Night Coming On

As much as I bitch about winter, I'm not completely immune to its beauty. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that right at twilight the snow glowed an eerie blue, so after a few more days of missing twilight, I finally had both charged batteries and the right timeframe...only to discover that night landscape mode won't let you shut off the flash. So, in order to catch that blue glow, I ended up bringing out my tripod (and cocoa) to take a series of photos before night came on completely.

It seemed like it'd make an interesting gif. What do you think?

Photos taken between 6:20 and 6:28 EST...or, if you want to be really pedantic, EDT since we're in daylight saving time.



"Blue Light marches on the distance, could be a TV or a UFO. Most nights, they start at least six times. Maybe I'm in the movies, maybe I don't know." - Marry me Jane, Blue Light

More?

I'd rather use my powers of photo manipulation for evil, rather than good. Good is terribly over-rated, as well as boring.

So which should I do more of next?

:

Retitled (for accuracy) books?

Fake products?

"I used up all my tricks and I hope you'll like this, but you probably won't. You think you're cooler than me." - Mike Posner, Cooler Than Me

Random Photos

I feel like posting, but I don't have much to say. So I'll post a couple of pictures I've taken this year.


I think the look on his face is something we can all relate to now and then "oh no, now what do you want?" (and yes, he puts his paws like that all the time)



I like the clouds in this one. They're a strange shade of blue. My eyes are too, come to think of it - just not this color blue. I've tried taking pictures of them, and just about all you can make out is that they're an odd grayish blue-green, so I won't inflict a picture on you.

"You must be an illusion. Can I see through you?" - Minus the Bear, When We Escape

Photo Mishaps

You know that old saying about the best laid
plans of mice and men? Clearly it also applies to amature photographers.

You see, last night I noticed one of these solar lanterns in the yard glowing eerily as its charge was draining down. It seemed like it'd make a good picture. Of course, I wanted a photo with the flash off so it would look spookier. What's scary about a lantern you can fully see?

It didn't take too long before I realized that night photos take forever to expose, and it's really hard to stay still that long. That's why my first attempt looks like this. I suppose it ups the eeriness a bit, but it's definitely not what I was going for.

After a few more attempts that look almost identical, I had an ephiphany: the biggest problem was that I was foolishly breathing. So, to solve that problem, I just needed to hold the camera against me, so it wouldn't move when I breathed. Or maybe not.

Then I thought, doesn't this camera have a couple of nighttime modes? Let's try those out. Well, if I'd been trying to take a picture that said "hey! look out, an angry demon is going to get us!" rather than "look at this neat lantern" this might have been a success.

In the end, this is the best picture I took,and it's not very good because it took so long that the solar battery was more drained that would have been ideal.

In retrospect I might have done better if I hadn't been too lazy to get my tripod out of my car (I have no idea why it was in there) but what's the challenge in that? Maybe later this week I can give it another shot - with the tripod.

Oh well, let's chalk this one up to a learning experience.

"You flirt with disaster but never give in" - The Tender Box, Beautiful Sin

Painted Ladies

click on the photos to enlarge them.

"Strangers talk, careful what you feel. There's something there, I told ya, I'm not done with you." - Van She, Strangers

Just when you think you're out...

I thought I was going to have this week off from work, but it didn't turn out that way. The project from hell wasn't even over 24 hours before I got called in to proof read some training materials, and the week got weirder from there. Weirder in one regard than I can really cope with in a mature manner (near total avoidance isn't mature), and one in much nicer way.

So, this is what I would have done if I'd actually had the week off...

* worked really hard on my pansy garden. Last Thursday, when I still thought I had time off, I bought a dozen six packs of pansies to add to the ones I already had, and the plan was to plant them all and put in mulch. So far I've planted 2/3rds of them and the mulch is still in the basement. I don't even particularly like the color pink, but I still find myself looking for ones that look like this to contrast the purples, wine reds, yellows and oranges I've already got.

* indulged in an Andrew-Lee Potts marathon. You probably don't even know who he is, but a few months ago I fell in love with the characters he played in Alice and Primeval. I've watched everything with him in it that I can get my hands on. And I've seen Alice five times since it first aired on syfy in December. Don't judge me!

* maybe have gotten some writing done on Pull - that novel about bringing people back from the afterlife - and/or various short stories. Maybe not, it's hard to say. I've been too drained to do much lately, and it's kind of frustrating...there's a flash fiction contest this weekend that I want to do, and maybe that'll help me get back in the right mindset.

* actually played the new version of Dance Dance Revolution I bought last week.

* gotten around to this month's music post.

* possibly have found something else to take pictures of, because I look at pictures I've taken like the ones below and remember that photography is fun. I don't want to think too much about that though, or else my lust for a digital SLR camera might bubble up. Someday I'll be able to afford to spend $700 on a camera, right? haha.

Oh well. Like everyone else, I could use the money, so it hasn't been all bad.

"You say we're friends so I'll just guard this heart. If I don't you might tear me apart." - Bowling For Soup, Guard My Heart

Happy Halloween!

What do you do for Halloween? I help scare kids at my best friend's parents' house, because there are never any kids at mine. Most of the kids call it "The Spooky House" so they usually know they'll be scared by someone...or something.

