I'm Not Done With Stellafane

I had so many things going on when I got home that I didn't have much time to post any more Stellafane photographs after I posted that one of the memorial with all the lights.  So this is late in the day, before it gets dark enough to observe.  I love how strange this looks.  What are all those silver ghosts doing on the observing field?  These are all telescopes which need to cool down before observing.  They are covered with this aluminized mylar because the telescopes sit out in this field all day and the mylar keeps the sun from warming them up.

 

Wow! A Corvette!

I saw what looked like a brand new, bright blue Corvette, driving home from Stop & Shop in Glen Cove.  it was moving slower than the rest of the traffic so I had time to look at it as I slowly went by.  I was stunned to see the driver, and his pet dog!  If you've got it, flaunt it!

As we neared a red light, I got out my cellphone and did two quick shots without looking at what I was pointing at, and I was lucky and got these two photographs.  I was surprised at the age of the driver, for some reason, but to see him with his dog was so cute.  The whole thing was just so surprising and I thought it worth a photograph or two!

 

The Bright Star in the West after Sunset

Take a look outside just after sunset and you will see a bright "star" shining brilliantly, even when the sky is still light.  That "star" is not a star at all, but the planet Venus!  It is beautiful to see something this bright shining in a fairly bright sky.  I started photographing this scene when it was still light out but decided this photograph, taken long after sunset was more interesting and that Venus stood out better than in the bright sky.  It will be fun for you to keep an eye on it and see how its position changes each day at the same time.

So after posting the first photograph and writing about it and how pretty it was I realized that I should have posted this photograph, because it is brighter and has more color.  This photograph was taken before the first one, and I like it better.  Duh!

 

The Garden at Pezzi's

We have been going to this Pizza Shop for years. Back when Kathy had an office just down the street from this restaurant, we would eat dinner there from time to time.  But we have always bought our Pizza from them.  There are two brothers and their father started this restaurant and then they gradually took over the business from him.  I think it was this year, for the first time, that flowers were planted along the edge of the parking lot and it was such a nice addition and dressed the parking lot up.  I asked them who did that and they said one of the workers at the restaurant was doing it.  I really love what he did with only a one foot depth to the garden.  Today I saw this, and although it is not really a traditional garden photograph I was attracted to the textures and the patterns of the leaves and felt this was an interesting photograph, even thought the flowers are fading.

 

"Technologies of Relation"

These are three photographs from a large exhibition with work from 12 artists. From the catalog:  "Technologies of Relation" examines how we relate to each other, to the world around us and to the technologies that often mediate those relationships.  The artists in the exhibition embrace how technology can connect us, but also acknowledge how it harms us."  There is a lot more text about these exhibits but I didn't understand much of it.  So here is the crazy thing - they have booklets available to take, with detailed informaton and photographs, about all the different exhibitions on display.  I have the booklet for this exhibition, but I neglected to photograph the text on the wall for this particular part of the exhibition.  I have read the book and searched the Mass MoCA website and there is no mention at all, that I can find of what is going on in this room with pink light!  But it was so interesting to feel the mood created by these objects and the pink light.  I will leave it up to you to see what you think this might be about.

So this is a kitchen and was created by five artists and is titled "One Who Looks at the Cup" and harkens back to family traditions of the art of tasseography, a predictive technology that interprets patterns and symbols in coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.  The box on the table, which was not working, unfortunately, would normally produce a cup of coffee and leave you with grounds which the device reads after using AI on which it was trained on transcripts and images from coffee readings from the past.  The fabrics are traditional Armenian designs.  It was, in some way, a beautiful room that seemed so cheery and was nice to be in.

This is only part of an exhibit that shows a film "Speculations on Capture" about the pioneering technological advancements made in the 1200's in Iran, while mourning the acquisition of instruments by Western museums.  The artist speaks of storage rooms where astrolabes, celestial globes, ephemeris and talismanic bowls from Persia and Pakistan, are "held captive" having been separated from the peoples who created them.  I did not see the film but I was taken by this "architectural sculpture" which is inspired by the Maragha Observatory, a site of significant scientific discovery in the Islamic world and beyond, founded in 1259 in Northwest Iran.  This also functions as seating for those who want to watch the film.

