Sorry
Colleen is a good sport. I get her to do goofy things. I am not immune. You might say we maintain a healthy level of good humor. Or, alternatively, we are just nuts.
If you’ve seen one…
If you’ve seen one castle…. They do tend to run into one another, as in, they tend to look similar. There are ruins. Or, there are antiques. The clans of Scotland built castles/mansions. In time, many were donated to the National Trust. It was about lack of funds to maintain the sights. Others are still owned and maintained by the original clan. A Campbell married a Cadbury and the resulting fortune has been beneficial to maintain the amount of gold in the castle. There are a lot of castles. Don’t get me wrong. We don’t have many in the USA.
Happy Thanksgiving
Pardon me? These wild guys were wandering through the backyard and probably are not adorning anyone’s table today. By chance the other photo – I have been called a “turkey” – slipped into the post serendipitously. It’s appropriate too. To all the scattered family this year, I wish you all a “Happy.”
Haunting
This might otherwise be called Stonehenge lite. No insult intended. It’s foreboding. And, it’s not that crowded. Great! We got to walk all around the site. It’s isolated enough and hard enough to get to, that there won’t be hoards of tourists coming here. That’s a good thing. Callanish stones, a haunting place, not haunted, haunting.
Faceless
I thought of this while sitting in a tavern waiting for our pizza (gluten free) to be brought to the table. Idle minds… and voila!
There are a myriad of ways to do this image. This was my way. We thought it came out about as humorously as we had hoped.
Distortion
Photoshop does photomerge. It will combine photos to produce a panorama. It’s a bit more complicated than iPhone. Apparently if you shoot a series vertically and try to merge them, you get a good amount of distortion. Sometimes that’s a good thing. It’s not realistic, but it is a function of the method. Okay!
Wide angle distortion. It’s what comes from holding the camera in one place and rotating. One could pan as you walk but then it would be work.
Scotland
By now you must have guessed we were in Scotland. It’s taken time to get to posting about the trip. Majestic! It rains, therefore, it’s foggy. If it’s not raining it’s about to rain or it just stopped raining. Nice!
Airplane
It’s a shame no one really cares about flying. That is to say no one flies with nose pressed to the window looking at the scenery passing below. I do. And there must be others like me. We were fortunate enough that the flight path crossed over NYC. And the cloud cover was not too bad. Not good, but not bad. We flew over my old house. Yeah, it’s too diffused to make it out. But… hey! For reference, that blank space is midtown and Central Park.
…Next day
And on the next day…Dave asked me about whitewater rafting. Way back more than a decade ago … Jules and I were whitewater rafting in Maine. It was summer but the water was still cold. And the object of the boat driver was to dump you in the water. It was very cold. We had a great time. I relied on my database and Lightroom to locate the files. It wasn’t too painful. We all had a laugh over these memories.
Been there
Dave was in Kauai. He knew I had been there. I reminded him that he had been there too, in a technical sense. 1980’s, Lisa was about six months pregnant. We traveled there for a meeting. To make a long story short, I pulled my slide after consulting my database. And Dave passed me his pic of now. How nice! Similarity. We’re reconnected after so many years. iPhone vs Nikon. It’s all the same. Only a few decades have passed. It’s nice to have a database.
Heilan coo
Scottish. Highland cow. It was a quest. We saw pictures, stuffed animals, post cards, tea towels… all with the cute images. The cows are not fierce. And because they are relatively friendly, the cuteness factor is not overrated. It’s not so easy to find them. It’s easy. You run into them if you are patient. Some tourist sites know enough and they pen a few within reach of tourist’s cameras. It always draws a crowd. The trick then is to get a portrait worthy of “cuteness.” Who thinks bangs on a cow is cute? Me!
Art
We’re at it again. Think Salvador Dali and the flying cats – Philippe Halsman. I don’t remotely pretend to greatness. But once in a while inspiration strikes. Art. I was already warned to never – ever – consider tossing my cats into a picture. Ever! Meanwhile we did this poorly lit moody picture. As a critic might comment, it was to enhance the moment and add mystery. None of that… it was just dark in the museum and I was too lazy to do any more.
Another sunset
Yes, it is among many others I have posted and among many you may have seen. It’s still makes us pause to see one. Someone, critically, once said to me, “You’ve seen one. Isn’t that enough?” Good point. They are all different. And the argument would go on…. My post, my blog, I disagree. I don’t think I shall never stop taking a sunset image no matter how many and where I am.
Kitten Kittens
I ran across the kitten pictures. They were small enough to fit together into a small bathroom sink. Cute! Yes, they were. And they grew up and barely fit singly into that sink. Cute, innocent, curious, they had not yet shown their character but they were sure to become characters. About the best you hope is that they look when you call their names. They do. Cute? You bet! I like them when they are kittens. It’s why I’m forbidden to go to the pet food store. There’s always a hard luck rescue cat appealing to me.
