Moon Spider

This weekend, a friend and I did a night shoot together at nearby Lake Weatherford.  Our goal was some moonlight reflecting on water kind of shots.  We arrived and set up on a peer at twilight Saturday night.  I soon found myself in a fight with my tripod.  It was dark and difficult to see, but i soon discovered that the screw was almost all the way out preventing me from adjusting it to horizontal level.  When I attempted to screw it back in, it wouldn’t go back in and I didn’t have any light or tools with me to try to figure out why.  I was crestfallen, being unable to use my tripod and quickly concluding that the shoot was probably going to be a bust for me and I was likely going to spend my evening watching my friend take wonderful photos. When all seemed lost however, in the dim soft glow of the moonlight glistening off the lake, I happened to notice a spider in the middle of a web under the upper part of the railing along the edge of the dock!  Hmmmmmm, I said to myself, I bet I can get some interesting macro shots of that spider framed in the moon!  I quickly removed my telephoto, slapped on my 90mm macro, laid down on my side and started playing with my camera!  It took me a good while and quite a few shots to finally get two that I liked.  For one thing, each time I’d get everything framed, focused and my exposure compensation just the way I wanted it, the silly thing would move an inch or two and I’d have to recompose.  At one point, a June beetle got caught in the web and the spider briefly went nuts until, luckily for me, the June beetle’s own weight caused it to fall out of the web into the drink below.  At least One other time I was all ready to press the shutter button and a mosquito started buzzing around my ear (we both forgot insect repellent, but I think I managed to avoid being bitten.  West Nile Virus has been a growing problem here).

Anyway, I ended up with three useful captures of this arachnid.  The first was focused and exposed just the way I wanted (-2ev: F5 1/25″ iso1600).  I failed to nail the focus on the second one, partly because it decided to move just as I released the shutter and I had the shutter too slow due to a too small an aperture (-3ev: F11 1/15″ iso3200), but I really like the composition and scene of that one better. I kept one other shot of a heron (the first scene I shot) that I took right at the end of twilight.  I had wanted to get it with a little more light, but I burned up almost all of twilight trying to get my tripod to work, then switching lenses in the dark.  I finally just raised the ISO to an obscene level and braced the camera against the railing (-2.3ev F7.1 1/6″ iso6400) and wild-hair guessed on the focus (so dark).  As I expected it turned out a technically crappy snap, but my artsy side likes it because of the combination of low light, the shadows, and the enhanced ISO noise due to cropping, made for an interesting image.

I then did a third shot of the spider from the side with flash to actually capture the spider itself:

This week’s happenings – Magazine photo-shoot, Spam phone-calls, Sunflowers & More!

Downtown Weatherford, North side, now mostly abandoned.I did my third shoot for Now Magazine Tuesday after a very long and hectic day at work, which went very smoothly.  I was pleased with most of the forty photos I took of Cynthia and her husband at “Petal Pushers & Texas Sweets“, the new business they own in downtown Weatherford.  Wish I could post some of the photos, but can’t. Afterwards, I stuck around downtown and took a few more shots of the historic downtown in the late evening sun.  This photo shows the old “Carter Ivy” Hardware / Dry goods store that has been around since at least 1900 or so, but closed just a few years ago. I used to love to shop there because you could find just about anything you needed there that you couldn’t find anywhere else!  They even had old washboards.  When I first moved to town, I bought a genuine brass impact head sprinkler there for our new lawn that I still use today! This scene also reminds me of that old Bruce Springsteen song “My Hometown” and the lyrics “Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores, Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more…” I decided to surprise my daughter with a “half birthday” cake this week to celebrate.  I bought a round chocolate cake and cut it in half and decorated it to give her.  She thought it was a cool idea.  To me the cool thing about a half-birthday cake is that you can both have your cake and eat it too (the other half) at the same time!  XD
	Wednesday, I went to our church’s annual Vacation Bible School (VBS) session and took some photos there too.  I only brought my fast-40mm (the tiny pancake lens I bought recently), so I had to stand back twice as far as the other photographer who was using a big zoomer, but almost all the photos came out really well. I also got to have lunch with my daughter this week too!  That’s about it for the whole week here.
	“Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You” – Sugarloaf, 1975.<<<  This is the outside wall of Carter Ivy (once the inside wall of another business, now long gone).     >>>  The chorus of this song popped into (and stayed stuck in) my head the other evening when out walking with my wife and discussing all the stupid spam phone-calls (hangups) I let my answering machine take all day, haha!