 

"Rhapsody"

There is a very large gallery on the second floor of the main building.  On this trip the whole gallery was used for an exhibition called "Rhapsody."  It is a really long gallery and the entire back wall, to the left in this photograph was entirely filled with a video presentation.  To the right of center behind that screen were tables with small examples of different artist's work.  Here is a funny story - see the two chairs to the left?  I couldn't figure out if they were part of the exhibit.  They were not remarkable in their construction at all, but I didn't want to take a chance.  I asked one of the employees about them, and he said they were for visitors to sit in!  So I did.  There was also a soundtrack playing.  I found that I really enjoyed sitting in one of the chairs and taking all of this in.  I just really enjoyed the space and the light and the sounds, and I must have sat there for quite a while, just drinking it in.

This is a "screen" that is the work of Rosendo Diaz.  It is made from carved pieces of wood and held together with wooden pegs.  I spent a lot of time examining how it was put together.  This piece is what gave the interesting shadows on the lower right hand corner of the overall photograph that was posted above.

This is a woven fabric piece, and the more I studied it, the more interesting it became.  It is almost a landscape, but created with different stitches and parts of it are quite subtle.  It is titled "I keep the laughter for your return" by Lucia Raineri and it was really worth spending time with it.  I first glanced at it and was going to keep going but something in it grabbed me and I stopped and gave it the time it deserved.

I love this little guy, on one of the first tables.  I am sad to say I was unable to figure out who the artist was.  The curators did a huge disservice to the artists by putting all the credits on large sheets of text, one at each end of the gallery.  So you would find an object you liked than walk to one end or the other then look at the map of the tables and then try and figure out which object they were referring to on which table and try and guess the artist.  Honestly that was a ridiculous way to credit the artists!  SO...  What was this gallery all about?  Here is some of the text for the exhibit:  "In 'Rhapsody', Jimena Sarno, who organized this exhibit, invites visitors, the community and collaborators to craft tools and relationships that can reshape the present and, ultimately, work to collectively repair the tears in the social fabric...  Sarno has gathered collaborators - mostly from the Global South - to contribute objects, soundscapes, and films that work toward visions for just futures."  Many of the objects in the exhibition are made using techniques associated with folk and craft traditions. including weaving, woodwork, felting and pottery."  So I hope this information might be helpful.

 

Topsy Turvey

This is such an interesting work of art.  It is simple and beautiful in it's design and in its experience.  It is in the middle of a long hallway, and it is not clear what it is or is supposed to do.  So you go to the wall and read the full page of text.  Then you go back to the device and discover that it moves and that you are supposed to move it while looking through it.  The glass sides of the long rectangular box function as mirrors and yet you can see through them.  When you try to move the device, you find it is really, really heavy, and yet it moves smoothly, though with a lot of force required.  But it moves in a strange way.  As you move it to the right it begins to point up toward the ceiling as it rotates further.  As you look, you see tilted views of the windows and scenes outside the windows.  It is such a surprise to find out what it does.  It alters our sensibilities.  And the unexpected weight is such a surprise.

So this is a view through the inside of the long rectangular box with glass sides.  It is disorienting, and it is supposed to be that, according to the text on the wall.  The text says this:  “Sarah Oppenheimer creates precise instruments for manipulating our built environment - altering our frame of spatial reference, displacing our experience of inside and out, and inverting our sense of what is near and far, here and there.” The piece is titled “S-334473.”

 

Back to Mass MoCA

I have a bunch more photographs from my recent visit to Mass MoCA and I will start posting them.  I have taken a number of exterior photographs of the museum buildings.  If you want to have some fun, go to the upper left hand corner of a daily post and there is a white box with a magnifying glass.  Enter "Mass MoCA" in there and you will be surprised how many architectural photographs there are.  I decided on this trip that I didn't remember having any photographs of the first buildings you see when you enter the parking lot.  I liked this one because when I first saw the blue and white stripes for the handicapped parking it made the picture much brighter and more colorful

This is the same building, seen from the other side.  I really love the modern parking lot lighting structure in this photograph.  It is not a very exciting photograph, however.  Better lighting at the right time on a sunny day would improve this no doubt. But I have a starter photo which I need to improve on. Stay tuned next year!

 

Oh No! I Dropped My iPad and it Broke!

