My new toy!

Yes indeed some days you get what you are looking for, and this week I have gotten me a brand new toy, a new camera!! A new camera for me and this is a great big step up from the little point and shoots that I have been using. If you look at this picture you might guess that it takes some pretty nice pics, and you would be quite right! It is a Canon Rebel T1i, 15.1 Megapixel. Since I didn't have a whole lot of money to throw at this, I searched for a while to find the best price I could, and then I saved my pennies for a few months until I could afford the nut it took to make the purchase. I hope that I will be able to sell a few pictures to help me pay for this thing!

I was so tight on the money that I didn't even have the spare to buy the kit with a lens, I had to buy the body only version. Fortunately, and with some planning I happened to buy a camera of the same make that my Father already owns, and he has given me 2 of his old lenses that he no longer uses. ( He spent the money on some high-end lenses, so I can have the hand-me-downs!) One is the original that he got with his own Rebel XSi, an 18-55mm zoom, and the other a 55-250mm zoom. They are both great optics, but they have a drawback that pops wanted to overcome, they didn't have enough apeture to shoot clear indoor, sports, action shots. While I may want to do that occasionally, I am much more about outdoor nature shots. Yes, I do lots of parties and performances, but they are either well lit, or I have no problem lighting them with a flash, so it's plenty cool to use the higher apeture settings for me. Plus I have learned how to incorporate the blurred movement of certain things into my style.

It has been many years since I have had the luxury of a true SLR camera at my utter disposal, and I am feeling my oats with it. I have already taken over 175 pictures and I haven't even had it for 48 hours yet! Of course, they are not all good by any means, but I am improving quickly as I get used to the feel and the features of the camera. I really dig the auto focus, but it takes a little tweaking for a picky pixel hound like me to get it seeing what I want it to see. Fortunately that's one of the big advantages of this particular brand, I can set the focal points where I want them and the camera will heel to my becon call. One of the things that I have missed so much in recent years with the myriad subjects surrounding me, is the ability to get such a great adjustment in the depth of field in my pictures. Since the glass on point and shoot cameras is set up to be pretty much idiot-proof ( nothing ever is, because there are always better idiots waiting in the wings!) it is designed with a very limited depth of field capability, even with an adjustable aperature, it only closes down to f8, and that is still a gaping maw compared to the the f22, 25, 0r 28 that I can get with the SLR glass. Now I can have some fun with depth!

Not only that, but because I enjoy the nature shots so much, sometime it will allow me to get in close and personal with certain skittish critters. Like this little guy! He was hiding in the watergarden and I nearly stepped on him before I realized that he had himself stashed in such a tight spot. But I was able to get a bead on him for a few frames before he decided to dash away. I sure hope he got his dinner first! While I am not a fanatic conservationist or anything like that, there are tons of subjects that I love to get pics of, from the frogs and dragonflies, to the deer and game birds that spend so much time within my visual range. If I am lucky I may be able to get some pictures of some crazy birds this year. Maybe a turkey or a pheasant, and if I'm real lucky maybe I get me a partridge ( pear tree optional!)

So far I am pretty happy with what I can do, and I am looking forward to really pushing the limits of what this camera can accomplish, and as I learn all of it's little quirks and intricacies, I will be able to refine my own style of picture taking. I am not the most creative person in the world, but I do know what I like and what draws my attention. I really want to get back into getting people like I have in the past. I have been compared to paparazzi on more than one occasion, because I manage to get pictures of people and things that people don't even notice. Partly because I so often have a camera that it becomes an expectation and people lose their natural inhibitions to being caught on film, and partly because I have this habit of shooting so much around me that it is inevitable that eventually I get a few good pictures!

I wish I had a real crystal ball to look in and see what it is that I need to do to find that moment when I meet my dream, but since I don't, I will continue to play with the things that draw me in. Oh yeah, one more thing, this particular camera also does video, in FULL HD!! so cool! I have only just tried this feature for a few seconds to make sure that it worked, but as soon as I have my high capacity SD cards, I will give it a try for real! Looking forward to having some fun with that also!

life on Mars...

