I drove Mady up to Williams Saturday afternoon to rendezvous with my brother and sister-in-law at Granzella’s, the halfway point (sort of) between Antelope and Redding. So, I am dog-less until the next time. I took this shot early this morning as Mady lay on the back lawn. She looks to be deep in contemplation. I liked this shot so much I printed it and gave it to my brother.
While I strolled down Auburn Blvd. in search of photo ops yesterday, I was cognizant of a recent Flickr challenge, “wall art” and I was actually seeking graffiti. But as I passed by a tire and wheel shop, I was intrigued by the wall of wheels that separated the tires inside a garage from the parking lot. It made a perfect wall, it was very artistic, and it tastefully advertised the business.
The Lincoln Highway, I learned today, was the first transcontinental road, stretching between New York City and San Francisco. It was built in 1913 and passed through Sylvan Corners at Auburn Blvd. in Citrus Heights. It became part of Highway 40, the Nation’s second transcontinental road, in 1926. Highway 40 was decommissioned in 1964 when I-80 became part of the federal highway system.
I discovered this bit of trivia when I took a walk down Auburn Blvd. while I waited for my car to be serviced this morning. The roadway marker is preserved along with an informational plaque (the reason I can spew the trivia) at a busy intersection. It sports a bronze medallion of Abraham Lincoln’s head dedicating the highway to Lincoln. The crackled and faded red, white, and blue paint identifies the marker as part of the Lincoln Highway.
I’m dog sitting and this morning when I went outside to photograph the hummingbirds, I left Mady inside so she wouldn’t frighten them away. When I turned to come back into the house, there was Mady inside peering out at me, the sunlight shining through the bay window reflecting off her copper coat. I’m certain she was puzzling why she wasn’t being allowed into the yard. It was only after I processed the photos that I realized the outside of the glass door was covered with dog nose prints from those frequent “out, you want in” moments.
I finally spent some time with Mady outside late this afternoon. She posed Sphinx-like.
I encountered this black swallowtail butterfly flitting about some thistle on my morning walk.
No, I haven’t been to Florida. I took this shot about a half mile from my house at the edge of a golf course. A recent Flickr challenge was “ICM.” Huh? I had no clue what ICM was until I read the challenge. ICM means intentional camera movement. For someone like me, who has spent the past 4 and 1/2 years trying to conquer the technical aspects of photography and to perfect my focusing efforts, intentionally moving that camera does not come easily. While I was walking Mady this morning at Dry Creek Community Park and chasing the black swallowtail butterflies, I noticed a simple grassy knoll with a fence and a few small trees on the edge of a gold course that made me want to attempt ICM. I had my 70-200mm lens on the D7100 and tried both horizontal and vertical movement using various apertures and relatively slow shutter speeds. I found the results exciting and interesting. The scene I chose to photograph was simple and the camera movement gave the scene the appearance of an impressionist painting. I used vertical movement for this shot (ISO 100, f/20, 1/15) and after I processed it in Perfect Effects 8, it looks almost like cypress trees in a swamp.
Sunday morning, I discovered an entire wall of multicolored graffiti on the underside of the Walerga Road bridge that crosses Dry Creek. Despite the relatively pastoral setting of the surrounding park, the graffiti was an encroaching fragment of urban decay.
Today’s Flickr challenge was “fast food.” I don’t think that there is much faster food than a juicy apple, in this case, my favorite, Fuji.
