Black and White Morning Sky

A morning after a day of rain.  Wasn't sure what the day would turn out to be so I started it in neutral. Turns out it was quite nice....breezy and cool but this is Ohio, it's fall.  Next week November starts and the 70's are predicted.

A Golden End

With all the rains in the beginning of the year and then the heat, never really got that hot, and the dryness you wouldn't have thought that this fall would be so brilliant in color in this area.  We do not get the colors of Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia or the northern eastern seaboard.  But this year has been very generous in mother natures color.

I must put out a tribute to a blogger from Maine.  His name I never knew until just yesterday.  He a 7th grade teacher in literature and the arts for 41 years at the same school  until retirement.  He never missed a posting in over a year or two....maybe even longer than that.  I should look that info up.  I read his post of 10/17/15 and then notice either the next day or Monday that he hadn't posted anything.  Well, I just learned his name a day ago when I checked the Portland, ME obits and found he had passed away suddenly on 10/17/15.  Mark Norton, also referred to as Birdman.  His blog was pORTLANDcITYdAILYpHOTO.  He grew up in Portland and would take you through memory lane every so often, talking about his paper route, playing baseball in the summer or just hanging out as boys will on lazy summer days, well, at least back then.  I know, that's what we...my brother and I did back then.  He told stories of how he met his wife, she had just graduated from college with an art degree and applied to where he was teaching.  She was from New Hampshire and had no place to stay so after staying with friends and something like the Y she moved in with Mark as a roommate.  Fate took over from there.  They ended up living in Buxton, ME on a small piece of land just to get out of the city.

So, this is my Golden tribute to a guy I never met but wish I had.  We did converse every now and then through our blogs...it was fun.  He will be missed.

Finally!

We are finally getting some much needed rain.  It wasn't suppose to happen, only a slight chance but late today it poured for awhile.  No more now until the remanence of Patricia shows up Tuesday and Wednesday.  Then the odds are for about 90% per day.

We've pretty much peaked this week in fall colors but unless you got up early and trekked out to the woods or real late in the day the sun was just too bright, however, today's cloud cover was perfect for bringing the colors out.  It was a good day for fall colors or taking pictures of cars but the car shows have all but wrapped up for this year.  Let there be clouds when wanting color in your images.  The rain can hold off.

Yellow-Green Sunrise, Really?

I know this is the same posting as the last but I sometime find photos I really like to change up from one look to another.  This is one of them so I have gone from chrome to a yellow green tone.  Seems to make the image brighter.  Maybe even cleaner.

Orange Skies to Black and White

In this area they are always asking the viewers of the local TV news to send in photos of news and weather issues.  Once I saw a picture during one of the weather issue times and they thanked the sender.  Something didn't look right so I stopped it backed it up and froze it again to really get a good look.  Unfortunately they gave credit to an individual that sent in a photo for sometime before, a year or better.  So, the other night they did the same thing.  Said where the sender was and thanked him for the great sunset shot.  Only problem was there wasn't a cloud in the sky all morning, day or afternoon.  The picture, it had plenty of clouds, just like this one except mine doesn't have color.  There is a fine line that can be used in time to where you can't tell AM from PM....Blue Hour from Golden Hour.  Maybe I'll send in a morning shot and say look at my sunset.  Naw, not my style.

As Promised

I have no idea as to why my post yesterday didn't show the picture except I was doing it on an iPad and the picture was in my iPhone so I sent the picture from the phone to myself then did a copy/paste into the body of the blog.  I saw it in my preview but when I clicked the Publish button it was only text.  Today, if you got it, would have been because I went back to the post and edited it on my phone and put the picture in from the photos.  Now that was not fun.....can't see the small print let alone the fine print.  Again, I saw the change on my iPad and Steph saw it but Cindy didn't.  No one else said anything so I figured they didn't see it either.