When I was a kid, I asked my dad one time what was the difference between a weed and a garden plant, and his succinct answer was this, " A weed is any plant growing where I don't want it." So by his definition, a beautiful rose bush growing uninvited in a field of cucumbers, is a weed.

As every gardener knows, weeds are the bane of our existence, there is no plant more resilient than the humble garden weed. Be it a dandelion, or a sunflower, if it is growing where you don't want it, it's gonna be persistent and nearly impossible to get rid of. Yet try to get the things that you want to grow to take hold in the same fashion and you will have better luck trying to stuff a wet noodle in a stray cats ass. I have seen sunflowers growing wild, and I can say that some of the wild ones are better by far than half of the cultivated ones I have seen. Yet, try as I might, when I want sunflowers to grow wild I can barely get three or four to make an effort.

If you have ever owned a bird feeder, you know just how easy sunflowers will grow, all they need is moisture and some sunny days and they are sprouting away left and right. You can mow them down all summer long, yet they keep trying. The birds and squirrels will drag those damn seeds everywhere, and they will try to grow. Yet if you plant 20 in a row, you get 6. What the hell? !

Sunflowers are just an example, but it is the weeds that I am concerned with today. I have weeds that are so hardy that they stand up to everything I throw at them. I have hit them with high-end weed killer, I have burned them, tilled them, hoed them and weed preventer-ed them yet they come back again and again. I get more than my daily exercise pulling weeds, and hoeing and cultivating the garden, trying to keep it looking fairly presentable. I get one area cleaned up, move on to the next and 2 days later the original has the pale green haze of weeds showing again! They grow in the dry season, they grow in the wet season, and they grow past the frost and before the thaw! If NASA wants to see if Mars can support life, I will give them a couple shovels of dirt from my garden and they can plop it onto Mars and watch it go! I bet them weeds will even grow on Mars!

You want to find out if there is life on Mars, give them some good old New York weeds to deal with and we may actually end up with our first interplanetary war. The Martians will be pissed, beause they will never be rid of them weeds once they get a foot hold. But the kicker of the whole damn thing is this, some of the blooms on the weeds, are prettier than the flowers I have planted. So I may use some reverse psychology on the weeds and try to grow a few rows of them for the blooms! You think they will actually grow?

Warm blooms...

As summer approaches, there are more and more flowers blooming all over the place, and every now and then some are so cool that I just feel like taking a few pics of them. Sometimes I get carried away and get 20 pics of the same blossom, and other times I get one and I can never find that particular bloom again, and I want more!!

So this is a peony that I have in one of my yards. It was left by the people who once lived on this property, and it grew wild for about 20 years and nobody paid it any attention, then I unknowingly mowed it down the first 3 years that I owned the property, then I realized what I was seeing there and I let it grow. Boy, I'm glad that I di, it has proven to be an amazing little bush. It blooms every year and the blooms are huge and SO sweet smelling that you can't believe it. The sad part is that the blooms are so big that the slightest wind or a good rain will knock them down, because they are too big for their own stems!



I have no idea what this bloom is called, but I have a bunch of them in various colors and I really like them. They are low to the ground and really bright.
They come in so many colors that I have to get pictures of all of my favorites. The more neon-y colors are my favorite. They are like little electric sparks in the garden. They have come from a wildflower mix that I bought a few years ago, and it takes 2 years for them to show up, but when they do... Man is it worth the wait!






I love this little one because the blooms are still opening and they are uncurling in such and neat way that I wonder how nature puts things together sometimes! They kind of remind me of a bouquet or roses and rose buds mixed together.
No matter how you slice it they look pretty darn cool.

Not all blooms are flowers, at least not our "normal" definition of a flower. But Mushrooms are also a flower of a sort, because it is the head that grows the spores which eventually become the seeds of the next generation. And they look so cool!






