Good Housekeeping "Seal of Dis-Approval"...

Earlier in the summer I noticed that the spiders like to build nests in the opening of the deck rail.  I guess the design affords them great opportunity to catch food with all of it's rectangular openings.  There is a bit of a view at the place, and so the quandary was to design a deck rail that would meet building code, go with the style of the house, and yet not block the view or "stop your eye".

Wandering around the local farm store one day on an unrelated quest solved the problem... there in the storage yard with all the cool tractor implements, watering troughs, and things of the like was a heavy galvanized wire horse fence material.  Cut to size, dip in a bath of black Rustolem in a quickly made vat of two by fours and visqueen, and the deck rail panels are hardly noticeable to the eye, unless those eyes are attached to a spider.

The same "eye stop" thing is true of the spiders constructions really.  You can hardly notice them under normal circumstances.  This summer I tried to photograph some of them, but my self-imposed rule for this blog of using only a pocket camera and not the digital SLR meant that I didn't get a good picture.  I took out a plant sprayer with some water in it, and I was able to capture some of the design by misting the web, but I was not satisfied with the pictures, so I didn't publish them.

Well once again I am reminded of how useful a tool procrastination can be if you learn to harness it.  Maybe I'll get to that.  At any rate, nature decided that I should record the wonder of the web, so it piled on a little help the other morning to highlight the various designs. I call this one waterfall and it was still hard to photograph.

It was hard to photograph until my handy photographic assistant came and used a passive reflector (her body) to backlight the scene.

Once properly lit, we could get a nice head on shot:

Webs are everywhere.  Click on the picture to get the bigger version and look at the one in the center, right as the deck rail turns.  Quite a design.

By this point, the photographic assistant and her sister had better things to do involving the search for things to catch (there is always something to catch on farm ground) so I was on my own;

Well, my mind wasn't quite in the gutter on this shot, but it was close:

On a lighter note

I think it is time for me to play tutor for the college kid... he has some study questions he wants to drill on for his final.  That will help me keep the cobwebs out of my mind. 

It doesn't get old...

Light, dark, repeat.  It doesn't get old.  I love being up early and watching the day start outside the window.  I never thought of myself as a morning person, but from the time I learned to read, I was the second one in the house with the newspaper, right after dad finished with it.  Dad is the definition of an early riser.

What I like is the quiet time as the day winds up its' first pitch.  Now my newspaper is made of emissive photons blasting my retinas from things named of science fiction.  Liquid crystals, and plasma inside a box to inform and entertain?  Doesn't that big bright thing in the sky (that appears over the Pacific Northwest ever so often) run on plasma or something?  Regardless of the medium, watching the world wake up and catching up on events is still a great way to start my day.

Back in my school days, the next part of the day was meeting up with your friends and classmates before school started for a few moments of socializing before the school machinery starting operating to try to destroy your will to live. :-)  I am so glad I went on to college to discover the joy of learning.

Today, I noticed I still start my day the same way.  I take in the morning, read the news, and do a little socializing with folks that are inclined to do so via the social media de jour.  Then it is on to life's possibilities.

The day surprised us with freezing temperatures and a sea of fog. 

This time, the sea sprouted an island

...and Captain Nemo in the Nautilus

Unfazed by the cold, the trusty garden shovel and I decided to crawl to the end of the place to dispose of some big rocks we had found.  There is lots of rocks down here, so burying a few more won't go noticed.

Even here, the garden shovel liked the view, electric blue skies on a cold day, quite a juxtaposition to the foggy mayhem below us.

The day gave us a pretty view of Mt Hood, a favorite of my sister, so I had to take this for her to enjoy.

Then it was back to work!

Chillin' Out

Looking at the hood of the car this morning it looks as if a single giant hand closed it in the early hours.  Of course we all know how silly a thought that is, there are no giant alien hands here closing hoods.  It was probably the foot of a pterodactyl that lit on the black car in the dark.

Some remnants of summer weather remain, the lad's flip flop left next to the hammock frame.  Let's try not to drift into the territory of 'why' it is there but rather focus on the beauty of nature and the story that is told by a ice speckled flip flop.  Still stuck on why?  Let me misdirect you with the Smashing Pumpkins' Here is No Why.