Oh No!  I dropped my iPad and look what happened!  The screen was completely shattered!  Oh no!  It is ruined!  No I didn't!  This is a joke.  First of all it is not an iPad, but some kind of Verizon tablet.  It was given to me by someone in the astronomy club probably 10 years ago.  She got it free when she signed up for internet service from Verizon I think.  So I played with it for a while just to see what it was like and it was nowhere as easy to use as an iPad.  So I put it somewhere and recently uncovered it.  I plugged it in to charge it and the battery was shot.  So what I had wanted to do was to get it up and running so I could wipe the memory.  I had no idea what personal information was in it, but I wanted to delete it all. So I couldn't do that, so instead I decided to destroy it!  I got a small hammer and hit the screen and the hammer bounced off of it! I hit it a bit harder and it bounced off again.  I think it was two more hits, and the last one was really hard, and this is the result!  It makes a pretty pattern, right?  I am not finished demolishing it to make sure that no one could possible get the data off it.

So this is proof of what caused the nice round circle of cracked glass in the center.  I hope you enjoyed my joke!  Do you remember my other post a couple of years ago called "My laptop is shot?"  I actually shot a hole in the 20 year old laptop screen in the back yard, just for fun, before throwing the laptop away.

 

A Surprise at the Beach Tonight

We had such a surprise on our walk along the beach sidewalk just around sunset today!  This first photograph shows what we saw at first.  I have figured out, after shooting this shot, that we are looking at the backs of the newly engaged couple and they are looking at photographs taken by a young woman and young man on the backs of their cameras.  We were not sure if they were just starting, or whether they were finished.

Turns out they were finished and they walked away from this pretty setup at the water's edge.  A little bit later, two cars drove up here and two men disassembled the whole setup and packed everything into their cars.  I wished we had seen the shoot going on, just for fun.  But it was nice to see this.  A very fancy proposal and engagement, I think!

 

Another August Sunset at the Beach

We did our walk along the beach again tonight, and were rewarded, once again, with a stunning sunset!  I immediately started shooting, and most of the photographs look like the one below, a wide angle view of the beach and the water and the clouds.  And I think that is an interesting photo and beautiful as well, but I chose as my first photograph, this view of a single woman on the beach photographing the sunset with her cellphone, I think.  It just seems so much more dramatic with a single figure.

This is an earlier photograph and what makes it interesting I think are all the specks of people that can be seen against the water in the harbot which is orange because it is reflecting the sky.  Really wonderful that we got two spectacular sunsets in three days!  I would be interested in having you all vote for which photograph is the more interesting to you.  Thanks!

 

The Betty Crocker Cookbook

We were having Pizza with our friends at their house tonight so Kathy wanted to bring a blueberry pie for dessert.  She got out her absolute best reference cookbook to find the recipe she needed.  This old standby, the Betty Crocker Cookbook!  She has had it forever, I think it was a shower gift before we were married.  I glanced at the book on the kitchen shelf and realized I had never seen it closely!  Look at how you can see how much use this book has had since it was new back in the 1960's!

And this is the cover, showing its use as well.  The covers have come undone and are now held in place by some bright yellow tape. This cookbook is a treasure, because it has been used so much, an because it has been in our house since before we bought it in 1970. This cookbook is a wonderful record showing how much it has been used in our life.

 

An August Sunset at the Beach

We have been going to the Dunkin' beach each evening when the weather is good so that Kathy can walk on the level sidewalk as she recovers from her knee replacement.  So tonight after dinner we were stunned with the sunset as we walked along the beach.  It was a gorgeous, colorful sunset!  As many of you will recognize, I have photographed this tree against the sky so many times. But rarely with people in it.  It was a pleasant evening and the parking lot was nearly full, with people just sitting on the beach enjoying the weather.  After I got this photograph I walked right up to the tree and was surprised to see something.

A group of young boys with some adults present were busy doing something and when they all walked away from their project, I saw this!  And it is perfect with the clouds from the sunset.  They had built a cairn, which in the original Scottish Gaelic meaning is "A pile of rocks."  Cairns are originally designed to mark points along a trail, so that people can find their way.  Recently there have been complaints on mountail trails that some hikers have built their own cairns which is a problem because they can confuse other hikers and cause them to lose track of the trail, which is hazardous.  That is not a problem here, of course because there is no trail, just a pile of rocks on the land near a beach.  I do love this photograph the best, for today's shots!

