Sunny snow

Afternoon

Morning

Wee hours

Snow day

Snow Beach

Beach at Golden Gardens

Trail through dunes, from meadow to beach

Grove, West Point in distance

Christmas is coming

A favorite thing about Christmas is Jo's decorating, and this year's mantle is especially fun, with her wooden houses surrounded by evergreen trees and Tomten figures.

Snow hips

Snow berries & rose hips at Golden Gardens, December 1st.

Pond in near background, Puget Sound in far background.

Fog & Sun

Autumn mornings at the beach can charm.

These are from several days ago.

Padilla Bay

Chris & I talk about day trips now & then, and occasionally manage to accomplish one. Our proposed destination for yesterday was Padilla Bay, East of Anacortes. My Laziness inspired the suggestion, since I could get Chris to pick me up on the way, and wouldn't have to drive & meet her someplace, or worse, drive myself home afterwards.

A primary factor in choosing where we go is providing opportunities for Schmoo to chase sticks and get wet.

Birdwatching was on the plan, but weather, tides, and perhaps being a bit early in the season tended against that.

When we saw these ducks out on the bay, my head first said "scoter," but I could only see poorly defined black silhouettes, and switched to "scaup." Out of laziness again, I didn't get out the binoculars but simply took a few pictures with intention of doing the identification when I got home. Surf Scoters.

Chris's favorite parts of the day were surely Schmoo's several attempts to come forward from the back seat to get in my lap.

Disruption

For the last few weeks, they have been demolishing the buildings next door and preparing to build townhouses.

It has been noisy and disruptive. Rumbles and banging and shaking and shuddering.

Sometimes the excavator was working about ten feet from the keyboard where I am now typing, and was trying then. I am just inside the corner of the house at the left of the picture above.

I like the name on the concrete pump.

I did consider making a photo-journal of the progress of demolition and construction, but decided that dealing with the disruption would be enough of a challenge without overlaying an additional "responsibility," even self-imposed.

I'm still enjoying photography though, subject to limitations of an over-filled hard drive (i have to constantly delete to make room) and a monitor that is not up to snuff.

Quality time.

Friday, Chris & went to Golden Gardens beach.

The ship & sailboat shot above was taken especially for Vera.

While I was thus occupied, Chris sorted rocks. It seemed to be quality time.

We like the beach.

The pond turtles seem to know how to enjoy quality time.

As do kids, when there is a creek to be dammed.

Vera likes lighthouses, so this is another picture for her. Pretty short lighthouse - she'll probably be disappointed.

Archie got a little quality time too (I am also obligated to post frequent cat pictures).

Beachness & such

I wandered out to Richmond Beach today for a little block play, train watching, and general beachness & photography play.
The image above is a grayscale conversion of a normal color image.

The image below was made in infrared.
For more on infrared, see today's Blockplay post.

A thousand and one ...

I've now taken over a thousand pictures with my new camera, since getting it May 21st.

This ship, taken from the pedestrian overpass at Richmond Beach Saltwater Park, is #1001.

The last picture of the morning was #1048, one of a bracketed triplet of this crow, which is #1046 - and actually the next to the last.

The camera takes bracketed triplets in the order middle-bright-dark but numbers them dark-middle-bright. The taking order makes sense, since the middle shot is most likely to be "right," and you may only hold the button down for one shot, not three. But it can make viewing the images in numerical order funny, with a moving subject (e.g. a train) jumping back then leaping ahead.

My thousand images include accidental button pushes, making images just to see how a
function worked, pictures of my toenails, and lots of semi-duplicates
because I held the button down in continuous-shooting mode, or bracketed shots.

But hey, that's an important part of getting to know a new camera with lots of options, and should continue even after I have 'learned everything' as I need to relearn what I have forgotten, and stretch the boundaries of what I thought I knew.

A couple more images are here.

Alpenrose

One of my favorite things about sunny mornings is how a spot of sunlight reflecting off some car windshield out on the street will be turned into ripples of light by the old glass in our front window.

I've often contemplated making a portrait of someone illuminated by this light, but the logistics are daunting - the illumination is brief and high up on the wall.

The other morning I grabbed an Alpenrose milk bottle - echoing the theme of "old glass" - and held it in a patch of the rippled light for some one handed trial shots.

Alpenrose was the dairy that delivered milk, in brown bottles similar to this one, to a box on our porch in Portland in the 1950s. It was also the dairy that we went to on field trips from Ockley Green Elementary School, as did school kids from all over Portland.

One option would be sandwiching two images, one a the light pattern such as this one, another of the subject. It wouldn't be hard to do in image editing software, but that doesn't appeal to me much.

And for Archie fans, here he is in a moment of liesure.

Lunch

Kathryn & Eliza invited me along to have lunch with my mom today.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially my mother.

We took lunch fixings from the deli section of PCC & made a very satisfactory spread.

I hope we can do it again.

Three

Webster joined us three years ago yesterday. I had meant to post this on the day, but forgot.

Archie hasn't been with us quite so long, but is a schweetie, and hasn't had enough pictures posted lately, so he gets to be here too. Albeit in black & white.

And to make it "three" pictures, below is an experimental infrared shot of a maple in our back yard.

Amooooooooooooooooozon

Every now and then, Amazon sends me information on promotions that can up the earnings of my Amazon Store.

The store doesn't make me much, but every now & then I get a $10 or so Amazon gift card that represents my earnings, and have a little fun with it.

So it amuses me that one of their current promos is Amazon gift cards - and that I even get a higher rate. :)

Since most of my Amazon Store is toys, it also amuses me that their other current promo is toys.

And if you are looking for something not in my store, start by going to my store and using the search box there, and I still get credit.

Now back to our regular programming.

Woof.

Heron & fish

We watched a heron catch & eat a fish.

He either jumped or fell the rock. We aren't sure.

But he got the fish.

[The original video is a nasty-big file (~58 mb). Blogger scrunched it into something more manageable & less clear. It is still fun.]

The heron had a lot of trouble with the fish but eventually managed to swallow it.

I had wandered off by then, so missed photographing the mid-throat bulge.