Another Sunrise

Woke up this morning to a beautiful sky.

September 11

My parents could remember what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My young life was touched by the war. Not in a serious way but growing up at a time children were silenced when the radio news was on and knowing our parents were upset over something we couldn't understand. They talked about ration stamps and things they couldn't buy. Being scared by the noise when tanks drove down our road seems silly when children in other places were close to or in the fighting. They had a true reason for fear. I remember the day my first stepfather drove us to San Diego with the car lights on and he honked the car horn and we were told the war was over. We didn't really know what a war was.

 

My mother was again divorced and married to a man that had gone through the worst of fighting in North Africa and then in southern Italy. Now they would say he was PTSD. Then he was just angry. My mother didn't know that he had married right after the war and had terrorized his wife by holding a gun to her head. Being married to my mother didn't help. After she left him, he came by where we were living and pulled her into his car and took her out on a narrow road in the woods and beat her up, threw her out of the car, and then tried to run over her. Some people drove down the road and saved her. My Great Uncle Burt had fought in WWI and came away with his own troubles. He talked about the war to us as we got older. We grew up knowing that war didn't help anyone. Uncle Burt left his medals in his suitcase and never went back for them.

 

Looking back it seems that there were a lot of wars in my lifetime. My cousin was over in Vietnam and suffered from agent orange and a smashed up back from a chopper crash. He died recently. I remember him as a lively two year old and now he is dead.

 

I was still managing the storage when the planes hit the towers. I had Hailey ready for school and was getting ready to leave to bring her up here when I saw the burning tower on the TV. I had started Hailey in school up here because we would be moving up here when the storage was sold. E.R. fed her breakfast and took her to school and I went back down to open the storage. That day I needed to turn off the TV but stood there and watched in disbelief as the tower burned. The news people were not sure just what had happened yet. The second tower was hit just before we left the house. I felt stunned. I felt stunned for days afterward and still when I think about 9/11 will always remember that hollow dreadful feeling. I can't listen to the voices or watch the movies of 9/11. It is just too tragic.  I can listen to survivors tell their stories. And be glad for them that they made it through. I am getting old and think that I need to think about peace and something good happening in this world.

Changing Sky

The sky was blue yesterday. In the aftertoon a few whispy white clouds brushed across the clear blue. By late afternoon the sky was changing as clouds from the southwest blew in. Close to sunset the sky looked like this.

We stayed out with coffee and watched the humming birds fight over the feeder and all the while the sky was changing. Looking at the driveway palms we could see the changes. These photos are not edited...just as is from the camera.

 

 When the sun sets a few minutes makes lots of difference.

Sky Show

Evening before last they began as white puffy clouds and then as the sun went down they took on sunset colors.

This morning we were treated to a pretty sunrise.

The sky lightened...

Neighboring palms. 

Bright Orange Cloud

It is sad that people around New Orleans are facing flooding again. People sometimes want to ignore reality and pretend the natural disasters will never happen again. No one can stop weather from happening. So levees are built and dams are built and people claim land that doesn't belong to them because it really belongs to rivers and oceans and wind and rain. When the water goes the building starts all over... The same happens in forests and dry lands that face raging fires...here we are hoping it never happens to us...

 

This evening my son, David, saw this wonderful cloud and told me to look...I got my camera...what else would I do?

 

The moon isn't full yet...Darn!...it still makes a good picture.

I walked accross the yard for a different view of the cloud and the palms.

The cloud is fading soon only the very top would show bright color.

Yucca

My mother had a beautiful yucca in her back yard. It took a few years before it ever bloomed. She painted a picture of it...I've always wanted a yucca growing in my yard and a few years ago on a trip over to Borrego Springs we stopped at a plant nursery and bought one. There are almost fifty kinds of yucca and I have no idea what kind mine is. We planted it and watched it grow. More plants grew and now there is a clump of them crowded into the space. One shot up quite tall and this year it bloomed. I still don't know what kind of yucca it is. I've looked at photos on the net and can tell what it is not...

http://www.dotcombs.net/desert/desert6a.html Photos of wild yucca taken in 03.

 

The sun was setting so the light became golden. The hummingbirds love to sit on the yucca and watch over the feeder. They zoom passed us as we sit with our coffee in the mornings and afternoons.

 

 

Looking at information on yuccas reminded me that the Joshua Tree is also a yucca. I was a child the first time I saw Joshua trees. We traveled up US 395 on our way to Washington state. The route goes through The Mojave Desert. Somewhere I have an old black and white photo of my mother standing next to a Joshua Tree. The great thing about digital is that I can remember a certain photo and can pretty quickly go find it. At first I numbered my digital albums starting with the number 1. That worked great for a few years. Then I had to invent my own system. It got hard to remember where to look with so many albums. Now I put everything into albums named for the year and then into folders named for the month and day plus a description of the photos. So if I want an old photo I can go back and find it.

 

My old print photos are not organized. URF. I was going to scan my negs and old photos and keep them on the computer but so far haven't...that is for another day...

August Sunset

This is the evening sky on the hills on the other side of our valley.

 

A close up of the same scene with my zoom to 200mm

 

Humming Birds

Yesterday morning we had several hummers visiting our feeder. The sun in the morning shines on the side of the house. That is why the background is what it is. Sort of bland...

Orange Moon

I saw a lovely orange moon and ran for my camera...well these days I walk...anyway when  I got out to take the photo a big cloud came down and had it half covered. I managed to shoot the photo and then waited hoping the cloud would pass...only to see the moon totally gone behind the miserable cloud.

Shooting in RAW

The camera set on vivid to take photos in jpg can take some very pretty picturess. Still I like to hedge and also set my camera to shoot in both jpg and raw. A good example of this being a good idea...

This is the jpg just as it came from the camera...size reduced for the web. I also like to take my photos as large as the camera will let them be. You can see that the snow is blown out. I could have had the camera adjusted for that but Hailey doesn't stand still.

Same exact photo in RAW. Yes I did use the sliders and I think I got a much better photo because that option was available to me.

Bottom line...if you have a camera that takes both jpg and RAW take advantage of it and do both. If you have to choose one then choose to shoot in RAW.

And if Hailey doesn't look like she knows how to walk in snow...this is So Cal...