Month: November 2012

Coming out of Home Depot this afternoon, after the downpour that inundated us, suddenly there were sunshine and rainbows…a double rainbow, in fact, which I discovered only after I started twiddling with the shots in Lightroom. As suddenly as it appeared, the sun disappeared behind a cloud and there was no more color in the sky. I made a few adjustments in Lightroom which brought out the second rainbow and enhanced the brilliance of the colors which were much more muted in the original shots. They look a little artificial but I like the tweaked versions.

When I got in the car to come home tonight, I thought the ghostly outline of the oak tree across the street made an interesting shot but because it was so dark out and there were raindrops on the windshield, the camera’s autofocus wouldn’t focus on the tree and focused instead on the raindrops on the windshield. I set the lens wide open to let in as much light as possible, perched the camera on the steering wheel to keep it still, and concentrated on the drops rather than the tree. Although the moon is full right now, the moon-like light in this shot is actually a street light that isn’t round at all but the camera turned it into a giant round bokeh. Despite the fact that it will be December in a few days and Xmas decorations are popping up everywhere, this shot is more Halloweeny than Christmassy. In any event, I was happy to discover that the shot meets today’s the Flickr challenge: “on the other side” so I named the blog post appropriately.

Ed. Note (12/6/12) I thought this shot looked familiar. Here’s my post from Feb. 18, 2011; this was taken, as I recall, out my upstairs bathroom window: Almost the same shot

Focal Length 48mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/60

There was a great sale on Dungeness Crab today and I couldn’t resist photographing the poor fellow before I devoured him. He was a two-pounder before the butcher at the market cleaned and cracked him for me. This crab is now unrecognizable as an individual without his face but he died for a good cause…my hedonistic self indulgence! Today’s Flickr challenge is “individual” so….

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/10
8/10 second

Well, not a few but two of my favorite things, anyway. This afternoon Jesse called me outside because a hawk was perched atop the oak tree across the street from Famous Mo’s and, as everyone at Famous Mo’s knows, I’ll drop anything to photograph…or rescue…a hawk. I had only my 24-70mm lens with me so I walked across the street to get a closer look and took this shot as the Cooper’s Hawk left the tree. I think it’s interesting that the tree is blurred and the hawk is not. I panned the camera following the hawk and because I wanted a larger depth of field, I had the camera stopped down to f/14 and the shutter speed set at 1/100. The hawk is fairly sharp but I should have used a larger f/stop and a faster shutter speed for crisper focus. Live and learn.

When I got home this evening, I realized that the moon was full and that I had never photographed the full moon with clouds. I found I don’t know how to do it. I had to make quite a few adjustments to this shot. I couldn’t get the clouds without over-exposing the moon. But with the undeexposed photo, I had to increase exposure in Lightroom to get the clouds to show and as a result, lost some of the clarity and sharpness I usually get with my moon shots and increased the noise.

I was attracted to the brilliant color of these crape myrtle leaves as the sun shone through them late this afternoon. Despite the fact that the light is behind the leaves, it is not evident in this shot. The leaves appear opaque, not translucent. It looks as if the sun is reflecting light off the top of leaves and that the shadows are also on top of the leaves, created by the leaves in front. They are not. The light is shining through the leaves from behind creating shadows from behind. Ah, the mysteries of light AND the frailties of the human eye and the misperceptions that result.

Except for cropping, this is SOOC.

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/8
1/400

Mady left a few minutes ago. Bobo and I will miss having her here. I couldn’t resist taking one last dog nose shot. The second shot is a “selfie” of sorts; I’m reflected in Mady’s eyeball. And last, Bobo couldn’t resist the glass of V-8 setting tantalizingly on the table.

This morning Mady and I took a walk in an area near my home that I have wanted to walk through but hadn’t taken the time. It turned out to be a short bike trail that connected to a residential area but Mady enjoyed sniffing every clump of grass, leaf, and unmentionable as I took photos of things that struck my fancy. Here are some of the wild things I encountered this morning. I love my 24-70mm lens and I keep it on my camera most of the time but this morning I wish I’d switched to my 28-300mm lens because I would have loved to have had sharper closeups of the kite. Next time….

