Scattered Thoughts . . .

I was playing around with my new Sony a6000 camera this evening and the obvious things to practice shooting were all the Christmas ornaments throughout the house.  The difficulty with these shots in particular is that this is a very low light situation which normally would demand the use of a tripod and long shutter speeds. I decided the push the camera to its limits and use faster shutter speeds, a regular "kit" lens, and no tripod.  Adding a flash to these photos would have ruined the mood of the scene so adding a flash wasn't an option either. This means that if I didn't want to use a tripod, I needed to move into very high ISO sensitivities... which normally would mean very grainy, noisy and oftentimes blurry photos. As you can see in the photos, below, this new camera held up well!   I understand that most people probably have no clue what it means to boast of a camera using high sensitivities so let me explain just a little bit to add some perspective. Alm

We had a really nice Thanksgiving Day... relatively quiet... with some friends we haven't seen in quite some time... it was warm in the house... while it was snowing outside like it was Christmastime.  Liza spent the morning with us watching the Thanksgiving Day parade. This parade should be renamed "The Parade of Balloons and Commercials" because they no longer show any of the parade... only the balloons. They do show some quick acts from current Broadway plays but that is not the parade. Anyway... we watched most of the 'parade' with Liza. After Liza left, Sheila's sister and her two children stopped by for a little while and that was a nice surprise.  Not only was the weather rather Christmas-like but our home looked like Christmas as well.  Every year, when it came time to go cut Christmas trees, we always felt it was a tremendous waste of resources and that we were being selfish and wasteful just so we could go out and pay $35 to cut down a tre

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend and today is the first time I've had a chance to share some photos and video. The first thing I want to share is a video that I shot while we watched a Christmas concert on the colorfully and brightly decorated Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. Our holiday weekend began with entertaining friends at our house on Thanksgiving Day... I'll write more on that and share some photos another time.  Then, on Friday morning, we headed to the rugged Adirondack Mountains to spend the rest of our long holiday weekend in beautiful Saratoga Springs. I haven't been to Saratoga in a few decades so it was nice to get back there and spend some time! Our primary purpose of visiting Saratoga Springs was to see Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train as it pulled into the station. If you've never had an opportunity to see this brightly lit and colorful train, you should! Once the train pulled into Saratoga's surprisingly nice train station... ami

After I wrote and posted my previous blog entry, I headed outside to help Sheila shovel. Fortunately for my spinal injuries, this snow is light, fluffy stuff so it was a quick and easy job.  Then I went in to retrieve my camera to see if I could get some decent shots outside without a tripod. They came out okay for shooting in complete darkness, handheld with driving snow covering me and my camera... I should have dug out my tripod though.  Hopefully, they'll be more chances to get some nice shots of the house decorated for the holidays...

As I had written previously, we spent the day outdoors decorating the house and yard for Christmas. It looks great out there! The only thing which can make it look better is some fresh snow. After finishing decorating outdoors, we headed indoors and continued since we already had all the storage bins of decorations out and open. Now, the inside of the house is looking pretty nice too!

Other than picking up a Christmas card or two at a local store and maybe some last minute wrapping paper and some tape, I do believe we finished up our Christmas shopping tonight. We headed up to Burlington and Williston tonight to pick up some more supplies for Lukey's train set that I am building for Christmas. We had a few stores to visit and then we walked through the Christmas decorations at Maple Tree Place in Williston. After shooting some photos of the Christmas decorations, we had a really nice dinner at The Longhorn.  It was a really nice night... although far too warm for this time of year... and it was really nice to get all of the Christmas present shopping out of the way.   Here are some photos from this evening... I shot all of these images using manual focus lenses only... I seem to be turning to my manual focus lenses more and more lately and I am enjoying the results... At the big Christmas tree...

Church Street in Burlington, Vermont Back in early December, our good friend, Frank, asked us if we were available on the Sunday before Christmas to visit Burlington. Fortunately, this day was still open for us and we jumped at the chance for another Christmas in Burlington so we put the day on our calendar. We missed an opportunity to get up to Burlington during Christmas last year so we were pretty excited at the thought of getting back up to Burlington during Christmas this year. Our plan was to do a little barhopping and to get some photos on Church Street while it was decorated for Christmas. We set out at lunchtime for our short trip north to Lake Champlain and Burlington. There were plenty of shoppers which made for a lot of traffic and parking scarce. Fortunately for us, all these people were actually shopping and not venturing into the restaurants and pubs that line Church Street. It was nice to be able to choose a place to go and then find available space at the b

Today was a relatively productive day for a nice change!  I'm a little more optimistic that I can finish this fireplace project before the end of the weekend.  That will leave us a day or two to decorate for Christmas and wrap presents...  hmmm...  presents...  I might need to buy some of those soon... The new aspen and maple paneling in the living room is now stained and I have applied three coats of a satin polyurethane.  Ideally, it could really use another two or three coats of poly but the wood grain is filled in enough and sealed enough to make it through the next month or so. Besides, I just might add a coat or two while I am applying poly to the fireplace and shelving unit. That would finish the walls completely. In the meantime, it is looking great tonight! The house is a mess with construction materials all over the place but those new walls look nice! Tomorrow I plan to start cutting the latest batch of finish lumber for the fireplace, mantle and shelving unit.  In b