Category Archives: Photography

October 14, 2023 · 23:50

Partial Solar Eclipse

Shortly after 08:00 this morning the Moon began to move in front of the Sun, causing a partial solar eclipse as seen from here in Los Angeles. In other places, along a path from Oregon, directly over Albuquerque, into Texas, directly over San Antonio, into the Gulf of Mexico, over Central America, and over South America, folks got to see a “Ring of Fire” annular eclipse. NASA-TV had an excellent program covering it.

Here I made a simple attempt to photograph the progress of the eclipse. No fancy solar telescope, no H-alpha filters, just my 300 mm telephoto lens, a Canon xt DSLR on a tripod, and a handheld solar eclipse filter held in front of the lens.

09:45, a minute or two after maximum coverage in LA. The Moon has come in from the upper left and is moving down toward the lower left.

09:53 – the color of the Sun varies a bit depending on the length of the exposure. Even with the eclipse filter and the Sun’s disk partially obscured, the Sun is BRIGHT.

10:06 – For each set of pictures I was shooting a series of images, “bracketing” the exposures from 1/4000 second down to about 1/100 second. Then from each set I picked the best picture based on focus, exposure, and other factors.

10:26 – The dark film used to make the eclipse glasses isn’t optically flat, so taking pictures through it introduces a fair amount of blur. To truly do a nice job on this subject I would need a precision, optically flat glass filter, which can be a bit pricey. I’ll be looking at it for next year’s total eclipse, but not today.

10:45 – Getting close to the end of the eclipse.

10:54 – These last three images are just a minute apart as the eclipse was ending.

10:55 – Just the tiniest little sliver of the Moon’s edge is still covering 1% of the Sun’s disc in the lower left.

10:56 – Last contact

I hope that you got to see the eclipse today, or at least had (or will have) a chance to see it online. Now it’s time to start planning for next April 8th, the last full solar eclipse in North America this century.

I’ll see y’all in Texas! April 8th! Be there or be square!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

October 12, 2023 · 23:04

Popcorn Lizard

Do you see it? It’s a teeny, tiny little thing. From snout to back legs is maybe an inch – add in the tail and it might be two.

I’ve said it before, but I don’t remember ever having so many lizards hatching so late in the year. I’ve always seen the babies, the little ones, in the spring. Maybe in the early summer at the latest. Not this year.

Dr. Earyn McGee, of the famous “FindThatLizard” weekly Twitter events which I so dearly love, called these tiny guys “popcorn” lizards. Their main function in the universe is to be food for other critters and bigger lizards.

A few make it and get bigger. And I understand they need to be bigger to have the reserves needed to make it through the winter when they become dormant.

They become dormant in the winter because it gets cold and wet. Maybe they know something we don’t?

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Filed under Critters, Photography

October 11, 2023 · 23:33

Fine Feathered Friends – October 11th

We’ve seen these dudes (or their relatives) in the past once or twice, but they’re not regulars.

Maybe it’s the grapes that brought them out. Putting a handful out is an experiment and they all disappeared in a day, so they were popular!

The “zebra-stripes” on the head make these guys stand out.

There were two or three flitting in, grabbing a seed or a chunk of grape, and flitting out.

They were fighting the mourning doves for the seeds. They may have been out of their weight class, but they were holding their own.

The Merlin app tells me that there are two similar species in our area. I’ve seen a Golden-crowned Sparrow once or twice, but never when I had a camera with me. They’re similar, but they just have one stripe on their head and it’s bright yellow.

The other is the Lark Sparrow, which has stripes on its head that’s more dark brown and white, and they go all the way around the head and down onto the throat, seven or eight stripes instead of three.

They’re very similar in size and coloration to the house finches. Any given morning we’ll have a couple dozen or more house finches out there when the seed gets scattered, so except for the head markings these guys fit right in.

A decent picture of the markings on the wing and back feathers.

This one finally marched up to the edge of the porch and started barking at me. I think the gist of it was, “We want more grapes! Where’s the good stuff, the fresh ones?”

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography

October 10, 2023 · 23:10

Random Old Photos – October 10th

What are you passionate about? What really, really makes it all worthwhile?

Sure, romantic passion is likely to be high on the list for most of us, whether we have it or not, but that’s not all. What else?

Can you list five things? Ten? Travel? Music? Books? Sports? Flying?

Do you have those things in your life? A smidgen? A bunch? None at all?

Why not? Are you working on getting more? Are you just going to settle on doing without?