Now I am doing what I said I would do, post the pumpkins after hanging them outside next to the front door.  We had 7 then I added 4 so will that be luck at the Halloween craps table?   Face on the bottom says it all.

Latest Project...Hey Charlie Brown

Started with a piece of 3/8" wanes cot plywood.  Flipped it over, sanded, mixed some paint with my daughters advice and air brushed the pumpkins and their stems.  Traced the pumpkin outlines on some wrapping paper that you would use for moving and then drew the faces.  Cut the faces out to make stencils then air brushed the faces on.  Pre hung the pieces with twine and pins to balance the setup and then I super glued the twine where the pins were.  Next I put a coat of polyurethane on the pumpkins and the twine so they would be weather resistant.  Tomorrow, a picture from outside.

Let it be known, I have never attempted anything like this from scratch.  Big thanks to Steph.

Mid-October

It's still warm to very warm here in the mid-west for this time of year.  We have had temps ranging in the 80's and we should be nearer to the 70 mark.  A week or so ago, right about the time the floods hit the southern states as the hurricane went up the coast, it got down to the 40's at night and right around 60 in the daytime.  Now that has passed and we have gone back into the 80's again but we are headed towards our first frost of the year this weekend.

One thing about these hot days and cool nights is that it sets up the possibility of fog.  It was starting to burn off when I took this picture of one of my favorite plants.  It's just a bush but it gets these little yellow followed by white flowers on each limb from tip to base.  Then they set little blue seed pods, about the size of push pins with the round head...not the flat ones.  In late September they turn purple and stay that way until February, changing only because the weather gets too cold too long.  When they do they turn dark brown to black and some burst open to reveal their seeds.  In March they become the feast for Robins and pretty much no other bird.  They will come every day to feed until they are gone and I mean gone...picked clean like a good BBQ rib bone.  In April or May I go out with my hedge trimmer and shear it down to about 4" and the process starts all over.

We have just started to really get fall colors here in the middle of Ohio.  In about a week we should start to peak.  Places like Hocking Hills should be in full color by then.

Of course, all of this is followed by ................................... SNOW!!!!!!!!

In 68 days and a little over 9 hours the winter happens and the days start to get longer.....yea.

Before and After

Straight out of the camera.  Nothing fancy.  Might make it my home screen background for awhile.

Of course it's the same shot with "some" editing.  I'll make it my background around the end of the month when the spooks and goblins come out for All Hallows Eve.  Even the bats are flying early this year.  Oh, it's just a flock of birds.....or is it?

In the Darkness of Night

Finally, the weather has Fall written all over it.  Windy, very cool (60ish) and now wet.  Good time to catch up on some photo work.

Four shots of the lunar eclipse from my perspective.  I only wish that I had remembered it when the moon first came up that night, when it would have appeared to be larger than life as some people said.  I've seen super moons before and they don't excite me unless the atmosphere is really working for you.  Then it helps in getting a better picture with a smaller lens.  Without using my teleconverters I'm limited to 270mm which is fine, not too much grain in the images.

I labeled these as Beginning, Middle, Ending and Blood Moon.  What was interesting was that to look up with the naked eye at the final stage the moon didn't look so bloody but more of a faint spot in the sky.  Unless you shoot a lot of night images it's hard to get it right in exposure which is ISO, shutter speed and aperture.  The first shot was set at 1/1250sec @ f-11, ISO 6400 at 270mm focal plane.  The next two were 1/4000 @ f-6.3, ISO 6400 and 270mm.  The final shot was 1.3 sec @ f-6.3, ISO 6400 at 154mm focal plane.  I had one at 270 but I thought it was more blurred.  It would have been great to have had a faster lens than f-6.3 at 270mm but as one of my first bosses told me, "any one can do it with the right tools, it takes a real tradesman to do with what he has to work with....get it  as close as you can to perfect, it'll all work out."

All I can say is thank goodness for LR and PS.


Beginning

Middle

Ending

Blood Moon