<<<  “Sunflower“, by Glen Campbell This song pops into my head whenever I’m photographing sunflowers! I ended up redeveloping this photo with the white-balance to “Warm Fluorescent Light” to get the flowers & leaves to look right to me, which made the railroad track gravel blue, but I thought it looked best this way.  I think this was because the evening sunlight was very golden such that even the leaves were a yellowish green which reduced contrast with the golden flowers.  >>>

My 300th Post: The usual – photography, random thoughts & interesting links

Old porch just like my great grandparent’s (Millard’s Crossing) 19th century bathtub, (Millard’s Crossing)This is my 300th post to this blog according to WordPress!  Don’t have anything spectacular or earth-shattering to write about at the moment. Things seem to be settling into the dog days of Summer as I haven’t been getting out hardly any during the day except to go sit out in my pool since it’s so hot.  I still try to get out and walk in the evenings.  This weekend I’ve been so bored, but I am looking forward to doing another photo-shoot for Now Magazine next week, though! I apparently created this blog way back on September 24, 2004 on Livejournal with a small technical rant about the Courier email package I was attempting to install and test for a client.  I had originally intended for it to be mostly technical notes that I wanted to save and access from anywhere on the web when working at client sites.  I also started logging my workouts there.  I never really intended for anyone else to look at it or even care.  It was about four years ago that I decided to start making a real “blog” out of it and start writing and sharing stuff that (I hope) others might find interesting after I had begun to discover and follow other blogs that did contain interesting material.  I guess this probably makes this blog one of the older blogs out there.  Since then I’ve blogged about a wide range of subjects including within individual posts.  I tend to blog a lot about my photography hobby (as you can see here), and just about anything of interest to me at the moment.  It’s also here that I express myself in ways that I’m willing to share with the world, including the occasional political rant.  I also like to include links to other stories, blogs, videos, and images I stumble upon in my travels across the great world-wide web!  If you find my last few posts boring, please feel free to wait for the next one, chances are it will be about something different!  When I decided to move to WordPress a while back, I thought I would pretty much have to start over, but they have a very nice feature that allows one to “copy over” existing blogs on certain other sides (including Livejournal), so I was able to not only copy over all my existing LJ posts, but WordPress kept the dates and everything!     This beautiful “votive” candle holder adorns the window in my mom’s sun room.  She bought it in Israel when they vacationed there a few months ago (the last time I house-sat for them).  I was house-sitting again for them earlier this month when I noticed it. The original (unedited) image is here.

Border Insecurity:  Heavily-Armed Texas Gunboats Now Patrolling the Rio Grande  (since the Federales WON’T) by John Hill, Stand With Arizona, July 11, 2012. me:Lovin’ that Gunboat Diplomacy, One thing Mexicans have historically feared, with good reason, is our Texas Rangers (and I’m not talking baseball)!  Remember the Alamo! Today’s Quote:  “Even more disheartening is that reviving the American dream just became nearly impossible to do,” he said. “We are now a nation which supports dependency rather than independence. Instead of encouraging self-reliance, we are encouraging people to rely on the government.” – Gov. Paul LePage (Maine). LePage calls IRS the ‘new Gestapo’ by Steve Mistler, Morning Sentinel, July 14, 2012. 30 Handy Bash Shell Aliases For Linux / Unix / Mac OS X by Vivek Gite, Cyberciti, June 11, 2012. Where Do Baby Carrots Come From? by Matt Soniak, Mental Floss, April 4, 2011. WOW:  A Linux computer for Grandpa and Grandma by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source – ZD Net, July 8, 2012.  me:Wow, check this out! The poorer middle class, Obsession with income redistribution is destroying U.S. productivity by Nita Ghei, The Washington Times, June 14, 2012. DNSCrypt – [en]crypt Your DNS Request[s]  by Linuxaria, July, 2012.

A Simple Illusion that Completely Screws Up Your Sense of Space by Esther Inglis-Arkell, io9.com, Jun 22, 2012.

“Surreal Photography by Philippe Halsman“ from eMorfes (blog), January 4, 2011. me:Absolutely Love these images! Check out his blog for more!

Independence Day, 2012

Happy Belated Independence Day Everyone!

