Stone Arch Bridge

We took a short walk today over the Stone Arch Bridge. It would have been even better if the person was wearing a Santa Hat. 

The temperature is in the 50s today, so this isn’t totally ridiculous.

River Road

Yesterday, it was spilling over in the form of a puddle in two different places.  As of today, they have closed a section of River Road.  While it’s still not that bad, it makes sense that they closed the road.  When you look at the river itself, it’s a lot of water and it’s moving fast. 

Rhubarb Resilience

 

After the 04/01 storm, we have had a run of snow-free weather such that almost all of it has melted.  This past week, we had temperatures hit the 70s and even 80s.  Today, we are getting snow, although it’s hard for it to do much accumulating. 

April Fool’s Day

It’s been a long, long winter.  It’s the first time that it’s ever tested my love of winter and snow.  I really needed the  several week break from new snow and a lot of melt-off, which was fortunate since I woke up to 9 inches of fresh, wet snow on April Fool’s Day.  It was in the forecast, so it was not a surprise.  It also helps that even thought it was heavy wet snow that was hard to shovel, it was also beautiful!!!

The first picture was from my phone.  One of the cats was looking out the window and the light was lovely just in time to take picture. 

Right after taking this picture, I bundled up and went to explore my yard and the block.  

I also have two other pictures from my neighborhood.  These are taken in mid-March.  

Someone "official" must have spotted the cross walk because it's been turned back to "normal".  While it was like this it made me laugh everytime I saw it. 

Riverview Theater

I adore the wallpaper in the powder room at the Riverview Theater.  If they ever make the bathroom bigger or replace the wallpaper I will be sad. 

Snow, January 4th

Given the winter that is wrapping up, it’s especially important to note what date the snow occurred, since over 80 inches have fallen this winter. 

This was a magical snow, that was preceded by sleet and a big change in temperature.  I don’t recall the specifics, but it caused a snow that both coated and piled up in a way I don’t see very often.

If this happened on a weekend, I think I would have been out more of the morning taking pictures.  Instead, I snapped a few pictures with the phone, helped push a neighbor out, made a pot of tea and worked from home. 

Practicing

Last week, I was away for a cabin weekend with friends that has been an annual tradition for many years. While I was away, one of my friends taught me a little about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. It’s all new to me. Even though I like taking pictures, I have never explored playing with these settings. Instead, I’ve just stayed in auto mode, for the most part. 

Since I’ve been back, I’ve played with all of this the tiniest bit.  This morning, I went out to drink my morning tea with my camera in the back yard. My good camera does not take good action shots in auto mode.  I’d like to try to capture hummingbirds in hover mode, which shows their wings, so I was playing around with shutter speed.  

The hummingbirds cooperated and while I was taking pictures of one at a feeder, another one showed up.  This is the second picture I took. The wings show up better and I think that’s a combination of bird position, light, and shutter speed. To do this, I think I figured out the manual focus and I like how it really zeros in on the focus area and blurs the out of focus parts.  

Another thing I like is the additional crispness or clarity of the object in focus range. I think this is clearer and sharper than auto mode when the camera is trying to focus on everything all at once.