Never take for granted the lowly little Mushroom, after all, he really is a "Fungi"!! LOL old, stupid joke but still funny!
When you live in a place where most panoramic views are blocked by trees, hills or buildings, you tend to appreciate them more when you actually see them. I am lucky in that I have a place where I can see this basic view every day, and some people might think that this would get boring. Truthfully it is far from boring, because it is nature that changes the view, stars, wind-blown dust, blooming fields, harvested fields, waving grass, painted trees, fluffy clouds, flat clouds, gray clouds, white clouds and snow! Look out in the rain sometimes and later you are treated to a rainbow. These things are all out there to see, but you have to look now and then to catch them.

There is nothing more ephemeral than a view in nature. If you forget to look you may never get the chance again.

traffic, weather and guns....

The world is falling apart and everyone is blaming the other guy, nobody wants to look in the mirror and point at themselves. Bumper stickers abound talking trash about everything, and the pundits on the airwaves have it all figured out. The conservatives blame the liberals and visa-versa. I don't have all the answers, I will leave some of that to the people who are way smarter than me, but I know some things, and I feel that I need to say something. Here is what I see:

In my local city, (Rochester) they are getting government money to install red-light cameras at particularly troublesome intersections. These cameras are designed to snap pictures of the license plates and drivers of vehicles passing through intersections that have red lights. Duh! "The great Orwellian society is taking over." "It is the age of big brother." This is the cry of the public now. Um... Guess what? There are cameras everywhere you go these days waiting to catch you doing something wrong. In the parking lots, in the malls and the stores. In the gas stations, and in the restaurants. Anywhere that people congregate there are cameras watching. The biggest difference is that, MORE PEOPLE BREAK TRAFFIC LAW THAN ANY OTHER LAW. Sad sack sumbitches think that now they will get caught doing something that they shouldn't. Mostly because they have been doing it for so long that they figure that they will forget the cameras are there and get nailed. I'm sure they will. I don't like it, but people have proven for generations that they can't be trusted. When I was a child someone once said to me, " A lock will only keep an honest man honest." I think that is probably one of the truest things I have ever heard in my life. There is something in a human being that makes them wish to "get away" with something. Whether it is extra dessert when nobody else gets it, or finding an open door or slipping through a red light when no one is coming. Even the most Honest person in the world will eventually slip up and let nature goad them into something. Maybe they peek in a window and see a naked lady, or snitch the last donut. IT happens. It's human nature, like fighting and arguing. Sadly traffic cameras are more about generating income for a city than they are about traffic enforcement. It's a newer and sneakier tax. There is another things that the police are using now to catch scofflaws too called a traffic scanner. It's a highspeed camera attached to a computer that scans plates and stickers for validity and warrants. Lazy cops! Whatever happend to knowing your people? Get out and walk around the neighborhoods! Get off the bbicycles and out of the patrol cars and walk. Get to know the people again.

Guns are in the news and in a big way. People dieing and people killing. Whole families wiped out because of the despair factor. Insanity and instability making people go out with a bang. (pun intended) But there is another thing that I know the Pro-gun and the anti-gun crowd haven't considered as a contributing factor here. It was dramatically pointed out in the Pittsburgh Police officers deaths. The Pro-gun people have been harping constantly on how President Obama is going to take away our guns. The truth is that he has so much more to concentrate on, that it is highly unlikely that it is up at the top of his to-do list. Yet as long as the NRA and others keep pushing the buttons it will spur idiots to do stupid things, and this only adds fuel to the Anti-gun fires. Everytime a child dies or a family is torn apart or a maniac goes on a killing spree, the drums beat louder to take away our 2nd amendment rights. This will literally take a LOT of doing and no one president or congress will be able to do it. It will take most of a generation to get that kind of change enacted and it just isn't gonna happen yet. Sadly, the despair brought on by the economic situation in this country makes it more likely that people who were borderline stable to begin with will go off the deep end and do something to hurt themselves and those that they "love". Selfish bastards! Still, look at the overall statistics and you will see that more people die on Americas highways than at the end of a gun. And now here in Rochester we have a new problem...

