The feature photo is something I saw while waiting for a traffic light the other day. It caught my eye because the day before I had dithered over buying this;
Eventually I said “Yes way to the rose”. Don’t take that as a recommendation, it was just okay.I’ve been through several boxes of this after my friend Rita introduced me to it when I visited her. Nice and light. Summery. And the rose version isn’t bad either.Happened into Sam’s in time for a wine tasting yesterday. This was so good, fruity, I’d have never looked at the bottle twice. I drank the last glass of the open bottle of ‘Yes way’ last night while I let this chill. While my guy perused the beer isle at Total Wine I went outside and took pictures of the crazy clouds, then I wandered through Home Goods, and when I checked to see if he was done he was right where I left him in the beer aisle. So I wandered a bit and spotted this, but didn’t buy it.
In this particular case it’s technology that’s driven me to drink. I discovered that my camera will let you take a ‘precapture’. So you focus on a bird and when the action happens you take the shot and half the time you get this;
If you use this new feature you half-press the shutter button while you find your shot, then when to do push the shutter button all the way it takes the photos from a half second before you pressed the shutter. Great, right? So I took a ton of pictures that way the other day. but my software doesn’t want to open them. So this morning I upgraded the software, upgraded the camera firmware, and added a new editing program. And everything fought me as I worked on it. It’s been a long morning and I still haven’t successfully created even one picture. I have wasted half the day, but certainly it must be close to 5 o’clock somewhere…
My complaint, when I returned to Wild Birds Unlimited, was that the cardinals had taken over the Bird Buddy. I never imagined that I wouldn’t be thrilled to see cardinals anywhere, but I was getting essentially the same photos and videos every day. So the advice they gave me was to add a little cup feeder and fill it with dried mealworms. I’d attract lots of other backyard birds, they said. But what I got was crows! They announce themselves loudly, knock the little cup feeder onto the ground where the squirrels enjoy a treat, and all the other birds lay low when they are around. Even the cardinals. These pictures were taken through the (dirty) sliding glass door and the screening on the lanai. But you get the idea.
He was making a racket out there.I didn’t realize he was also sampling the gourmet bird seed in the Bird Buddy. Which didn’t take his picture.Mealworms do seem to be his preferred food however. And I’ll keep using them until I run out, but that’ll be the end of that.
I do need more bird seed, but I’m asking myself if I need another pole? To hold another feeder or two? With some other bird seed mix? Hmmm…
I usually try to stay under the radar, for the most part. The fact that I write this blog is something that I’d have bet money against myself ever doing, if anyone had suggested it when I was young. I suppose the fact that I can write in the dark and quiet of a morning while I drink coffee is what makes it feel anonymous, and therefore allowable. So imagine my surprise to discover that my household has been the talk of the neighborhood lately. There has been some comings and goings at my house for the last week while I had a minor bathroom remodeling done at my house. While the handy men worked on the bathroom I unloaded various and sundry items that have resided in my shed since I bought the house, making room for my trike so it doesn’t have to live in my car all the time. Twice a week trash pick up was a blessing. It took both pick ups last week to get rid of all that I put out, and then sweated out whether they’d take it and if they didn’t then what was I going to do. Only they were terrific, they took everything, including the toilet that has driven me crazy ever since I bought the place.
Have you shopped for a toilet lately? You have so many choices these days. Round bowl or elongated? Slightly higher seat, or not? Able to make an entire bucket of golf balls disappear in a single flush? Or if that’s too much you might choose the one that will send 6 billiard balls into the sewer system. I would think that either of those last two options might have a tendency to backfire on you, but that’s just me. I now have a nice, level floor with fake marble tile on it, plus a toilet that flushes just what’s necessary and no balls of any kind. I am a happy camper.
So while I was home I got myself out for some sunset and sunrise pictures, taken with my camera and also my iPhone. But since I didn’t have my computer with me I never looked at the photos from my camera until today, and I had already posted iPhone pictures from those outings. But I found a couple I could use, as I get myself and my camera ready for the next adventure.
A foggy morning at Bayport, taken as an HDR in the camera and it couldn’t be worked on until I got back to the computer.There was a nice moon out that morning so I took a picture of that too. Since the camera was set for HDR it took the three shots even though I have never had Lightroom actually process a photo of the moon into HDR before. I’ve tried many times. It usually says it can’t be done, the images aren’t identical or something. But this time it worked.
The neighborhood news was that it was suspected that I was having my house worked on because I was going to sell it. I hope they weren’t looking forward to getting rid of me because I’m not selling. I might even think about working on the kitchen, I’ve always wanted to ‘do’ a kitchen…
The feature photo is from Monday morning, pale but nice sunrise after a storm the night before. Which looked like this just after it ended, and in time for the sky to light up.
I think I was lucky enough to catch the finale of the show, because it got grayer soon after I took this shot.This is the audience apparently waiting for the sunrise right along with me.And this was Monday night as we left the restaurant and headed for home. An early night because our company was leaving on Tuesday, a very early flight.
Note to self: Just because you are in a parking lot when you decide you have to take a shot of the sunset, and you step up onto a curb and then onto the sandy grass, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t fire ants ready and waiting to bite your toe and make you too itchy to fall asleep…
Turns out I’m not smart enough to outsmart technology, although I outsmart myself regularly. I’m back home on my desktop computer and I can’t get a start page to write a new blog post. More correctly, I’m on my phone at the moment. if I start a post here can I open it on the computer and finish a post? Guess I’ll find out.
And the answer is no, I couldn’t. So how many devices does it take to write a blog post? Three, so far. I’m now on my laptop, the pictures were in my desktop, but I bought a flash drive the other day so hopefully I’m good.
I have asked for help from WordPress twice so far with no response. And since I pay to upgrade so that anyone nice enough to bother reading this doesn’t have to see ads, I would hope that I rate a response from them. At least the post-storm sunset from Hudson Beach was nice. A low tide view when I had expected lots of water. And I almost gave up, but it did, finally, get pretty.
The new USB drive didn’t work, just saying. It was too new for this old laptop. But I found an old one that did work. Sometimes us old things do manage to save the day, at least when they stick together. Or something like that…
What started out to be a potentially futile trip out to the sunset on Wednesday night turned out to be a wake-up call. After all there was no guarantee that the sunset would be a good one, and/or that my view would be decent, because I was headed out to try for the ‘shipwreck’ against a sunset sky. But not only was there a promise of some color, but I also met a biker who is on a journey inspired by what God has done for him in his life, and who is on a trip to the four corners of the country to spread his story and hopefully inspire others with their own personal struggles. I realized that it’s been a long time since I met someone and heard their story while I was out taking pictures.
James Rice is his name, and he said he was riding past on his Harley when he noticed the ship and the sunset and stopped to take pictures. I was happy to see that no one had parked on the tail of the boat, giving us a little leeway for photos, and the woman who had parked close to the front had moved her car a few feet over when I asked her to. So I told Jimmy that he could be my bouncer because it was going to be a while until the actual sunset and I was sure that other people would would try to pull in and park. And they did, but they moved when asked nicely. I was more surprised when a couple of young people climbed aboard the boat and settled down to watch the sunset. By then another photographer had joined us and he said, “I guess I’ll have to try again tomorrow”, but I figured the heck with that, and yes, they also moved. What a nice trip out that night turned out to be, for entirely different reasons than I expected. I will think of Jimmy and pray that he stays safe as he travels and shares his story.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 