Scattered Thoughts . . .

When we spent the day at Echo science and nature museum earlier in the week with little Miss Ellie, I naturally was reminded of our last visit to this museum.  Back in the summer of 2021, we brought Lukey and Kenzie there.  I don't think I ever shared any photos from that day so I guess sharing them late is better than not sharing them at all so here are a few from that day in 2021. If I remember correctly, we brought Lukey and Kenzie up to the Burlington waterfront two or three days in a row that summer.   The kids were able to do a local newscast in front of a green screen.  They had a few choices of backgrounds for this newscast.  We were able to email the videos they created to ourselves but the video quality was exceptionally poor.  If I remember correctly, the sound quality was so poor that it was mostly just noise.  The kids had fun creating their own news reports though... The day before we went to this museum with Lukey and Kenzie, we went on a cruise on the Spirit of Etha

I like to try my hand at nature or wildlife photography whenever the opportunity arises. Of course, my health needs to be cooperating... the weather needs to cooperate... and my photography gear needs to be ready to go for when these situations arise.  (Note:  When I say "the weather needs to cooperate", I don't necessarily mean clear, sunny skies. I mean the weather needs to match what I intend to capture. For instance, I often get up early in the morning while we are at the lake house so I can get out on the lake while it is still foggy... the environment is thick with a lot of depth which makes for nice photos. I rarely will want sunny, clear skies... some clouds are much more interesting! So, cooperative weather means different things depending upon my photographic vision.) Sometimes I'll choose an area of the yard... say, just a small area of only about 50 square feet... and I'll try to find a few things to photograph in that limited area. This forces

We had a very nice day the other day... sunny and in the low 80's... but I still wasn't feeling well enough to get anything accomplished on the house. It was a perfect day for mowing the lawn and getting some landscaping chores accomplished but I was not well enough for that either. Sheila and I briefly discussed my overall health just this morning. I was telling her how I am feeling a bit like a prisoner in my own home after having such a long bout with consistently poor health. Since returning from the lake three months ago, the only times I have wandered away from our tiny home have been to pick up dinner at the grocery store in town, our trek to Shelburne Farms with the kids last weekend, and a couple of visits to Arvad's for a meal when I was feeling too miserable to even prepare a meal. This has left me feeling a bit anxious, bored and in need of a change in scenery.  We both agreed that we are due for a change in scenery. The weather is finally cooling down so my

The six foot tall piles of snow outside our bedroom window have now melted enough to allow the early morning light to stream into the windows affording me a view of the kayaks and sailboat sticking out of the snow in the yard. This, naturally, reminds me that the boats and car roof racks will need some work before we can take advantage of the incredibly short boating season here in Vermont. The melting snow also reminds me it is Springtime and I need to get started on my to-do list which was put on hold due to weather conditions. I have plenty of home improvement projects which need to get done too but getting the boats ready for summer is always the first priority. I have learned that if I delay getting the boats ready, it will be too late in the short season to even try to get the boats ready and then we never get out on the boats at all.  My focus is on getting the boats ready for use for the start of summer in June... and that gets me thinking about getting back out on Lake G

Sometimes...  hmmm...  actually, quite often...  I forget about some photos I shot and they get lost on one of my many hard drives full of photos.  Then, on nights like tonight when I find myself scrolling through photos on my drives, I come across a really nice photo. Tonight I came across this photo, above, which I shot during the summer of 2012.  I shot this photo through our open kitchen window.  Our neighbors have a few bird feeders in their yard so we usually have birds feeding outside our windows facing our neighbor's home.  The problem is opening the window slowly enough and quietly enough so that I don't scare away the birds. Capturing good photographs of birds is tough.  It is especially tough with smaller birds like this one.  Even larger birds such as swans, geese and ducks can be difficult to capture.  Smaller birds can be extremely difficult. Getting close to these birds is almost impossible so that means you must arm yourself with a big, long lens.