Last Saturday morning (3 am) a man shot and killed a 17 year old kid who was breaking into cars. The basics of the story are this; A man heard noise and looked outside to see people moving from driveway to driveway. Being a leaglly licensed gun owner he grabbed his gun and told his girlfriend to call 911 and get the police coming. He went outside and yelled to the people to stop what they were doing, he warned them that he had a gun and he was calling the police. He found that it was three young men, and two of them took off running. The third one charged him despite his continued warnings. He fired two shots stopping the young man. He immediately ran back into his house and relayed to the police via the 911 operator that he had fired his gun and was afraid that he had killed the young man. He laid down his gun and put his permit with it as instructed by the police. He was arrested and put in jail and indicted by a grand jury. The young man's family has spoken out that their little angle could not have possibly been doing anything wrong. If he wasn't doing anything wrong, why was he out at 3 am? Why was he breaking into unlocked cars? Why did his cousins run and not look back? They are as culpable in his death as the man who pulled the trigger, and they should be charged as well. If they had stood still and kept their cousin from charging a man with a gun, they would all be alive and most likely on probation. Now a good man is going to stand trial and probably lose his job and half of what he has worked his whole life for, because he tried to do the right thing. To much to discuss here, but it's another example of neither side willing to see the middle ground where real life happens.

Scientists wish to put reflective particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth. Idiots!! I can't even believe that they are truly considering this act! The planet will fix itself if we give it the chance to come back into balance. Stuff in the atmosphere is the reason for our problems. I have watched enough of the History channel and Discovery to know that they are talking about Carbon Black. It's a very fine powder that when released in the atmosphere will cause cooling over large areas because it will block the suns rays and reflect them back into space. Uh huh. In small scale, earthbound, laboratory expriments it has proven to work, yet I truly fear putting this dust into the air. In 1980 when Mount St. Helens exploded, there was a decided cooling in the atmosphere and the summer was particularly mild. This was a natural phenomenon, and we had no control over it. The dust eventually settled and the atmosphere warmed back up the following year. Carbon black is FINE stuff and it could actually stay airborn in the atmosphere indefinitely. How long do we really want it up there and what would be the effect if it stayed there for a few years? How much crop loss would there be? How much crop loss could the world stand? We are near the edges of production capability on many things and even one year of significant crop loss could be plenty hurtful to many economies, but 2 or 3 years? That would be utter devastation and probably the beginning of the apocolypse. Screwing with the atmosphere in a deliberate way is worse than all the damgae that we have already done. We could easily bring the planet back into balance in a generation with some minor fixes. Messing with the atmosphere is too dangerous. It is the atmosphere that keeps us alive. We must have it to live. Without it we are done for. No question about it. The magnetosphere keeps out the excess solar ratiation and the atmosphere gives us life. Carbon is what got us into this mess and Carbon is NOT going to get us out, unless it is used as a way to gather solar energy and convert it into electricity. Solar power and wind power are the two things we need to develope in order to stave off the disaster that is looming in the future of humanity if we don't change our ways.

There I got that off of my chest! I feel BETTER, but still not very powerful!

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Sunlit birch against threatening sky
















sunset trees against purple sky














Glowing cloud














Nature is the best artist ever.

Spring thoughts...

So the first day of "official" spring in the Northern Hemisphere has occurred and to remind myself that it was really spring, I froze my face and fingers off to get a nice little picture of a robin. Living in Western NY, many people consider the arrival of the geese, on their trip north, as being the harbinger of spring, but for me it is the arrival of the robins. They show up the week of the equinox. Always. They arrive and with them usually comes the first warm weekend of the season as well. So, they are my favorite birds.

