, the multiple lights produced shadows that feel to me like mountains fading into the haze of distance.

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.