 

"Asterisk"

This architectural installation by Sam Frésquez’ is titled "Asterisk."  It is a very small kitchen in the middle of this large gallery.  As you approach it, you realize that it is more than one kitchen.  When you get right up to the low railing you can see that there is another kitchen, which is smaller than the first and it is an exact copy.  Then you notice that there is another one beyond that one, and smaller yet!  Each kitchen is fitted out with the same appliances and lights, but those items are also smaller.

Ranging from life-size to miniature, the telescoping rooms unfold into a sequence of six miniaturized versions of the same room, prompting viewers to contemplate the compression and expansion of lived histories.  The title of the work, * , a typographic symbol that connects one text to another, underscores the work’s function as a portal, connecting one plane, one moment, to another.

And an extra added bonus is when you leave the front of the piece and look from behind at how the rooms were constructed.  This carpentry is absolutely fascinating, and a work of art by itself.  It was so much fun to walk from front to back, really close to the whole structure and see how it was built.  There is a secret - if you go to the smallest part, on the left hand end of the structure, there is a tiny window that lets you see backward, from the back of the smallest kitchen to the front.  This was such an interesting piece of work to study and to contemplate.

 

Mass MoCA

I went to Mass MoCA of course as I always do when in Vermont.  Mass MoCA is in North Adams, Mass, and is about an hour and twenty minute drive.  There are always wonderful surprises each year when I visit.  This is the first sculpture you see when you enter the first gallery.  It is a huge sculpture and hangs in a three-story gallery - it goes up to the ceiling.  The sculpture is by Cecilia Vicuna, and is titled Quipu desaparecido.  It is made from unspun wool and climbing rope inside.  Here is a closer view...

When you view it and walk around it, and actually you are encouraged to gently walk through it, it is an amazing thing to see and contemplate.  There are very powerful feelings evoked when you are close to it.

As you walk around it, the color of the light illuminating it changes it when you watch from a different direction.  This was a joy to see and a pleasure to contemplate and I spent perhaps half an hour photographing it and looking at it.  It was the most interesting artwork in the museum this year. Cecilia Vicuna is based in New York, NY and Santiago, Chile.  Her quipu installations, of which this is one, are woven metaphors for the cosmos and resilience.  There was so much more information about her and the sculpture, but I thought I would include one sentence so you might get some sense of what this is about.  But I found I didn't need to know that.  I just needed to be in the presence of it and feel "something" from it that was such a nice experience.

 

The Morning After

"The Morning After" is a funny name for this photograph, but it is definitely appropriate!  At the Bed & Breakfast where I stay, there are a whole bunch of other amateur astronomers who stay there as well.  When it is time for observing, I stay up on the hill at Stellafane.  But a few of them stay down here at the inn because the owner keeps a large area of grass mowed short so they can set up their telescopes right here, and after they are done, they cover them with waterproof fabric to keep them from getting wet from dew.  I have to unload my telescope, carry is some distance, set it up, and when I am done I carry it back down to my car and then drive back to the B&B.  Anyhow when they are done, they just leave the scopes where they are and go inside and sleep!  So here are two scopes in the morning after being out all night after an observing session.  I got to spend some time looking through the black shrouded telescope to the left and the views were fantastic.

 

A Stellafane Tribute

One of the greats of amateur astronomy passed away last October.  Al Nagler who started his business, Televue, years ago and who made great advances in telescope eyepiece technology has been attending the Stellafane Convention for years and years.  He won prizes for telescope design.  He made his first telescope when he was a high school student in the Bronx.  He went on to design complex optical systems used by NASA Apollo astronauts to train for lunar landings, among other things.  He loved Stellafane and was here every year I was here, and I have been coming to Stellafane for 37 years.  He was so generous - in order to raise money for Stellafane they have a raffle on the last night of the convention.  Al would donate literally, bags of expensive telescope eyepiece sets.  His son continues the tradition and he donated four bags of 5 eyepieces each, one valued at $2,500 and one at $3,500!  So they did a presentation about Al Nagler's life and accomplishments, and then they had handed out tiny little battery powered electric candles, and we all turned ours on as a tribute to his passing.  It was so moving.

 

It Took Me Long Enough!