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/1250

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/1250

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/125

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/11
1/320

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/11
1/320

For the most part, I am meticulous about keeping my camera clean. Today, however, it’s covered with dog slobber. No, Mady didn’t try to eat it. I put it there myself as I depressed the shutter release and made exposure adjustments with slobber-slick fingers from throwing the tennis ball over and over for Mady who pranced and trolloped around the yard. Despite my efforts to get her or the ball stopped midair, I didn’t like any of the action shots I took because the back yard is in deep shade now and the photos weren’t as sharp and crisp as I wanted. So, I’m posting my favorites, all closeups. In the first, she’s sniffing the Thai Basil, preparatory to munching on it. I guess she likes Thai Basil because she kept eating it. In the second, she lay in the only sunny spot in the yard, in the middle of a shrub with her tennis ball. I love closeups of dog noses and I especially like this one. In the last, she runs toward me with the retrieved tennis ball, ready for another romp.

. . . for Mountain Mandarins. The season for local mandarins is short, only a few weeks so we stopped at a fruit stand on the way back from lunch yesterday and bought some mandarins grown a few miles away in Penryn. Mandarins are delicious, sweet, seedless, and, I just found out from reading the label on the mesh bag they’re stored in, that mountain mandarins contain significant amounts to synephrine, a natural decongestant. I wish I’d had these mouth watering treats a week ago when I was in the throes of nasal congestion from my cold.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Focal Length 62mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/15
WB Tungsten
SOOC (!)

I came across this leaf in a rain puddle in the parking lot at Famous Mo’s this afternoon. The tree from which it fell is reflected in the water.

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/400

Bobo is in love with Arthur. This morning she looked longingly at him after taking a chunk out of his finger last evening. She’s trying to make amends. Mady is trying to stay out of it.

Arthur and I made pasta tonight. After two glasses each of 7 Deadly Zins followed by one and a half glasses of Ghost Pines red blend, we managed to feed the pasta dough through the pasta machine and made pappardelle with butternut squash and broccoli rabe.

My brother and and sister-in-law are coming for a visit tomorrow and, as is our custom, Arthur and I will make homemade pasta, get drunk on good red wine, and enjoy a fun evening. I thought I’d make the pasta dough ahead of time so we can concentrate on the “fun” part, employing the pasta attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, and pressing out long sheets of pasta while we toast our accomplishments. I learned how to make excellent homemade pasta when I took a pasta-making class a few years ago at Whole Foods. The dough is fabulous and I learned that I could make pasta dough quickly in the mixer, so soon after I took the class, I bought the pasta rolling attachment for my mixer. Now, when my brother and I get together, either at my house or his, one evening is always dedicated to a messy, floury pasta fest.

While planning my pasta meal for my brother’s visit, I found a yummy-sounding recipe in Anne Burrell’s (I consider her the Food Network’s female equivalent of Guy Fieri–at least she has the same hair!) cookbook, “Cook Like A Rock Star,” for whole wheat pappardelle with butternut squash, broccoli rabe, and toasted pumpkin seed. When I read Anne’s recipe for whole wheat pasta, for some reason, I decided to try her method, the one you always see when someone like Mario Batali mixes pasta dough: Dump the flour on the countertop, make a well, break in some eggs, mix in the eggs, and knead the dough. Before you know it, it’s perfect pasta dough!

Since I have never made pasta that way, and I have a tried and true method, I don’t know why I decided to try Anne’s method. I guess because I considered it a new adventure for me and I am willing to tackle just about anything. Appropriately enough, today’s Flickr theme is “adventure” so off I went. I first set up the camera near my work surface which I had meticulously scoured and wiped dry. Once I started to handle the dough, my hands became encrusted with floury dough so I had the camera set to self timer and I depressed the shutter release with the end of a clean wooden spoon. Things started out okay. The eggs in the flour well looked fine. And it was easier to mix with a fork than I suspected. But, whole wheat flour is denser than white flour and absorbs the liquid quickly. Anne suggested kneading the dough would take from 8 to 15 minutes (it take just a couple in the Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook and no elbow grease is involved). After 20, I was thankful that my workout at the gym has strengthened my arms and I didn’t feel tired at all. It was just that the dough was very dry, starting to break apart and was no where near the look I was trying for (Anne’s benchmark was the head of a preemie Cabbage Patch doll!). I decided to get out the mixer and use the dough hook. All that accomplished was straining the motor so I stopped that before I burned it out. With the mixer bowl, filled with the dry lump of pasta, perched on the edge of the countertop, it took only a slight bump of my arm to send the bowl with the lump of pasta dough inside crashing to the floor, where I watched helplessly as the the dough rolled erratically across the floor and stopped dead on the floor mat by the sink. The five-second rule doesn’t apply in my house so the ball of dough ended up in the trash. What a disappointing misadventure. After cleaning up the mess, made another batch of pasta in under 5 minutes using my tried and true method and that disk of pasta is resting in the refrigerator until tomorrow’s pasta fest.

