Ice

Yesterday, Sun, we work to icicles hanging off of everything. It had lightly rained during the night and then froze in the early morning hours. This is the first i've seen ice hanging from the bushes and trees and i got out my camera, etc and proceeded to create some photographs. I've not worked with icicles before now and didn't do a very good job considering how much potential there was. I only got one i liked:

And if you click on the upside down icicle, you'll see the neighbors house across the street at the top. I thought that might be happening when i was photographing but wasn't sure until i got it into my computer.

I did one other that was o.k.:

But like the ad says, "O.K. isn't enough" with which i certainly agree.

I'll continue practicing that kind of photography so i'm ready when the next rain freeze shows up.

Old building, Comal County, TX

For many years i have been photographing a couple old building located in between San Antonio and New Braunfels. When i was in college about 20 miles north of the buildings, they were function and the building on the left had (even then) an old fashion gas pump, the kind that has a glass bulb with a spinning wheel inside and the store was, more or less, your old country store.

This is the earliest photograph i have, June 2006. However, my memory is that i took many long before that and just can't locate them. Clicking on the image will give you a much better view of the buildings.

Four years later it didn't look too much different but ... i took the photograph in the afternoon and the sun was shinning on the front of the buildings.

The yellow realtor sign on the left building is gone but not much else had changed - the sunlight certainly made it look better.

In 2013, some of the bushes were removed from in front of the building on the right and this sign had been installed:

The building on the right was where the above sign was located

And all the realtor signs were gone and the front door of the left building was slightly open so i stuck my camera inside and took a few photographs without seeing what i was shooting until i withdrew my arm - this is what was inside:

Isn't that amazing ... just like old country stores that i grew up around in the 50's; the room next door, the one you can see thru the door, looked like this:

At that time the front of the left hand building looked like this:

'Nuff for now.

Geared Heads

These are 'geared heads', an adjusting via gears that i only learned about about 18 months ago.

Made by Manfrotto, a company i've never thought made very good products, these turn out to be quite good. When shooting macro items having to adjust the camera's placement by moving the tripod causes all kinds of necessary adjustments. I bought the smaller, on the right, geared head without doing much research to discovered the camera and rails i was using was too heavy for the head and when tilted downwards tended to literally fall forward, ie the gears didn't hold the tilt. Then i discovered they made different models for different weights and today i received the model that will, i hope, handle the weight of the camera, rails, lights, etc.. I was lucky and located a used one that was about 25% less then a new one. Over the next weeks i'll learn if i have finally bought the one that will work.

New Lens

Recently i purchased a new lens for the new Sony A7lll; 24-105mm ... sometimes called a 'walk around lens' as it covers the conventional usually shooting sizes. And its seems, at least initially, much sharper then the Canon lens of the same ilk - and that's what i was hoping. I used it for the first time today and here are a few of the images:

Carolina Titmouse and Wren

Probably the sign was put there to keep the mail person from 

overstuffing the mailbox

There were dozens of geese flying overhead as we went for a walk

Yum!

Back of House

Blue Jay

and sometimes the big birds use it

I'm pretty pleased with the first use of the lens ... what do you think?

Wisteria

Love 'em:

HDR, fence in Albany, CA

Same fence, different view

and a few blocks away

This area had a lot of wisteria growing everywhere - never could get enough of them, either their sight or their aroma.

Orchids

I have been photographing Susan's orchards as they are about to go away for this season. I've always been enthralled by the intensity of their purple and bought a, mostly white, velvet cloth for the backdrop. It didn't work out as it wasn't really white but off-white or cream-white - so these have been cut out of the background and plain white substituted ... they came out pretty well.

I like the color of the bottom photograph but prefer the layout of the top photograph. The color difference is the lighting used. Its a good start to getting the depth of the color my eyes see ... learning to reproduce what the eyes sees is the challenge of photographing.

Apples

This is apple season in the mountains and just outside of Hendersonville are dozens of apple orchards ... and as we visited Stepp's last year - we returned to the same place AND they have fresh backed Apple Cider Donuts! Yum!

Although i take my camera with me i've found i'm not so interested in taking photographs of apple trees, etc. This is about all there is.