This is my favorite new addition

There are quite a lot of gravestones this year...

This is Hanging Chad. He kicks when a motion detector is triggered. I was co-fashion consultant for this particular project. By the end of the night he also wore a sign that said "Took four pieces of candy" ('cause the kids were told to take three.)

This year two kids were too scared to come into the yard and two cried; the crying was a surprised because timid kids tend not to even come in the yard. The rest of the kids had fun, including my favorite kids from last year (they fell in love with my doll Blix then) who asked about how to make Hanging Chad. They're young teens, mostly girls, and we're tempted to recruit them as scarers when they get too old to trick or treat.
I hope everyone had a good Halloween!



"we are, we are the shaken (shaken), we are the monsters (monsters) underneath your bed!" - Matchbook Romance, Monsters

York's Wild Kingdom

C, K, and I (along with K's husband and his friend) went to York's Wild Kingdom yesterday. It was the first time that any of us had been there for twenty years, and neither of the guys, having both grown up down south, ever went there. It's interesting to return to a place like that after so long. I have no idea what has changed, because my memories of the place are all a bit fuzzy.

The most amusing part of the zoo visit was the fact that K thought that this duck was following her. It was, but she thought it was acting in a sinister way. I think he was just hoping for food. On our bestest behavior, we didn't tell her that it was amused that she waddles like it does =) Nah, that joke would be more appropriate in another month or two.


I was sad to learn that K and JJ are going to be stationed in NC again early next year. Sigh. It was nice having them in Maine while it lasted. We're going to try to get together in November, before their baby is born.

After we left the zoo, we went to the beach for a while. York beach is almost as ugly as Hampton beach. This far north is not known for their beautiful beaches, and I find the idea of beaches lined with parking meters to be sort of depressing.

All in all it was a fun day. Who knew that I'd still be hanging out with friends from college a decade after I graduated. It's nice.


"And you and I will find that when I need you I need it quickly. In fact, you'll never know" - Manchester Orchestra, I've Got Friends <-- mp3

Missed Photos

Beyond wishing I'd had a camera with me a week ago tonight for the last Carbon Leaf concert, there are things I wish I had pictures of. And I don't just mean things like I wish I hadn't somehow left my camera behind during the senior class trip, either.

Instead I mean things that were so totally unexpected that it wasn't reasonable to expect to take pictures. These are things I wish I had photos of:

* Contrails? When we were tiny, maybe four and five, Eric and I thought we saw a distressed plane spell out the word "help." His father told us that it was just regular contrails, but by the time we'd gotten him out of the house, they'd mostly faded, so of course he didn't see the word. I still wonder if it spelled anything out - I could read at that age, so maybe it really did.

* Vynce, knee-deep in water, and swearing as he dragged a shopping cart out of Mill Pond. Maybe if someone requests it I'll have to tell this story someday, but it's definitely the funniest thing I've ever seen, even to this day. Sarah and I were crying and hanging on each other because we were laughing so hard.

* The fire ball that shot out of the heating vent at work a few years ago. A chunk of ice broke the gas main, and as soon as the gas accumulated and the heat kicked on, the heat pipe had a 2' fire ball shoot out of it. It was scary, but also kind of exciting. I don't want to see it in person again, but photos would have been neat.

* Lightning striking power transformers during the ice storm. We weren't close enough to see the strikes, but both times lightning nailed transformers in the distance, the 11 o'clock sky was lit up an errie blue flash that filled the horizon. Very cool.

* Ice-coated tree in the headlights. Same night. When the lights of the car hit a certain tree in the median, it looked like crystal. Much prettier than all those crystal figurines people keep making me look at in the mall.

* Fire on snow. I had no idea how incredible this looked until I helped my mom burn some brush this winter. The lighter fluid does not sink into the snow like most liquids do, but instead pools on the surface. Fire does too, licking along the snow and barely melting it. If I can find a foolhearty assistant, I'm going to try for pictures this winter.

I guess some of those are kind of dangerous, but they are the things I wish I had photos to show people, so they could see them too.


"If I go everywhere you want me to go how will I know you'll still follow?" - Silversun Pickups, Panic Switch

Lucky Shots

It's in my profile that I enjoy photography, but I haven't talked about that yet that I recall. Some of the best pictures are ones that turn out to be different than you expect.

Take this one for example. I don't know who the little boy who got into the way of my shot was, but this turned out to be my favorite picture from last weekend.

And then there's this one from a damp day at the beach in October. You can't tell from the photo, but I spent most of the time there facinated by this golden quality that the edges of the clouds had once the drizzle let up. I took dozens of photos trying to capture that, but only a handful showed it. This one is a picture that doesn't show it, but I love it anyway. The irony is that I couldn't have set up a shot of the boardwalk like this if I'd tried.

Some times, there's a gift in the unexpected. We should try not to take that for granted.

"I’m a liar, set sh*t on fire" - Brad Sucks, Dirtbag

Me. Here. Wish I were.

"Get me outta the rain, you get me out of my clothes/Hope I don't make a sound, you hope that nobody knows." - The Academy Is, Checkmarks