Photography at 60mph

I don't know about you, but I hate it when a fleeting moment presents itself that I want to capture so I can freeze it and keep it from being fleeting only.

Unfortunately those moments sometimes occur when I'm behind the wheel. Fortunately, sometimes I have the camera right there beside me.

Now you also have to understand that I don't have a death wish, either for myself or those I'm sharing the road with. So I do exercise caution under these circumstances.

But I also enjoy reliving the moments at a later time - moments that otherwise would have been lost.

Have you ever indulged ?

Slipping those surly bonds ...

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

written by RCAF Flight-Lieutenant John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922-1941)

Well I may not have experienced that joy of unencumbered flight praised by Flight-Lieutenant Magee, but I did catch a glimpse of those sun-split clouds ....

Speaking of brass monkeys ...

I can state with certainty that I am not now, nor am I likely to become, a member of a polar bear club. You know, those people who think it's a lark to go out on New Year's Day and plunge into a hole hewed out of the ice in nothing more than a bathing suit. Having said that, I did find myself outside very early this morning in weather that would have prompted owners of brass monkeys to have brought them indoors. It was -26C and for those who keep score in Fahrenheit, that's 15 below zero. Even Sasha decided that only fools would be out in those temperatures.

I seem to have standing orders to be awakened if there's the promise of a sunrise worthy of being captured on camera. There was enough time to acclimatize the camera and I spent about 40 minutes traipsing around the yard alternating between preventing frostbite in my fingers and capturing the amazing colours.

Sometimes you do what you gotta do ...

It's a beautiful morning ...

... or I should have said it was a beautiful morning a few days ago even though my wife interrupted my (much-needed) beauty sleep to tell me of a sunrise that I should see. Knowing that the lifespan of a sunrise is usually measured in minutes, I was outside in a flash, camera and tripod in one hand while trying to remove cobwebs from my eyes with the other.

You might recall the song (click link below the photos) which came to my mind - and stuck around - while I basked in the early morning sun (and those of you who've been around my blog for awhile know that that's a rarity).

I hope your new week is off to a similar auspicious start !

Morning has broken

A few of my favourite morning quotes:

I could be a morning person. If morning happened to be around noon.

My bed and I have a special relationship, we're perfect for each other. But my alarm clock just hates seeing us together.

Every morning I long to hold you, I need you, I want you, I love your warmth... your smell, your taste... Ohhh coffee I love you. Good Morning!

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.

If you've followed for a little while you likely know that I wasn't cut out to be a morning person. I'm just not that productive in the morning. Oh, I'm not the surly kind but my internal clock seems to be a few hours out of sync with the early morning crowd's. Of which my wife is a devoted member.

She has told me on numerous occasions that I've missed a glorious sunrise. In fact, on several of those occasions she's even made some photos of the sunrise - in case I didn't believe her. A few mornings ago she told me of a beautiful huge moon that hung low over the horizon at the break of day (sorry, no photos). So I promised myself to go look the next day. No huge moon but I'll (grudgingly) admit that the light in the early morning was pretty nice. Hold the applause. Fear not - I doubt that early rising will become my new habit.

Looking on the bright side

"You know it's going to be a long day when you yell 'Seriously?!?' at your alarm clock." (author unknown)

Ah, the benefits of airline deregulation. When I was young, people flew at a decent time. But now, to get a good airfare, it's the early bird who catches the plane. And so the alarm clock rudely jolted us out of bed, prematurely, so we could get our daughters to the airport by 04:00 am (!!) for a 06:00 am flight. It was early, but on the bright side there was no traffic (everyone else had wisely chosen to stay in bed) - the usual 45 minute trip was done in under 25.

There was another bright side to this equation. I'm rarely up to witness a sunrise but since I'd already paid the price, I was treated to the following, which in my estimation was adequate compensation.

Osmosis

I was awakened prematurely this morning by my wife who told me that I had to get up and see a beautiful sunrise (thank goodness we're in the middle of the winter when the sun rises at what I consider to be a more 'normal' hour). As I jumped into my clothes she reminded me that I had requested her to wake me the next time there was a gorgeous sunrise. She had even brought the camera up with her.

