Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s I wrote yesterday, I had done a relatively small roof repair on our neighbor's roof yesterday to repair damage done by part of our spruce tree falling on it.  I do some light physical therapy everyday for my spinal injuries but this was the first time in months that I did anything physically strenuous.   Just finding the strength to get up and down the ladder was grueling by the time I did it about a half a dozen times.  Doing anything on a roof does no good to anyone's knees and ankles and I already have significant problems with my knees (always have) and working on the roof did not help at all.   I just remembered something else...  I had roof cement all over my hands and needed to use paint thinner to remove most of it.  Using any solvents on my hands always results in my health crashing.  I don't know if it is due to what is absorbed into my tissue or if it is the fumes but I know that my health crashes after cleaning up my hands wit...

I had previously written that the top section of one of our trees (a tall spruce tree) broke off during a little bit of wind we had a few nights ago.  The section of tree that fell on our neighbor's roof had rolled right off the roof.  All that was remaining on the roof was some boughs that were about the size needed for making wreaths so I though the roof was fine.   I should also mention that our neighbor's house is unoccupied at the moment.   The other day, the temperatures were up around 60 degrees so I went outside to pull those boughs off our neighbor's roof.  I grabbed the roof rake for pulling snow off the roof and attempted to pull down those boughs...  they weren't moving and the roof rake was getting caught up on something.  I immediately knew what the roof rake was hanging up on...  some of the branches on this section of tree must have punctured the roof.  Now I wasn't too happy and I knew I had some work to do ahead o...

T here is a way to sort of simulate shooting in medium format or even large format (those old large wooden cameras with a bellows on a big, heavy tripod with a cloth draped over the photographer's head) by shooting many images (side by side, high to low) with a wide aperture and then stitching the images together.  This provides a wide view compared to just a single image using the same lens but also will provide a very shallow depth of field.  I've never tried this before but the idea of this technique always intrigued me so I tried it this afternoon in our living room. A shallow depth of field simply means that what is in focus in the photo is just a small slice of the whole scene...  what is in front of the slice of focus is blurry and what is behind the slice of focus is blurry...  the only thing in focus (hopefully) is the subject.  This type of shooting is most prevalent in portraiture or still life photography to eliminate distracting backgrounds and/or e...