Today I went to Mass MoCA in North Adama, Mass, which is such an amazing and wonderful art mustum.  In on of the giant galleries, there was an exhibit  that took up maybe 1/2 of the room.  Then there was a background and you had to walk around the edge and through this dark cloth tunnel to get to the second part of the exhibit.  The first time I went to walk through, there was a couple exiting the tunnel in the distance.  I grabbed my camera but I was too late, they walked out of the dark and turned right and disappeared from sight!  So I waited for another couple and no one came.  So I continued touring the whole exhibit, but I still wanted my photo.  I saw a couple who had walked through it and thought of asking them if they could go back and I would do my shot, but I was too shy or didn't want to bother them.  Later on another couple were in the last part of the exhibition and I knew they would HAVE to come back through, so I waited and they didn't come.  Then I decided to go back through and see if they were coming, and they were.  They did enter the tunnel together but one was in front of the other so it wasn't a nice silhouette!  So I screwed up my courage, and said "Can I ask a favor?" and they agreed and then walked down the tunnel, holding hands, in perfect silhouette!  I thanked them profusely, and I finally had my shot!  Not even sure why I like this so much but it has to do with the triangular opening.

 

The Heart of the Milky Way

I spent all day at the Hartness House Workshop which was a series of lectures all day long on so many different topics having to do with astronomy, observing and some talks about imaging in order to gather some scientific data for research.  It is always such a spectacular series of talks from experts in their fields.  I look forward to this talk each year.  Then there was a dinner and a keynote speaker.  By the time I got back to the farmhouse inn it was about `10PM and I was beat but against the forecast, it was perfectly and some of my fellow astronomers had telescopes set up out in a field that the proprietor mows, knowing that some will like to set up their telescopes..  I was too tired for that but decided to get my camera out and to do a few photographs, so that I would have a nice blog post.  I cannot remember the last time I saw the Milky Way.  I think it was when I was out observing at Orient Point about a year or so ago.  Such a joy to stand under a dark skies, full of stars from horizon to horizon!  This is a larger image, so please click on it to see more detail.

 

Meadow Exhibit

About 6 miles after crossing in to Vermont from Massachusetts, there is the Vermont Welcome Center.  It is a wonderful place to make a visit and take a break from driving.  I love to wander around with my camera snd try and find a blog photo.  In this photograph is is a view of the "Meadow Exhibit" which I did not know about from other visits.  There are so may wildflowers in bloom here it is so much fun to walk around and see if I can find a photo.  The dead or dying tree doesn't help here, but I could not find a photograph that did not include that tree.

 

A Stunning Musical Instrument

This is another of the musical instruments on display in the "Heavenly Bodies" exhibit, a series about unusual musical instruments, some of which represent human forms.  This instrument is a Ngombi, a harp, from Gabon.  It is from the mid-20th century.  It is a sacred harp central to the ancestor-focused spiritual practice of the Tsogo culture.  It is often crowned with a female head, it represents the voice and body of Nyingwan Merge, the Sister of God.  When the harp is infused with ancestor voices and animated by the performer’s spirit, it becomes capable of playing itself and is a direct channel for spirits to communicate with the ceremony participants.  This is so stunning to see, I started with a close up photograph of just the top of the harp.  The full length image is below.  What a stunning and beautiful object this is!

 

"Heavenly Bodies" at the Met

I have posted here about two recent exhibits I saw in Manhattan. You have seen the one about the Giacometti sculptures at the Met.  There were two other exhibits at the Met.  One of them was called "Heavenly Bodies" which included a series about unusual musical instruments.  This is a "PianoArc 360"  piano, and as you can see, it is stunning.  It is an electronic instrument because there is no where to have the "piano strings" or musical wires where the keys control the hammers that strike the strings.  I cannot imagine how this is played, but it must be something to watch.  What a cool device!

 

No More Shredded Wheat!

I was walking down the cereal aisle the other day, to get another box of Shredded Wheat Minis, which is what I have for breakfast most days.  With blueberries, of course.  I saw this brilliant flash of orange-red color on the shelf, and I stopped to see what it was.  I was stunned.  THIS is a cereal?  It looks like hundreds of tiny chocolate croissants!  THIS is healthy for children?  A chocolate breakfast cereal?  This is nuts!  Next trip I am going to see how much sugar is in this cereal, compared to, for instance. Shredded Wheat.  Or, maybe instead I will rethink this and start having this for breakfast instead of Shredded Wheat! I love chocolate!

