Pick Your Favorite Ghosts (picture)

I was driving by this house the other day, early in the day, and saw some ghosts hanging from the trees in the front yard.  The light was too bright, though, so I made myself a note to come by late in the day, and so I did that today.  I love these ghosts!  They are the ones that you make by blowing up a balloon and then draping it with an old sheet and then adding eyes. Very cool.  So it was fun to photograph two of the three and try and find the best shot.  But you will have to tell me your favorite, because after shooting about 30 exposures it was really hard to narrow it down.  I chose these three images.  I like this close in image because it is more dramatic than the other two, below.

Maybe up close and more dramatic is not the best way to present these two ghosts.  So I backed away some and gave more a sense of the surroundings, and this is a nice photo.

So here is one that is in-between really close and further back.  So your job is cut out for you to decide which one you like best.  Thanks for the help!  Please let me know.  Thanks!

 

Cracks

I have been painting rather than out taking photographs.  I found this image in a folder marked "Possible Blog," and checked to see if I had used it before.  And I think I have not posted this before.  This is a home in Sea Cliff that was made from a garage kind of building and it is really nice inside.  Some years ago they had a sale of "stuff" and I went and was surprised how nice it was inside.  Anyhow I forgot what brought me to this side of the house, on a side street, even though the front of the house is on a main road.  I was taken by the pattern of the cracks that have been filled with some material to seal the cracks before the building was painted.  I was just fascinated by the pattern of the cracks.

 

I Was So Scared!

I went to the hardware store for yet another gallon of white paint for the house.  I am nearing the end of painting at long last!  As I came out the front door I turned left and at the next door on the building, which it turns out, is part of the hardware store and sells outdoor furniture and other seasonal things, had this woman on display in the doorway!  I nearly had the life scared out of me because of this scary woman! Oh my heart!  Whew!  It took my pulse rate a few minutes to get back to normal!  Actually I was once again desperate for a blog shot so I set the can of paint down on the sidewalk and grabbed my iPhone and took this "just in case!"  Good thing I did, huh?

 

"Cosmic Microwave Background"

We had a brilliant professor from Stonybrook University as our speaker tonight and she gave an amazing talk about observatories being built to explore the Cosmic Microwave Background.  She is the principal investigator of a new one under construction in the Atacama desert in Chile.  She made some complex concepts more easily understood. The "CMB" is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The CMB is the key experimental evidence of the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe.  So why is this photo in black & white?

This is what the original photograph looked like.  Why is it all yellow green?  This light is from the digital projector in the ceiling.  Because it is a color digital projector it doesn't transmit white light.  I think at high speed it rapidly creates an image using red, green, or blue light. So when my camera shutter goes off, the camera may be capturing only one of the three colors in the moment it was displayed.  I thought that when I converted the color to black and white, the image was more attractive. 

So try and figure out this photograph which has the correct color.  The speaker and the group are illuminated by the light of the screen where the photographs and charts are projected. But for some reason, all the photographs like this one have the correct color.  I am at a loss.  Life is complicated!

 

 

A Flying Saucer Invasion!

We went to McDonalds tonight for a three course dinner - burgers, fries and a hot fudge sundae for dessert.  Living large!  I looked out the window at the twilight and noticed that the lights in the ceiling in McDonalds were reflected in the window. Flying Saucers! An invasion!  We quickly finished our hot fudge sundae and got out of there as quickly as we could! Kind of a cool shot, on't you think.

 

Beach Seining

On one of our evening walks it was getting pretty dark when these men came along with their net on poles and started dragging the net through the water from a little way off the beach, up on to the beach.  I tried a few photos and they are not tack sharp but I think this photo has a nice mood with the dark figures at work.  The process is called beach seining or drag netting.  The net usually features weights along the bottom edge (the lead line) to keep it resting on the floor and floats along the top edge to keep it upright. Two people stand in shallow water, each holding one of the end poles. They wade through the water together, dragging the net parallel to the shoreline or walking in a sweeping arc.  As they move, the net herds and traps small fish, shrimp, or crabs, which are then brought onto the beach or shore. Because seine nets are dragged through shallow coastal waters, estuaries, or lakes, they are designed to catch schooling fish, bottom-dwellers, and small baitfish.  In watching for just a short time, it didn't appear that they had caught any fish at all.  I do love the mood of this photograph.  I posted a larger image you may enjoy clicking on it to see it larger.

 

Thomas's Ham and Eggery Diner

After going to Home Depot the other day around dinnertime, we were pulling out of the giant parking lot and stopped at the light.  Suddenly, in front of us I saw this beautiful, classic diner all lit up!  We have eaten here once or twice in years past and it made me want to eat here again.  They serve breakfast all day and night and are famous for that.  I think I recall that your eggs arrive when they set a small, hot frying pan in front of you with your eggs in it and tell you to be careful because it is hot!  I was desperate to photograph this scene, but I did not have my toy camera on my belt!  I did have my iPhone but it is a wide angle lens and the diner was across a 6 lane road!  But I was desperate to get something and used my phone. When I got home the file size was large enough for me to crop into it and here is my photo.  I just love the pink and blue colors on the building, and the telephone pole and wires and streetlight!   And the traffic lights in the sky above.  I am thinking it might be worth trying to photograph it again when there was the fading light of day in the sky behind it.  I may just do some calculations and make a project of going back.  If I do, you will know!