A Beautiful Day!

It was hard to come up with a photograph today. But it was a gorgeous day with absolutely beautiful clear blue skies! The wind, however, was something else! Man, it was howling all day long. 25 MPH winds with some gusts to nearly 40 MPH. There was a tree down on our street and another down on my bike route. In spite of the wind, I decided to do my ride. It is much more difficult, especially when heading directly into the wind. Oh, and I got an unbelievable surprise - I was racing down a hill, into a curve, on a narrow residential street, and suddenly there was a line of yellow police tape completely across the road! I ducked as low as I could, and was not decapitated, you will be glad to know. It was there to warn people of another downed tree. Anyhow when I got home, I looked up to admire the sky, and saw this single cloud illuminated by the setting sun.

LaGrangian Points

This is Helen, the president of our astronomy club. She was the speaker this evening, and her topic was "The LaGrangian Points." She is holding up a globe of the Earth and one of the Moon - they are not to scale of course - the Moon is only 1/4 the diameter of the Earth. You would probably want to know what LaGrangian points are, right? Here is the answer: "The Lagrangian points are the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically be part of a constant-shape pattern with two larger objects (such as a satellite with respect to the Earth and Moon). The Lagrange points mark positions where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provides precisely the centripetal force required to orbit with them." See how much you can learn here?

The Sticks

I have photographed these tree branches before. They are dead branches sawn off of an old Lilac tree, and I temporarily put them on the leaves under the Japanese maple tree. I didn't consciously arrange them this way - I just tossed them there. But for some reason the arrangement - the design they make - touches me in some unknown way. They have been lying there nearly a year and I can't bring myself to throw them away. I have photographed them on a couple of occasions, and posted them here at least once. So when I went out and saw them covered in snow, I was driven to photograph them again. This time the photograph may be about light and shadow, but I can't be sure.

The New Projector

The Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport is where our astronomy club meets. The Planetarium has been under renovation for about a year now, and is getting closer to reopening in March. The other night I got to take a look at the new projector which is a stunning piece of machinery. This is the device that projects all the stars on the dome, and the moon and planets - it recreates the sky at any point in history or in the future, and it can show the skies as they would be seen from anyplace on Earth. I an really looking forward to seeing the first show here!

Suburban Street Scene

I was driving down the mile long hill that leads to the power plant down at the harbor and the light on the smokestacks was really nice. Then I remembered that there is a hill right above the plant. I wondered what I could see from the hill. So I drove up to the top of the hill, and this is what I saw! It just seems like an incongruous scene, with the two giant smokestacks sticking up at the end of the street. I spent a lot of time trying to find the best composition. This was the first photograph I took. Then I walked down the street closer to the stacks, eliminating the cars and church. The stacks were more significant, but I lost the sense of a suburban scene, so I stayed with this longer shot that included the church.

Other Options

So here are some other photographs I took yesterday of the ice covered rocks. These are not necessarily arranged in the order I took them - I tried to vary the selections to make them more interesting. I love this photograph (above) because of the sky - the reddish color makes it feel like it was taken on the surface of Mars.

I tried to see if I could find an interesting composition if I moved in really close to a small group of the rocks. I like it as a more abstract composition.

I found this composition kind of by accident. I was looking at the rocks, and then happened to notice the bottoms of the tree trunks in the top of the frame. It gave a different feel to the scene, so I decided to shoot it this way. It doesn't feel like a traditional landscape.

And finally another close view of just ice-covered rocks. I think it is better than the first shot which includes the sky. In fact, I think it may be the strongest image of all. You would think that I would be the best judge of which of my photographs are better. Sometimes I am just not sure. Do you have a favorite of this group of four photographs? I would love to know which one you like best.

Ice on the Rocks

So here's the deal - I went looking for photographs today and was excited to see that the rocks at one of my favorite scenes were covered with ice. It takes a week of temps below 20 degrees for this to happen. So I started with a wide-angle view, but thought that I could get a more interesting view if I moved closer. I did a lot of different photographs of this scene. If you are lucky, I will not be having "Ice on the Rocks Week!" But I will post a couple of other photographs so you can see what else I did. Anyhow, in the editing process I realized that there was a subtlety to this photograph, and there are some lovely colors as well. The sky is this color because of the coming snow we had after sunset. Oh, you know what else? The trees in this photograph are the SAME trees in yesterday's photograph! I didn't realize it until I went to yesterday's post to see if there were any comments. I had forgotten that this was a different angle of the the same landscape.