Scattered Thoughts . . .

I went back to the folder which is holding the few images I captured the other night of the "supermoon" to see if there was another image which I might have missed the other night. Sometimes I find it is best to come back to revisit photos a few nights later or weeks later or even months later. These photos get overlooked for various reasons... I'm tired when I first looked at them... the one with the most detail gets lost in a sea of decent photos... and sometimes I just miss the potential of a particular image. In this case, only a few days have passed but I think I did miss a nice image with some impressive detail for a full moon... I was hoping to get outside to shoot some photos tonight but the moonrise is quite late tonight and I am exhausted already. Trying to hold a camera steady while I am exhausted is difficult to do and getting all the camera settings correct at the same time I am exhausted and not thinking clearly is next to impossible.  I still do...

Back a couple of years ago, we bought a fairly nice lawnmower. It was definitely more mower than we needed for our lawn but I didn't want to buy something that would be a pile of junk within a couple of years. Adam started using it to cut a neighbor's lawn in addition to cutting our lawn when I wasn't feeling up to it. This was all fine and dandy until some carelessness entered the picture... I kept harping on Adam to make sure the oil level is good since this is a four-cycle engine and, as such, oil was needed in a separate reservoir to keep the engine lubed. If the oil level gets low, the engine will seize up. Well... long story short... at some point between the two lawns Adam was cutting, the engine seized up.  I finished out that season cutting our entire lawn with a weed-whacker each week... fun times.  The following season I looked into buying a new engine... the cost of a new engine would cost more than a new lawnmower! That brought us again to the task of loo...

Supermoon - 12 July 2014 Last night, our moon was a little closer to our home planet than usual. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as a 'supermoon' because the moon does appear ever so slightly larger in the night sky.  Anyone who has tried to shoot a photo of the full moon realizes that this is a rough task. The moon doesn't really seem all that bright but it really is exceptionally bright especially a full moon. This is why far too many photos of the moon only depict an overexposed, bright white splotch in the sky when they try to capture an image of the moon. You really need to use a camera which allows manual control over your exposure to get this right. Contrary to popular belief, you actually need to set your exposure as though you are shooting on a sunny afternoon... yes... as though you are shooting on a sunny afternoon! Another thing that most people don't understand, or realize, is that the full moon is the worst phase of the moon to try t...