 

The Egret in the Mill Pond

On July 7 Kathy and Amy and Vivian and I went to Cedarmere, the home of William Cullen Bryant, in Roslyn, and I did a series of six photographs there, which I posted on the blog.  There were so many things to photograph that I left a couple of photographs out of the post.  This is one of them.  It is the Mill Pond at the estate and I did a photograph of looking at the pond the long way in the first post.  This is a view across it, with an Egret carefully walking along the shoreline in the shallow water.  I love this photo because the Egret is such a small part of the photograph and yet we see it almost instantly.  I love this photographs because of the richness of all the vegetation, both in the background and along the shore and in the pond.  It is green everywhere!

 

A Different Way to See

I walk this route so many times, and I kind of know all the best views for photographs.  Which is good because if I am walking in a snowstorm or rain or fog or see orange light from sunset, I know right where to go for the best shot.  But I am always looking for "different" ways of seeing these wonderful Sycamore trees.  And I found this view the other day.  I. cannot remember how I came to this, but it is really unusual to have the tree trunk split the photograph right right down the center.  I love how there is a tree shot on the left and a sidewalk and harbor shot on the right.  It is interesting and a nice exercise in an unusual composition.

Salt Cod???

I was in line at the fish counter at our grocery store.  While I was waiting I happened to see this - I mean it is really hard to miss - seeing some hard, pure white "stuff" in a box in the fresh fish section!  It hardly looks like something to eat at all!  I could not imagine what someone could make to eat starting with this!  Dried and salted cod has been produced for over 500 years in Newfoundland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands and in Norway!  I thought it was dried and salted on the fishing boat, but it was actually dried and salted on shore, so that it could be shipped long distances and stored up to a couple of years!   So, below is an excerpt from "The Joy of Cooking" about what to do with the salt cod in order to turn it into a meal!  Coming from New England, I had heard about salt cod all my life, but I had never seen it before!  Wow, 48 hours of rinsing it to get all the salt out of it!

A Brilliant Young Man!

This is Mak, and his mom Valerie.  They first came to ASLI in January of 2025.  He was interested in astronomy and of seeing galaxies.  So he learned some things about astronomy from many of the people in the club and decided he wanted to be able to photograph faint galaxies and nebulae.  So his mom went to an astronomy store and bought him a semi-automated telescope which finds objects in the sky and then it starts taking long exposures of them.  It "stacks" one image on top of another and then another until a faint objects is captured, and you can do this for an hour or 3 hours or 6 hours, or for a number of different nights until you have a good photograph.  That's because some objects are so faint.  Then you have to use some sophisticated software to work on the photograph to make it better.  Mak did that, gathering 14 hours of exposures on something called the "Eagle Nebula."  He worked on it for days and days in an image program like Photoshop, but more complicated and only used for night sky images.  In the end he got a stunning photograph and at the urging of one of our members, he entered it in a contest called the "Youth Imaging Award" from "The Astronomical League" and he won Second Place!  This included amateur astronomers and imagers from all over the United States!  His mom asked me to present him with his plaque at the meeting tonight, which is what I did.  What an astounding compliment this was to his skill and determination and patience to create his prize winning image!  We are all so proud of him!

 

The Power Grid

I stop at a number of places on my bikeride.  I have checkpoints along the way that I stop and write down my times to see how I am performing as I ride.  The last place I stop is near the old power plant.  This time I just happened to look up toward the sun and saw all this electrical infrastructure.  I am not sure what is in here but it is definitely still in use, with lines leaving there and going up to a tower where they are connected to really high voltage lines.  I think there may be transformers behind the wall.  But I loved seeing all the high voltage wires and ceramic insulators everywhere within this framework. So this is all part of what brings electricity to our homes.

 

Vivian Lost Her First Tooth!

Today was Vivian's birthday!  She is six years old!  So we had a Facetime today with Vivian and Amy and Gus.  We knew that she had a tooth that was hanging for a day or two, and it finally came out about two days ago, and so today we see it for the first time.  How could I forget that Liz and Amy went through this, with one by one their baby teeth came out and were replaced with permanent adult teeth.  So it is fun to see this again with Vivian!

 

Rainstorm

At the beginning of last week, we had two days of good rain.  I was standing on the front porch looking out when it started raining hard for a bit, so I took my toy camera and made this photograph.  I love the atmospheric effect of so much rain that it almost looks foggy as you look further into the distance.  And I like the feeling of this photograph as well, whatever that is.   Please click on this to examine it in a larger size and you can see the streaks of raindrops throughout the picture.