I did document a few of the steps toward failure, but I didn’t capture the ultimate insult. Just as well, I guess.

Step 1):

Step 2):

Step 3)

Step 4): Noooooooooooooooooooo

Today’s Flickr theme is “all lit up” and when I visited Famous Mo’s late this afternoon, just as it was getting dark, the bar lights were on and it was the first time I’d seen them on in the dark. Since I hadn’t yet taken my photo today, and, since the theme fit, here are Mo’s bar lights, all lit up!

Focal Length 42mm
ISO 500
f/2.8
1/80

I was, in fact, foiled again (curses!) when I went out this morning after seeing my favorite hummer bathing in the fountain. As soon as I stepped outside, he disappeared. I sat and waited patiently until I could wait patiently no longer (about 5 minutes because I had a session with my trainer and needed to be at the gym by 7:30) so I took a few shots of the bubble coming up in the fountain, using flash at reduced exposure, f/16, and 1/250 shutter speed. I really like the reflections from the flash on the water and, as I experimented with cropping and reducing the saturation, the image morphed into a crumpled wad of aluminum foil and so, here it is.

Well, the subject at hand is. . . Bobo! I started taking shots of her while my Trader Joe’s two-serving pizza was baking (of course it doesn’t serve two people). I upped the ISO to 1250 and got a couple of good shots. She is very curious about the camera lens and usually comes toward it with cute expressions. I cropped this one, added a vingnette and made a few other “Scott Kelby” adjustments. Today’s subject at hand:

I tried unsuccessfully to change all or parts of her to purple to meet today’s Flickr Challenge, unlike my friend Melinda’s photo today Melinda Three Six Five. My shot is a little grainy which could meet yesterday’s challenge, Grain, but I think I’ll just pass for now.

My first photos today were of the intersection at Roseville Parkway and Galleria Boulevard. I haven’t posted many night photos and thought I’d post this one since I have no other photos from today. I actually like it but should have slowed the shutter speed further to get head and tail light streaks. I guess I’ll try that another time.

Focal length 70mm
ISO 400
f/2.8
1/30

We flew home from Las Vegas this afternoon. I had an unforgettablly fabulous trip, but, for the first time in almost two years, I didn’t use my Nikon to take photos everyday. In fact, my posts for the past three days were a struggle because I didn’t have easy access to wifi. And, because I am so used to downloading photos at the end of everyday, I erased all of the photos from the first day we arrived, so I lost shots of the limo ride from the airport and the neon lights on the strip. Since I started posting to this blog in January 2011, I have visited Texas, Seattle, Canada, Switzerland, and Italy and I have always managed to upload blog posts on a daily basis with minimal hassle. Las Vegas was another story. Its tagline, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” seems to be true in more ways than just a visitor’s behavior. Unless I was willing to pay what I consider exorbitant fees for hotel wifi access, or put up with the inconvenience of downloading photos to the computer at the end of the day and schlepping everything a couple of blocks to the nearest Starbuck’s late in the evening to use the free Starbuck’s wifi, all of the photos that “happened” in Vegas, stayed in Vegas. I chose to use my iPhone to take quick shots and put up with the frustratingly marginal iPhone WordPress app to post. I didn’t take a single photo with my Nikon after Sunday morning until this afternoon when we visited the Bellagio. It felt good to hold the camera again and think about the shots. I thought the glass flowers suspended from the main lobby ceiling in the Bellagio were quite beautiful. However, I’m posting two similar shots because I’m tired and filled with cold medication that is making me a bit dopey and limiting my perspicacity (is that a word?) preventing me from deciding which of these shots I prefer.

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We spent much of this afternoon luxuriating in the spa today. It was nice, we had a good time, but they didn’t serve wine. I thought they always served wine at spas. I say that despite never having been to a spa before today. They did have lots of towels.

Well, uh, you know. And it’s staying here because we have no reliable wifi I can’t upload any pics from my camera. We’re on our way to dinner and then to see Thunder Down Un…uh, well, you know what happens here….