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.

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.