Spring is my second favorite season. Summer being the first, but spring is right up there. I like 'em all to be truthful, but for different reasons and in different degrees. Spring is many things for me, but more than anything it is the beginning of warm weather. I like warm weather, actually I like hot weather, but Western NY hot, not Mojave Desert hot. I like when the thermometer is pushing into the high 80's and the sun is shining bright all day long. When the pool temp is getting up there too, and you can jump in the water and be so comfy that when you get out the air seems cool. That's what I really like. But that is summer, I wanted to wax philosophical about spring!

So what I like about spring... the snow is mostly gone and nature is coming back to life all around me. I walk outside in the morning and I can hear birds back in the trees. I am greeted by all manner of chirps and squawks and cheeps. Whistles and trills, the flutter of wings and the honks of the geese. Sometimes I can look out in the field and see the Canadian geese less than 50 yards from my doorstep. I see the rabbits scampering for cover when they spot me. They better scamper for cover, because I hate when they eat my flowers, so they are fair game for a shot from whatever gun I have handy. But the big draw for me is watching the world around me turn green. The spring bulbs come first, poking little shoots out of the ground and fighting the cold and the occasional snow until they triumphantly bloom! Sometimes the first emergence is the snowdrops, but other times the crocuses beat them to the pop, but color reappears in the world.

After the first blooms the daffodils follow and the tulips right behind them, colors from the whole rainbow in little gardens and corners of the yard. Poking out from under the mulch or the matted grass left from the winter snow. Before long there is work to be done, raking up the sticks and branches that winter has blown from the trees, making a pile and setting it afire, maybe using it to warm you hands on a cold, clear day. Everywhere you walk the ground is still soft, and if you're not careful you find the squishy spots where the mud squelches up around your boots, and if you don't step just right it squirts up and onto your pant legs. On the calm days you can hear the sounds of the neighborhood children outside playing again, maybe you spot the occasional kite, or if you're lucky enough to have the time and space you can fly one yourself. Can you get it so high that you can barely see it? Soon you will see the bicycles and the skateboards returning to the sidewalks and the streets and parking lots. The roads are still white with the winter salt, waiting for that big rain that will wash them clean. Motorcycles return to the roads with the warming of the world, and once again it begins to sound like summer. Before long the weather is warm enough to wake the frogs and the toads, and the forest comes to life with the sounds of peepers and croakers. The warmth also brings back the dreaded mosquitoes and the annoying houseflies. But they are food for the frogs, so they are tolerated until they get within our personal "no-fly" zones. I'm one of those lucky people who is not bothered by a mosquito bite. They bite, I swat and it's over, no swelling, itchy bumps here. Yet I still can't win the lottery!

Before long it's Memorial Day, and the gardens must be planted and the grass needs to be mowed, and the cover comes off of the pool. It is the beginning of summer, and the end of spring. Spring is it's own special time and it's a time to be enjoyed. I always hope that one of these springs I will have my great love to share it with. Because I really do think that spring is a great time to be in love. To take a walk holding hands watching the world come to life, or seeing one of springs spectacular sunsets. Having a person to share thoughts and ideas with, and to feel understood and cared for, seems the most important in the spring time. I guess I'm a romantic fool in many ways, but the new seasons always make me more so.

Go out and walk in the mud. Spring only lasts for a few months!

First one!!

Spring has sprung for me!! My very first bloom of the spring! I am happy happy happy!! I know that in a week or two it will snow again, and before it's all over with, probably more than once, but for today I felt like spring and I'm happy with it!!! Soon it will be daffodils and Tulips, then I will be mowing the grass, but for now a blossom is a beauty!