I made some shots out of an upstairs window and then went down and stepped out onto the front porch, sans winter coat, into the -21C / -6F early morning. Within a few minutes I realized further shots would suffer from severe camera shake brought on by hypothermia. So inside I dashed for a coat and toque. I stayed out to get more shots until my fingers were so numb I couldn't operate the camera any longer.

I've never impressed on my wife any of the unwritten rules of photography e.g. carpe diem (see #2 here) but I think the 'learning by osmosis' concept has been at work in our home. She had already made a number of shots of the sunrise in its early stages whilst I was still lost somewhere in dreamland.

Here's a bit of the sequence we were privileged to witness and capture this morning. I hope your new year is off to a similarly auspicious start.

(if patience is truly a virtue then I'm in line to be a saint - this 'only' took 4 hours to post. Starting next week, I hope to be blogging at the speed of light, relatively speaking)

click on photos for a better view

Guest photographer

As some of you may already know, I'm not a (voluntary) morning person. I think that my better work is done once the day is well under way. My wife awakened me a few days ago with a bad news/good news story. The bad news was that I had missed a most glorious sunrise (which I do, of course, on most occasions). I mentioned to her that if it was glorious enough to wake me up early, then I could certainly make the supreme sacrifice and get some shots. That's where the good news came in - she had obviously heard me mention 'ABC' in the past - and she had grabbed my camera and captured the sunrise.

It was just left to me to put a collage together. So, from today's guest photographer, I present a glorious sunrise.

Internet update: first I'd like to again thank everyone for their visits and comments - you daily sustain me with them, and I read your comments with much pleasure ! As our intermittently fair/extremely poor internet connection permits, I've been making some visits to see your work. When it's very poor (e.g. tonight), it's almost impossible to load blogs, and to post on my own. The expectation is that our current connection will be replaced in 5-6 months (oh that I may be granted patience !). The good news is that we'll be down south next week where we have an excellent connection and I'll be able to resume visits.

 

"It was an early morning yesterday ...

... and I was up before the dawn ..." Some of you might recognize those opening lines and those fit our situation as we all were up just past 03:30 a.m. to bring our daughters to the airport. We had a wonderful week with them and they made it back home safely. We returned home just after 05:00 a.m. and it was still pitch dark. We decided not to go back to bed and I found myself in uncharted territory at that time of day - up BEFORE the dawn !

Well, dawn did arrive and I decided to take advantage of a rare (for me) opportunity to capture a sunrise on a bit of a foggy morning.

(70-200mm  f18  1/3 sec  ISO100)

click on photo to enlarge

(Day 301) Lawn ornaments and surprises

You may not remember, so I'll remind you, that we've had our share of rain here lately. And with the temperatures still up in the comfortable range (15-20C/60-68F) that means that the grass is still growing. I thought I'd done the last of the mowing, but the lawn looks like it should have another trim before settling down for the winter.

As I noticed the length of the grass I also saw a couple of lawn ornaments poking out from among the grass, and I thought I should capture them before they too got trimmed.

Oh, and my wife shocked me this morning when she handed me the camera and asked me to look at the images on it (I always delete images from the camera once I've downloaded them). Imagine my surprise when I saw some beautiful sunRISE photos she had made ! Early morning is not prime time for me so I miss the sunrise (unless I set the alarm, which is rare). I thought I'd share one with you. Maybe I should get her a DSLR for Christmas - better yet, give her mine and I can get a shiny new one ;-)

(60mm  f7.1  1/60 sec  ISO800)

(60mm  f7.1  1/13 sec  ISO100)

 I think my endless prattle about photography must be having a subliminal effect - she mentioned that she specifically went to the pond so she could get a reflection in the shot also !

(10-22mm  f4.5  1/60 sec  ISO400) 

(Day 88) A new day

For the first time since I began this 365 project I'm having to take both a mental and physical break from shooting a daily photo so I can put my focus on being supportive during this time. I'm reaching into my archives to find a photo to post.

This one I took very early one morning from our front yard, as a new day dawned. I find it symbolic of today, the first day where we who remain behind move on without a loved one present, and the first that she who has left this earth has experienced without pain and suffering.

(18-55mm  f11  1/40 sec  ISO200)