Infinity style shot down the frozen deck rail captures the now empty hammock frame and the deck that will be used mostly by critters for a while.  Maybe I will start a new cold weather tradition with the brataci whre we go dress up warmly and have a big cup of coffee out there on cold clear starlit nights.

Another remminent of summer, or is it?  The garden shovel as we call it has a full agenda today.  It looks so peaceful resting there but it knows somwthing is up since I started checking the oil and rattling the grease gun at it.  The coffee is ready, so I hope the shovel is too.  Time do do some more gardening.  Today's project is the planted areas on either side of the driveway, just short of a quarter mile worth digging both sides.

Oceans Apart

The day began with the sun rising over a faux-sea of clouds tucked down into the valley.  Surprisingly the morning was rather warm for this time of year, so I could hold a steady camera with out the chills shaking me.

The day had barely started going when I took a call from a friend who needed to replace a window in his beach house so I traded the faux-sea for the Pacific.

The view from the living room is 'OK' don't you think?

A very pleasant November day on the north Pacific coast.  A few days back we had some pretty good winds blow through.  The sea is still a little stirred up over that, even though it has been a few days gone. One particular mountain in the coast range is a wind magnet so it always has some spectacular sounding wind gust numbers reported there.  

This storm was no different with the gusts hitting 97 mph by 7:30AM.  Along most of the headlands, the gusts were more typical of a Pacific storm in 60 mph range.  Back at the faux-sea the gusts were only in the 30 mph range, so quite a difference.

Today, gut-guster(tm) wind guesstimator says maybe 5 mph gusts.

In a fit of symmetry, I needed a shot of the sun hanging over the real sea to match the earlier shot, so later in the day I took this one.  

Balance has been restored.

The two people that bludgeoned me into this project, and myself as well, live near the sea, some a tad closer than others. 

One of the bloggers has been a tad tardy with posts lately. She lives on the Bering Sea so I decided to look in the surf to see if the latest post had been sent in a bottle.  

The post would only have to travel 2000 miles or so down the coast to where I am. Plenty of time has passed since her last post, so it should be here. 

 I can read her post, then send it the 1000 or so miles further to the south to be read by my sister.  

Stared into the surf.  

 Nope, not here yet. :-)

Looking at the wave curl, it is hard to get the scale of it because there is no reference object to judge it against.  I would guess this wave to be in the 6ish foot neighborhood.  

Looking at it takes me back a a month or so to a 'rough' ride in 3 foot chop left over from hurricane 'i-don't-remember' turned  tropical depression 'whatever'. 

I was on vacation after all.

I don't think I even heard the name of the hurricane, just followed it on radar and knew we were anchored in the eye path.  Well whatever it was called, it was a good sport and petered out two or three days before we wanted to leave, so we put to sea, in a similar state as above, blue skies, and some (hardly) bumpy water due to a forgotten storm.  

I didn't have the sense to take any pictures at the time so I had to reach back a year and put in some old ones.  I was on my friend Reggie's boat Calypso Night but instead I included a couple of shots of a boat that he helped restore some 20 years ago.  He did the rigging.  

This boat laid cable back in the day (can you guess who for?), and now does weddings and so on. We left her behind in the harbor as we sailed.  Was it not even a month ago? 

Wow, truly, oceans apart.

Models

I decided to try photography with some models.  Most of my pictures have been inanimate, so I decided to use some models.  Since the cats were busy and would probably have been uncooperative, I had to look elsewhere.  What to use?  How about some cute fillies with toned bodies?  Ya baby, that will get a cowboy's heart beating!  It must be just like a gear head at a car show.

I also through in a gratuitous Mt. Hood photo for no reason other than it was there.  Well that and it is a pretty site from the front yard.

Framing and distance.

These two shots taken back to back only vary by the framing, varied by the zoom.  Both are nice, but I think the second one has more punch.  What's your thought?

Sunday morning

This:

Therefore this: (yes, there two coffee makers there; the french press is out of view.  It IS the northwest after all.)

and this:

Head in the Clouds

Some days this time of year I awake to a spectacular sunrise.  Today I awoke to a general brightening of the sky, spectacular in its' own way.  Some days I get to look down at the top of the clouds that haunt this valley this time of year, others they tower above us.  Today, we woke with our head in the clouds.

