I Never Saw it This Way Before...

I have passed this spot on the sidewalk a billion times in my life - while running (in the old days) and while walking, and while carrying my camera.  I have never seen exactly this photograph before.  What caught my eye was the kind of "whisk broom" branches in the trees on the upper left side, and then in contrast, the beautiful gentle curve of the railing.  And what seems pretty important as well, is the delicate pastel colors in the water and in the sky.  I walked the same route today, and everything was a leaden gray.  The picture was just not the same.

The Face in the Truck

As they used to say on Monty Python - "And now for something completely different!"  I was walking past my favorite marine salvage yard, down by the power plant, and happened to notice this bollard sitting in the back of a pickup truck.  I saw the face right away, and realized that it was a picture.  It always tickles me when other people do something whimsical like this.

Bittersweet...

These are my friends Jess and Glenn.  They are both brilliant, and wonderful to have as friends, and  they keep me feeling young.  They are both amateur astronomers, and Glenn loves to photograph and has a good eye, so we have a lot of things to talk about.  He is also an engineer and a programmer, and  he has just been hired by a startup in San Francisco and leaves on Sunday!  It is a wonderful career move for him, and it is amazing to see him taking this kind of risk, but it is so bittersweet for me.  I will miss being able to call and say "Hey, do you want to grab lunch at Panera?"  I guess I can still do that but it will involve grabbing a plane to San Francisco.  Wait, that's not such a bad idea!

"Walk Your Camera..."

I took my camera for a walk down to the power plant today.  I love the term "walk your camera." It was coined by a photographer from West Virginia whose work I really admire and who I have briefly corresponded with.  I went in the afternoon, and the skies were a beautiful silver gray.  I saw pastels everywhere and I took a lot of pictures, which I will be posting for the next few days.  I love the mirrored effect of the sky in the water.  And the few ducks add another element of interest.

I Didn't Get The Sunset...

I was out running errands, and was a couple of miles from home, and from the water, when I turned to the west and saw a spectacular sunset with layered clouds.  As I headed toward the water, all the traffic signals were red, of course, and I could see the colors on the clouds fading.  So I grabbed my iPhone and started shooting out of the windshield, hoping to get something.  I wasn't talking on the iPhone so it was ok to be holding it (at least in my world view...)  Something about the red traffic lights in the distance, and the red tail lights in the foreground and the hint of color in the sky seemed to come together and make a photograph.  Not a great one, however.

Moonlight on the Snow

The other night, when the moon was out and the sky was clear, I happened to look out of the back door window at the snow before I went to bed.  I could see the sparkles that I tried to photograph in daylight the other day, but the main interest was the shadows of the trees on the snow.  The whole scene seemed ominous.  When composing the picture, I was looking for some object of interest.  Then I saw the broken branch coming out of the ground in the background, and the picture felt complete.

The Kitty is Looking...

OK, we need to establish this from the start - I have no idea which kitty this is!  I happened to have had the close up lens on the camera when this kitty came by, near the window.  The light was perfect, and the camera was handy.  I just love the intensity with which she looks at whatever she's looking at. It is also fun to be using a lens that focuses so close, and then I become aware of so many small details in her coloring and her whiskers. You must click on the image to see a larger picture with detail that is spectacular!