Art

Really?! Heather. I like the quiet isolation. I like the color. Nice peaceful shot. We were in a café for afternoon tea and hot chocolate…

A cannon at sunset? I beg to differ. It is a mortar. I like the setting sun standing in for the exploding shell…

Ok ok … a bit obtuse. How about (which appear in today’s PhotoCritical too) moon shots. Middle of the night. No tripod, a handheld photo…. It can’t be done. Secret revealed in the other blog.

Spectacular. For me, I am impressed by my own ingenuity. I got shots! Semi-worthy. But even more so because I did what I would heretofore consider impossible without more planning and equipment. Suffice to say – the moon!

First impression

…again. We have returned to Scotland once more. Dawn over London. Sleepless night. I guess that is why it is called the “red eye” flight.  Cheery, ever cheery, it is so nice. We laughed. Again. Every small town has a Chinese take away shop. No exceptions here. Haircut – lots of customers, the price was moderate. No pictures in the castle! A lot of people shot pictures. I asked and was given permission to shoot the guard. Right! He did not shoot me.

It’s Scotland. Great! Adventure! … rain came later in the day. But of course!

Focus

It is the morning before the eclipse. The weather has us all on edge. Will it be sunny? … or cloudy?

Why worry? I saw and photographed the eclipse in 2017. Successfully. Cats! Always in focus nowadays. Details. Pay attention to….

My living room has filled up to overflowing. It happens when things come in and nothing goes out. Ha ha! Is that partly why they call it a “living room?”

Sun? We got plenty now. It’s a day until the eclipse. What then?? Time will tell. My post will mention? Photo? It would/will be akin to shooting a black cat.

As this post publishes, we are wrapping up a trip to Scotland. I hope that went well too?!

The challenge

Shooting the eclipse had a number of variables. The least of which was to protect my vision. Numerous articles warned of blindness if the event was viewed directly without a filter. It was a problem to get a filter for my camera. But, I eventually got one. Amazon failed me. B&H sent one in a day. Would you believe that?

Ok. Next. Exposure. Shutter speed 1/160; F stop 8; ISO 400; manual exposure.

The pictures/images were on a black background from the solar filter. This begged for Photoshop to add multiple images of the eclipse on one frame. How to do it? I experimented. Start to finish was too many images and the composite was too busy. Clouds!? I was so fortunate. Nary a cloud was in the sky except for about ten minutes. This was fortunate? It had rained the entire previous week. The cloud cover for my address was predicted at 50%. Lucky!? Yes!!!

I saw the event from beginning to end. Colleen did not. Her sister was having cataract surgery. And the cat had to go to the vet. I was selfish this one time and took this special event as my photo op of a lifetime. I stayed home and had a grand view. The camera worked perfectly. The images were good. How to illustrate them? Ah! That was the ultimate challenge. A single image illustrated the event. Right. But in order to make it more interesting… did it need more interesting? Nonetheless, I saw, I photographed, and I am trying to show it to you.

Packed

Never a dull moment around hereabouts.

Dawn broke with nary a cloud in the sky. Clouds and eventually rain ensued. I am on eclipse watch. Two days until the partial eclipse. I hope to photograph it. By the time this post publishes it will be history. I wonder how it went – the eclipse – and wheter I was successful in getting photos?

Flowers, deer, daffodils… they punctuated the day. Cats – always. Spooky? Tillie has an eye colored like the solar eclipse sun in my camera. Close out the day in a blues concert.

I was up way past bedtime. Coffee. Chemicals help.

It goes without saying that I spent the day with Colleen. And… we were busy all the day long. Rain rain, go away… come again another day…

April showers

…bring May flowers.

We dressed… just not for a Fifth Avenue stroll. The flowers were in bloom. Spring! Color! It’s so lovely to welcome the flowers back after a gray winter season. The rabbit ears were a nice touch too. Cheer and joy. Planting season is upon us. I shall soon embark on another year container gardening. There are a lot of flowers to capture with multiple cameras. Let the experimentation begin anew. I seek the perfect blossom.

Good Friday

Winterthur. We went to see what was blooming in the garden. No complaints. Color!

I love color! I am definitely not a black and white photographer. Give me a sunny day with brilliant intense colors. Spring blossoms are so fleeting. I am wistful. So much beauty, so little time. Late March going into April, the garden changes every day.

We’re gonna need a bigger table

Nine cats. I decided to get a current family shot.

It’s easy. You call. The cats – all nine of them – dutifully come and clamber onto the table. Click. Take the shot. Done. Easy!

So we tracked down each and every cat. Elle was the most difficult. She hid and absolutely would not cooperate. Great! Eventually each cat got their close-up. I edited for the shot with eyes open. Otherwise it was a crap shoot if they were looking at the camera and lens.

Pull the memory card, download, and edit. Then on to Photoshop. I masked and selected each cat, made the adjustments, and placed them on the table before us. Then, I discovered I did not leave enough table space for nine cats width worth of table. Ha!

A new selfie. Then back to the editing. Photoshop. Now my cats were too large for the image. So they needed a diet and were reduced in size to fit the new scale. Finally! Voila! I dearly wish they would just march up on the table and let me take a few images. It was 144 images and counting. Oh well anything worth doing is worth doing well. Right?

Colleen is so relieved that we are out of table space.

Shhh… Mozart is in the middle flanked on either side by Feather and Spice. The Maine coon cats hate poor Mozart on sight. It is fitting that he sits smack dab between them. Karma!

Museums

Washington DC. The museums are free to the public – government run, taxpayer funded – we are taxpayers. Yay! We took advantage of the fine day and walked the mall stopping in at the – Gallery of Asian Art, Freer Gallery, American Museum of Indian Art, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery, Textile Museum, National Portrait Gallery… Pfewf! We passed thru seeing the highlights and appreciating the different forms of art. Dizzying. Did we see anything? Fun?! Did we do it to see if we could finish a marathon? There was traditional art – Whistler. And there was modern art. Ahem?! It was an unintended sidebar to the cherry blossoms on display outside. No complaints! My watch tells me we walked about 5.6 miles in our journey. Eh?! It was nothing?!

Exhibition

In the National Portrait Gallery courtyard is a display of orchids. I never realized there were so many. And they bloom for a long time! They require little watering. We have an orchid in bloom for months now at home. Another orchid lost its bloom within days of coming to our house. It seems so hit and miss. But in the meanwhile, at the gallery there are orchids in bloom and showing no sign of fading. Beauty abounds. We are the beneficiaries. We are so lucky!