Closing
Perspective. I have written about this in the past. It’s not so easy to achieve. I did it again. The beach looks like it’s teeming with people. That would be telescopic perspective bringing the fore and background crowding together. There weren’t as many people as the picture implies. Mermaids! That is what struck me about this beach cover-up. Ha! She made me look! It was the end of summer weekend at the beach.
Hype
By the time I will have posted this to my blog, the Impossible Burger will be commonplace. It’s not meat! It’s plant based. It’s nothing to look at. It tastes just like a Whopper. Which is to say, it was never fine dining, but, for fast food, it was a meal. I hedged my bet and got a $1.49 chicken nugget special to go with it. We are not craving our next burger. But for what it was advertised, it wasn’t a disappointment. … been there, done that.
Ominous
We went down to the beach at sunset. The beach faces east; there’s no real sunset view. It had rained the day before. No big deal, it rains. But we are entering fall and the turbulent waves had done a number on the beach sand. There was a three-foot ledge from wave erosion overnight. A lot of sand had been washed away. There goes millions $$$ in beach replenishment. The towers in the distance are the bridge at the inlet. The waves speak for themselves. Our otherwise tranquil beach was roiling. I have often read about telephoto perspective. “It” compresses the scene to make things look crowded upon themselves. I did it! With a point and shoot! Sometimes, I surprise myself.
Tick
I saw the motion of a leaping frog as I watered the plants. I dutifully retrieved my camera and got some shots. Another? More frog pictures? I have pictures of a green frog… as recently as a few weeks ago. It’s like all the fish I saw in the Red Sea. You take the picture. It might even be the same frog (fish). It has happened. Honest. I post processed and saw the brown spot on the frog’s head. A tick! How about that? No spot. Tick! Darn! Do you remove it? I never did know. The frog was long gone before I ever had a choice to help/interfere with nature. No tick for me. I hope the frog’s ok.
Antenna?
I’ve been shooting images of the swallowtail caterpillar. I don’t touch them or disturb them. But, Mike came to collect some for his garden. Transplant. When I harvested this fellow from the parsley – yes, they eat/love parsley – he sprouted a yellow antenna? It’s probably not an antenna. Wow! I never expected that detail. Surprise! Neat!
“Black swallowtail caterpillar with extended osmeterium. A feature shared by all swallowtail caterpillars, this strange forked protuberance is not found on any other kind of butterfly larva. It has a bad smell and is used to ward off attackers.” http://www.austinbug.com/larvalbugeye/gallery-swallowtail.html
Fog
Rain had just fallen. We missed the thunderstorm. It was ahead of us. We caught the remnant as we traveled through. There was fog on the mountains. You drive a lot. You don’t see fog very frequently from the road. At least, it is a rarity for me. Layers. I remember watching layers of mountains while in the car as a kid. I recall the Blue Ridge mountains? Clouds? Layers of mountains? I’ve seen it since. They are always fun.
Eye to eye
Just sitting at the light, we were right up parallel with this dog. We stared at each other. Passing ships. He was striking enough to make me pause and then grab my camera.
What if…
Ordinarily, this image would not make the “cut.” But it is the last image I have of Feather and Spice together before… we went to WV for a visit. Apparently, the door to the terrace was open and all seven cats had a shot at “escape.”
“If you love something, set it free…”
Mike and Jen managed to round up five of the seven cats… no Feather or Spice. Spice showed up on the second round of searching. No Feather. We were five hundred miles from home and on the way back within the hour. We cut a very important visit short to make the dash home. I suspected that Feather would be home. She is the least likely to bolt. There were four others more likely to explore the wide wide world. Happy ending! Feather was home. Hiding. She strolled out after we made a fruitless search. She was good and ready to finally show herself. You can imagine how relieved we were. Is Feather my favorite among the seven? I guess you love all your children alike. But, there’s always a secret favorite.
I wish…
… I had a better image. A white cat in the white snow, how cute! Think of the possibilities. I did not realize the potential. Oh well, I can dream about lost opportunity. Next time, perhaps I will be more alert. Hey, I almost got it. I learned my lesson. Meanwhile, I’m not sure Patch ever experienced snow. It was a first for us both.
Mother is the necessity…
Back in January 2018 we had the worst snowstorm. How worst? It was the first time in my life we couldn’t go. I mean I have been out to do aneurysm surgery in NYC when there were no cars on the road on the west side of Manhattan. Really! We couldn’t back the car out of the garage. Yeah! We were on a mission. We had to feed Colleen’s cousin’s cats. Snow gear? I had to dig up what I had. My North Face coat is decades old. It’s so old… the color is out of style and hasn’t been seen for decades. You just can’t kill these coats! The rest of the winter gear is all mine too. I always had redundant gear. You just never know. We needed it! We were walking in a blizzard. We fell in the canal at least once. But! We made the round trip!
photobackstory 