Monthly Archives: January 2017

The Stars and Stripes

On the way home this evening I stopped at St. Mary’s Church again. Last week I posted a picture of their graveyard and the church taken at night. This time, the photo was taken from the edge of their property but of a flag flying across the street in the triangular Veterans Park. The flag is well-lit, as the nation’s flag should be when flown around the clock, and it was quite breezy, making it easier to get a shot with the flag mostly unfurled. This was a 1/8 second exposure at f/2.8 and ISO 500, taken with a 100mm macro lens and with the camera mounted on a tripod.

Colored Pencils

It was back to work again today and a busy day it was. I barely left my desk all day and didn’t go outside at all. Cathy and I went to work together because we have a car in the shop and by the time we left for home it was after 6:00 and quite dark. After dinner I took some pictures of bunches of colored pencils. There are quite a few floating about the house. Actually, they aren’t as scatted as they have been at times in the past. Most of them are in a bin in my computer room.

I took some pictures looking at the pencils end-on but then decided to take a few with them standing in rank. These were just a bunch held in my hand with the yellow wall beyond them. Maybe I should have sharpened them all before I took the picture, or at least the orangish one in the upper right, but I don’t suppose it really matters.

Fjord

We had more snow this morning. Still not what I’d call a snow storm but more than yesterday. Also, temperatures have been below freezing for a day and the snow stuck to streets and other paved surfaces this time. When I got up in was 29°F but by noon the temperature had dropped to just above 20°F. In the early afternoon I went out back and took a few pictures. This one reminds me of a coastal valley in Alaska or Norway, with inlets and islands. Of course the entire scene is only a foot across, but nature tends to make similar shapes, whether large or small.

First Snow of 2017

It was something short of a blizzard but we had our first snowfall of 2017 this morning. It started before I got up but had mostly stopped by the time I got to work. The roads were all perfectly clear, so it had no real effect on my relatively short commute. It’s suppose to snow again tomorrow and it’s gotten colder, so it may stick a bit more, but for today, it was just a light dusting on the grass and in the woods. Quite pretty, actually.

Cracked Bowl

It was a busy day at work today and I didn’t really get out of my office, much less the building to take pictures. When I got home, I fixed dinner and then sort of crashed for a while. Late in the evening I started looking around for things to photograph. There are some little Greek ceramic buildings on a glass-front cabinet in our dining room and I took some pictures of those, as well as a Cloisonne egg, but those were not very satisfying. I took a few pictures of this bowl, which I made back in the late 1970s, probably 1979. The crack makes it pretty unsuitable for anything liquid but it works well for holding chips or popcorn. I kind of like the crack, which was not intentional. That combined with the darker glaze around the crack gives it some character.

St. Mary’s Church and Graveyard

It was a bit foggy this evening and as I was coming home from downtown Rockville I decided I’d see what I could get in the St. Mary’s graveyard. I hadn’t thought to put my tripod into the car so I had to brace the camera on the fence on the edge of the yard. This exposure was six seconds at f/5.7 and it turned out reasonably well. Because it’s all lit with artificial light, it was much more orange than this, which I’ve desaturated significantly. I should probably return with a tripod and a bit more time some evening but this was a good first try.