Why?

What are you passionate about?

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Flying, Photography, Weather

October 9, 2023 · 23:36

Skyscapes – October 09th

More sunset-ish tonight.

A little bit of everything out there.

Layers on layers, row on row, all with a really nice color pallette.

Boy, talk about “air quotes!”

One thing that I consider with every house I’m looking at on Zillow is the view, in particular the number of telephone poles and wires. Trees are one thing, and the wires aren’t a deal killer, but they’re most certainly worth a couple of demerits.

Virga. The wisps dropping away from clouds like these is rain that’s starting to fall. But it’s falling into air that’s very dry so it evaporates before it hits the ground. That’s called “virga.”

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Weather

October 8, 2023 · 23:20

Skyscapes – October 08th

When I first saw it, finding recognizeable shapes as the pattern recognizing primate brain wants to do, I thought it looked like Greenland.

Then I was thinking, no, too long and skinny, maybe more like the Sweden/Norway penninsula. Or Florida. Yeah, Florida.

It’s a sure sign of my naive upbringing in Catholic school that it wasn’t until I just looked at it now that I made the connection to what it really looks like. As “Dr. Rick” in one of the current ads for Progressive Insurance ads says, “It may be a fruit emoji 🍆 🍌, but that doesn’t mean they’re talking about fruit!”

I’m going to stick with Florida.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

October 7, 2023 · 19:55

Going Back To Hell

The 2022-2023 season at the Ahmanson is over and the new 2023-2024 season doesn’t start until December.

But in the meantime they have squeezed in a return engagement of one of last year’s hits (and a huge Tony Award winner from 2019 when it was on Broadway.)

We enjoyed it the first time, and we’ll take any excuse to get “oot und aboot” on a Saturday night, so here we are!

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Filed under Art, Los Angeles, Photography

October 6, 2023 · 23:13

Change Of Seasons – LA Backyard Version

First of all, a note on yesterday’s post. I apologize to my tiny lizard friend for assuming that he was “lousy at hide and seek.” In fact, I’m apparently not one of the cool kids in the backyard (big surprise!) and didn’t know that the game being played was actually peek-a-boo, and I was being skunked by a grand master. The editorial management of this site regrets the error and we’re looking into sacking the offending staff. Or at least flogging them.

While SoCal does have some trees (all imported from places far more temperate and moist, I assure you) which turn fall colors, they’re pretty much non-existent in our yard.

We have one fruit tree (peach, maybe?) which has never borne fruit in the 5+ years we’ve been here, but the leaves do turn yellow and fall off in the fall.

Compared to seeing whole valleys and mountain sides in New England covered in flaming red maple leaves, or miles upon miles of sunburst yellow aspens in the Rockies, this is a little short on the spectacular.

But you take what you can get. It’s not this tree’s fault, it’s doing its best. It would be nice if it could produce an actual fruit someday so that we could know what kind of tree it is, but that’s beyond my job description.

Happy Autumn from the land of pine trees, palm trees, and cactus!

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

October 5, 2023 · 23:33

Lousy At Hide & Seek

Do you see it? Can you “find that lizard”?

I don’t know for sure (the little dudes don’t wear name tags) but I think it’s the same one from a couple days ago.

I saw him and froze, moving only enough to get my phone out of my pocket. He was really well hidden – at first.

However, the longer I waited, the more emboldened he got. I don’t know if it was curiosity or a territorial display. Either way, it makes for a lousy game of hide & seek.

Finally he was way up above the edge, fully exposed. I didn’t move, but another, bigger lizard ran by from left to right along the top of the rail tie and freaked him out. He vanished back over the side in a flash.

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Filed under Critters, Photography

October 4, 2023 · 23:20

Detritus

The winds are back, and they were howling last night and this morning.

On the far (upwind) side of the driveway you can see some of the rose bushes planted there. Yesterday I noticed that several were starting to bloom again, including the spectacular pink & white one.

On the near (downwind) side you can see hundreds of rose petals. Red, pink & white, yellow, that amazing favorite shade of orange/red, all covering the grass. The rose bushes have all been stripped of every petal.

The lawn looks like there was a wedding here and some precocious (and cute) four-year-old had scattered a bushel basket full of rose petals everywhere. Which is actually what happened, if your cute four-year-old angel was actually a 40 knot wind coming through like the Avenging Angel of Death.

Po-TAY-toe, po-TAH-toe?

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Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography