We can’t seem to escape from these cloudy grey days down here, but it could be far worse, we could be somewhere farther north where it’s got to be colder. My Friday Feet today came from an impromptu photowalk around my the block, so to speak. I was taking a very needed break from writing one of three research papers that are due by next Friday.
One of the subjects of photography I have always loved to look for are reflections. Reflections are one of the more rarely photographed views basically because you have to search them out, and then try to make the subject useable. Reflections are everywhere, and they look great when they show up naturally. We have a small pond in the back of our place that has very little water in it right now, and consequently, it’s very black and still.
As I walked around the property I found a great combination, and created the shot below of me with my iPhone. There isn’t any special filters or photoshopping done to the image below, just a little boost to the contrast to bring out the leaves (see exif metadata here). The reflection of myself comes from the water, just like the trees above my head. The color and texture comes from the leaves sitting on the mud bottom of the pond, so the shot is both translucent, and reflective. All shots in this post were taken on my iPhone. Have a great weekend everyone.
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That cold-ish time of year has come again, even down here in the south. On Wednesday it was almost 80*F, and now it looks like all that warm air is gone for now. One of the things we love about our house in the winter is our Lopi wood burning stove, but it takes a lot of wood too. Normally we cut and split wood all throughout the year, but the past year or two we haven’t really been able to catch up with the wood work so to speak. With all the trees down from the storm on Wednesday it’s too bad we couldn’t have just driven around Auburn and picked up all the wood, but instead I just cut my own up for today’s Friday Feet via my cell phone.
It was a little surreal driving around Auburn today in the sunshine seeing huge holes in people’s roofs, and massive trees down all over the place. I know there are still a lot of people in Auburn that are dealing with huge trees down on their property, and many with a lot of damage to their homes. Hopefully this will be the end of any more tornados for Alabama this year, this state has seen enough for 2011.
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They say you should stop and smell the roses. It has been so cold, wet, dark, and raining for the last few days that you couldn’t get outside and do anything, let alone smell a rose. It finally cleared up enough this afternoon to jump outside for a quick break, and today that makes this shot the photo of the day. I took the shot of the roses with my iPhone today, and in my ongoing battle to make the iPhone a viable photographic alternative to a big DSLR I am testing out some new apps (blog post review to come some time).
There is so much going on this week and my mind and heart are in basically three different places so this was a nice walk around the house break. My friend and marathon prayer partner lost his sister unexpectedly this week and today he is in Tennessee with his wife at the funeral. He has usually been on the other side, praying for myself and Deborah as she continues with her tests at UAB, but this week it changed.
This morning, going through my normal continuous reading of the bible, I just happen to be reading Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 12:26 that says “if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together”, and this is truly the case. As we get ready for the next round of tests at UAB on Friday (depending on whether UAB and BCBS can figure out how to talk to each other) I know he will be back on the other side praying for me once again, and that is such a comfort to me.
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Everything in Auburn is frozen and covered in ice but I think this was just so everyone could take the day off for the BCS game in Glendale. Only a few hours left before Auburn and Oregon go at it.
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Lynchburg is getting cold, feels like 6* now yikes. There is going to be a ton of snow on the ground in the morning.
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I started off today with a beautiful creation by our Creator that I am not all that thrilled to see when I get up. 20* Frost.
I took this photo this morning when I went out to get in my truck. We live in the deep south and I like to think that our winter days are mild, but not lately. It is currently 30* outside and it is almost 11am, not a pleasant thing for those of us who have a wardrobe that consists of t-shirts and one or two long sleeve shirts that we never like to wear but do so when we can’t bear it any longer.
The first image is actually the sunrise looking through my truck window on the driver’s side, into the truck, then back out the other side. The sun still hadn’t warmed things up enough to melt away the unique snowflake like frost that had formed all over everything last night. There was just enough humidity last night at 20* to make for a beautiful close up of the snowflake crystals on the window (although handheld due to my tripod being in use at the time).
The second shot above is a further close up (beyond the macro 1:1 ratio for those photo techies) of the first shot above. It took less than a minute sitting in the car for all of this beauty to melt away. My next blog post is going to be where we should be this time of year, but for now, it is cold down here. I don’t care if it is -10* up north and 20* isn’t cold to some, it is cold down here, time for Spring.
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If you have been following the progress of our tree and tree swing, it now has just about no leaves on it at all, so last night I decided to take advantage of the very dark night out here and do a long exposure of the tree showing the North Star. This shot was a single frame, 3 hour exposure with another 3 hour noise reduction process. I started the exposure when I went to bed and it finished around 4am. Showing star trails are a little easier with a film exposure but this one turned out pretty good. The tree looks like it is leaning over to the side because it was shot with a 14mm lens pointed almost straight up at the sky. I am actually standing about 5 feet or so from the tree.
You can just see the North Star behind the right side of the tree. I couldn’t actually see it when I setup the tripod and I was just shooting for somewhere close to the center of the frame. Missed it to the left by a little but close enough.
The tree is the same one you see in the previous posts, here, here, here, here, and even here. Some day I will put all the tree shots together in one post. It is pretty neat to me to see the changes in one single location, sort of like a very long time lapse. For those of you still wondering, no, I did not sit out there all night with the camera, I just set the exposure time to 3 hours and hoped that a deer or other large animal didn’t tip over my tripod.
