21 Nov 11. A fun image for today of two dogs who simply love each others company. Maggie and Mini (Cooper) got to spend parts of both Saturday & Sunday this past weekend playing together and this is typical of how they play. Mini outweighs Maggie by a factor of almost 2.5, but Maggie, at 2 years of age, has the advantage of youth over Mini, at roughly 7 years of age. But you would never be aware of these differences by simply watching them play. They wildly chase each other all around the property running and leaping like a couple of spring lambs. Maggie is much faster than Mini so if during a chase Maggie suddenly outdistances Mini, she waits for Mini to catch up and pass her, and then takes out after Mini again. This can go on for an extended period of time until Mini temporarily wears out. At that point she simple lies down and stops running around chasing or being chased by Maggie. That tends to frustrate Maggie, so she builds up a head of steam and rams into Minnie who then responds by rolling over onto her back and fending Maggie off. Both dogs have their mouths open and frequently lips retracted, but always the tails are wildly wagging and they simply continue their play through the day or until Mini has to go home. Note the size of Mini's paw in relation to Maggie's head. It doesn't take much for Mini to be able to toss Maggie around and the more Mini does it the more Maggie comes back for more. You couldn't ask for a better pair of playmates. ISO 500; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6
22 Nov 11. A planned weekend work project for the new house which I had hoped would occupy only Saturday (wishful thinking on my part) turned out to take all of Sunday and still wasn't completed. Now that we have a roof on the house the county is highly concerned that we channel all that extra rain that hits the roof, but never hit the ground before we starting building, properly diverted away from the ground and into a catch basin so it won't harm the remaining 9.75 acres! We got the majority of 380 feet of drain ditch dug, the pipe laid and connected to the down spouts, and the ditches filled in, but didn't get the catch basin part completed, so at least another day's work lies ahead. The bright spot in all this idiocy was that the Sunday morning temps and moisture levels were such that a lovely coating of hoar frost was present in many parts of the area between our property and my cousins, and the drive gave me some opportunity for some delightful images of the stuff covering most everything from trees to fence posts to barbed wire to all kinds of ground cover. My plan is to share a few of these for the rest of the week but I first have to master some tricky selection techniques to really show them off in the very best way possible. So we'll start with some easy stuff, like trees, while I work on my craft. This image is a view across my cousin's farm to a group of trees lining the western edge. The white of the trees is actually frost, and as I was looking at them I couldn't help but be reminded of a wonderful ice storm we experienced during our first tour in the Navy while stationed in Warminster, PA. The storm raged through the night, and in the morning we had ice covered everything, especially all the leaf bare trees. The wind remained for the rest of the day and what resulted was a magnificent natural music box as the wind pushed one branch into another creating a chime like sound. I'll never forget it! ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 6.3
23 Nov 11. Here is another image from those taken last Sunday of the hoar frost. This fence post was just a couple feet off the road and behind it was an open field of small grasses, basically what remains of a mowed field of hay. I felt the grass was both a bit distracting and that it hid a lot of the detail in the frost, so I removed it and replaced it with just black which I feel sets off the frosted stump fairly well. Still working on mastering this making technique so if you look really close you'll be able to see a few small areas that need improvement, but we are getting close to having a good handle on it. Overall however it is starting to allow me to do some reasonably good isolations. With luck I'll have it under control by the end of the week. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 9.