The view is a tad foreshortened or something:

Hidden pictures, through the now empty hammock frame lies a barn, and a bunch of gardening tools.  Can you find them?  I can see the barn...

I expected to see Lon Chaney Jr. come loping out of the trees at any moment. :-)

That which matters...

My sister is an amazing person.  Rather than post some pictures today, which is the real purpose of this, I am going to support my sister's participation in a cancer fundraiser project.  The project is publishing one person's story and a sweet recipe per day for one year as a both a fundraiser and awareness activity. 

Today was my sisters day to be published.  Out of all the bloggers in America, sister and one of her lifelong friends have both been published in this project.  She did it in honor of some friends that were survivors, and in memory of some that were lost.  One of the lost was our Mother.  So here's to you sister, and to you mom, and dad too.  Click on this sentence to link to my sisters turn at the kitchen.

Welcome, New Day

I don't seem to get tired of it.  I wake with the new day and together we get started on our way.  Today we got started when the day made the first move. The light peeking over the Cascade Mountains is my alarm clock.

The day has created the illusion of an inland sea with its low clouds a few hundred feet below us.

 Sometimes little hillocks stick through these clouds like islands, and a barn may appear like an anchored barge.  Today it is the open sea across the straight of the Willamette valley that exists only in our imaginations, that organ we developed through exercise before HD TV and those wondrous video games we all like to play.  Well at least I like to play them.

 The day signals me it is time to grind the french roast, and put a pot of coffee on for soon I must go down the hall and welcome my son to join us in our adventure.

 The coffee is ready.  It is time.  My Son also rises.  This is what he saw as we munched granola (has it come to that?), a muffin, and indulged in a great dark French roast.

Both Sons (sun) are up, and it is time for him to head off to his college classes.  In a few hours, this same sun will rise over my daughter in Japan and see her off to class at the university there. The sun will have to hug her for me, and its' warmth will be my smile until Daddy's little girl returns to us.

Distance

Philosophers struggle to find depth and meaning in things.  I like to do that to, I mean who doesn't enjoy a good laugh?  I briefly contemplated the cosmos yesterday and then quickly decided that was hard, so I switched to finding some depth and distance in a group (clutch? gaggle? covey?) of pictures.

With my new plan, things were looking up!

 You can see the forest AND the trees

 New opportunities are around every corner

and uh, oh heck.  No smart Alec comments coming to mind.  I just thought it was pretty. Sort of superficial for a philosopher, but I am going with it.

Machine Pictures

I snapped some pretty good fall pictures today, but I don't want to be stuck in a rut for a while, so I decided to try a couple of machine pictures.  I have seen some great machine pictures and these aren't those pictures.  I think the subjects could be interesting if I can figure out how to get some emotion into them.

This one is almost there, the feeling of antiquity.  I think the right lighting might make this one work.

I am not sure what to do with this one... the long shadows are ok, but maybe too bright?  This one could be forlorn  or something. I think I wanted to feel "ghost town" or at least hibernation in this shot. (For the curious this thing works great, I just parked it here the day before and it is an invaluable garden shovel for building flower beds.)

OK, while this thing makes a great wheelbarrow and I enjoy using it in my gardening projects, I really need to work on composition and lighting to make this interesting.  This proud old machine, born in Seattle while I was learning my basic cypherin' in grade school, still stands ready to serve. I sense potential here, but need to noodle on how to put some feel into this:

Tried a dash shot like the old Chrysler one above... you really have to stretch to build interest in this.  Rod Stewart insists that "Every Picture Tells a Story" and since I love that song, I have to agree.  This one just requires too much of the viewer.  The story I see when I sit behind the wheel of this fine old machine, is of all the hands of the people that came before me, nursing the truck through a days work, all the miles it has traveled, and the wonders it helped build.  I will think on how to reframe this shot because I would like to tell this truck's story.

All in all my foray into machine shots today is a bit disappointing and very exciting at the same time.  Disappointing in that they really are not compelling, yet exciting in that I learned by taking them and studying them what I really wanted the shots to do.  Now comes the creative part of figuring out how to do that.