Nature's show

One the great things about living out in the country, is the bonus of a great sky to be able to look at and enjoy. Sometimes it's just grey clouds for days and days, but occasionally you get to see something really nice, and if you look at the right time you get to see something downright spectacular. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a morning person, although on occasion I do have the reason to get up in the morning. When I do, I look at the sky. I'm more of a sunset person. I love to watch the sun go down. I like to see it sinking into the trees, as is my normal view. However, on certain occasions, I will be where I can see it sinking slowly into some great body of water. Some times it is aGreat Lake, and a couple of times it has been the Pacific Ocean. I have also had the pleasure of seeing it dip into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. I have begun a collection of sunsets for this year, and I'm sharing a few with you.

This pic is a nice one that I had fun trying to capture in just the right way so that it looked balanced. The reflection on the bottom side is from the hood of my truck, after a day of rain and snow all the salt residue has been washed off the hood and it was so clean and shiny that it looks like a mirror reflection. The hard part was getting the shutter speed and aperture set just right so that the sky didn't wash out and the reflection didn't disappear. I think it came out pretty darn good! I have found that to get the best versions of the amazing colors that are present in a sunset I have to play around with shutter speeds and apertures to get the same colors in the picture as I'm seeing with my (nowhere near perfect) eyes. Sometimes I take 10 pictures in less than 2 minutes with a raft of settings trying to find just the right one. I have also found that my mini-tripods are a great help in this too. When I am using a way slow shutter speed, setting the timer and letting go of the camera gives me a great exposure and unless it's windy a pretty smooth finish.

I have found that to show the seasons , I like to shoot the same basic scenes, this way I can see some progression and change. One of my favorite scenes is this set of pines in my neighbor's field. They stand tall and lonely, but when the sun sets behind them, the silhouette just catches my attention. I love to see what the sun does behind them and how the colors seem to break out around them. This particular picture was taken in the cold and it was all I could do to keep my fingers from frosting as I was taking the pics. The air temp was in the high teens and the windchill took it down below zero. But I persevered and captured my colors!




The first time I ever drove into Cleveland, Ohio, I was headed west on I-90, and driving into the setting sun on an August evening. I was stunned by the color of the sky, it looked like it was on fire. If you have ever seen the movie image of molten iron being poured, this was the color of the sky. Just so bright and looking like liquid fire. So later that night, I was commenting to my mother how much I loved that sunset, and she brought me back to reality, she said, " Isn't it amazing what air pollution does for the view?" So now no matter what I think of the beauty of the sunset, I always hear my Mother's words and remember that it isn't the pristine beauty that I am enjoying, but the result of the crap pumped into the air. Sure, it brings global warming. Acorrding to some scientists. Other would argue, but I look at the ice caps. They are eroding. This tells me that something is getting warmer someplace. I read something recenty that said that the while the Arctic Icecap is shrinking, the Antarctic Icecap is expanding. I can't believe that, because huge sheets and shelfs are breaking off and floating away. Maybe it's getting deeper in limited places, but over all it is not growing.

The best part about trying to capture sunsets, is that you get a chance to see one every day. The potential is always there. You never know when you will see something that completely blows your mind. On those perfect nights when the air is warm and the wind is calm, you can sit through the entire gamut of colors as the sun settles down into the horizon. As the sky darkens and the light stretches farther and father and gets more and more red into the purples and violets, and then the darkness comes, and the stars and planets come into view. Some days you can see Mercury chasing the sun over the horizon, followed quickly by bright Venus. Other times you have the bonus of the rising moon to light the way back to the house. In the summer you can share the sunset with someone that you love and stay warm and feel like you're the only two people left in the world. In the winter, you can watch as long as you can stand the cold. Your breath coming in little clouds. In the spring it may be hidden by some rain clouds, but if you pay attention occasionally the clouds part at just the right time and you are treated to the beauty of nature doing what she does best. Showing off.

Sometimes we get busy and forget that this little show is put on every night. Sometimes we get great reception, and sometimes we don't, but when it comes in clear, it's always worth watching. I hope you all have plenty of sunsets left to see.

BTW, click on any picture to see it biggerized!!!