I got back home from house sitting for my mom just in time to be with family on Independence Day.  For the first time ever, our tiny little town decided to have a celebration in the park with the usual folk activities including live local bands, bounce-castles, face painting, and lots of sun and heat.  I asked my wife about walking the mile or so down to it and she declined, so we did not go.  Instead my wife greeted me with a delicious BBQ brisket dinner and we shot off some of our own fireworks.  I’m talking about the kind you buy at the local stand from China that we can’t legally shoot off on the part of our property within the city limits, but can out in the pasture, which is outside!  My daughter had dinner, but then blew out to go do the same with some friends.  I miss having her around because she used to always put on her own fireworks show here!  We stayed and watched the city’s show from our pasture, as did most of our neighbors.  This background photo is of that show. Here’s some more fireworks from the stack to think about if you’re done celebrating!: Judge says man can’t hand out Bibles at Twin Cities’ Pride Fest. by: Dan Browning, Star Tribune, June 11, 2012.  me:We’re continuing to lose our freedoms folks, one inch at a time! Here’s a bit of good news for those of you who, like me (and a majority of our nation), support life: Komen Sees Huge Drop in Support After Planned Parenthood Funding!   by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, June 21, 2012. WSJ Chief Economist:  75% of Obamacare Costs Will Fall on Backs of Those Making Less Than $120K a Year. by: Jim Hoft, Human Events, June 30, 2012. me:WE TOLD YOU SO! Study: More Than Half a Trillion Dollars Spent [WASTED] on Welfare – But Poverty Levels Unaffected! By Matt Cover, CNS News, June 25, 2012. “Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending the national poverty rate has not declined…Obama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year Than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War!” me:To all my “liberal” (progressive) friends out there – THIS is one of the reasons WHY the Constitution leaves benevolence to local governments and private charity! Don’t believe me, consider what James Madison, one of our Constitution’s authors said:  “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”  Why do they NEVER learn? Obama’s Infrastructure Charade by James Piereson, American Spectator, June 25 2012. me:This isn’t so much to bash President Obama, but is a big hidden problem that no one talks about that is strangling our economy.  It’s a big reason why our infrastructure is crumbling.  Why we used to build freeways while now we build toll roads.  Why China is on the way up and we’re on the way down! Activists Take Out Frustration on … Ronald Reagan! by Daniel Halper, Weekly Standard, Jun 22, 2012. me:This just shows the other side’s true colors.  They are just as childish and sickening as are their “lifestyle” choices!  We can only hope that come January of next year, the grownups will finally be back in charge in this nation and will end these kinds of national embarrassments!  I’m not going to give the disgusting photo the dignity of inclusion here, but you can see for yourself it’s banality by following the link to the story.  NOTE – it’s not profane, just disrespectful, immature, and stupid. Profanity Rally Protesters Slam Town’s Anti-Swearing Law. courtesy Associated Press, via NBC Connecticut News, Jun 26, 2012. me:The stupidity just continues to expand the available space.  By the way, the police can now “steal from you” for not buckling up, sometimes for not wearing a bike helmet, operating a lemonade stand w/o permission, smoking a joint, and other truly harmless things.  Why not for violating civil society?!  Once again, demonstrating that there’s only a few grownups left! Quote of The Day on “Obamacare” (me):  So now, we get all the disadvantages of the current health-care system (private for-profit insurance middlemen & escalating medical/insurance costs) PLUS the disadvantages of socialized / universal health-care, like Canada and Europe (long wait times, lack of doctors, run down hospitals and higher taxes) and the advantages of NEITHER!  Oh and a Congress that can now compel us to buy ANYTHING they think is best for us too¡  Thank you so much Mr. Obama, Congress, and Chief Justice John Roberts for providing us the WORST (of both worlds) health-care system in the world¡  Oh, and we’ll still have lots of uninsured people that can’t afford health-care¡ Are we breeding a generation of app-loving, web-addicted digital illiterates? by Jonathan Blum, TheStreet, via The Globe And Mail, June 27, 2012.

Nacogdoches Photo-shoot, Part III: Tucker Woods, Millard’s Crossing & More

Saturday, I spent the day shooting photos in Nacogdoches, Texas with my friend, fellow photographer, and most excellent tour-guide Richard!  If you recall, I went by myself this last spring when Richard was unable to join me and shot a bunch downtown, the Azalea Gardens, and around an old bridge over the railway.  This time He took me down the Tucker Woods Trail, Millard’s Crossing, and to the main rail yard.  I also made him take me to an old grain elevator that I had only shot from a distance the last time.  We had a great lunch together as well.  It was very hot and sticky (normal Texas summer afternoon), but well worth it and just a really fun day! This and the flower images were taken on the Tucker Woods Trail, Arthur Temple College of Forestry, Stephen F. Austin University.

I took these at the Millard’s Crossing Museum:  You can also view the rest of the album here.
Really old house that was moved from elsewhere in E. Texas	Old one-room Texas school.  Note listed many offenses all punished w/lashes?!
Neat old porch just like my great grandmother’s house!	Inside of an old caboose