Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s many of you who regularly read this blog already probably already read, we traveled by train to Ohio with two of our grandchildren at the beginning of this past summer.  Throughout this cross-country Amtrak journey to Ohio, Kenzie was using one of my cameras and two lenses.  She was already familiar with my little old Sony a6000 camera so that is the one I let her use on this long trip. When we went to the aquarium, she was using a wide zoom lens that has a wide aperture on this camera.  As I mentioned in a previous blog entry about this aquarium, capturing photos at an aquarium can be difficult because they are always so dark.  What made things even more difficult on this visit was that the aquarium was crowded at full capacity  making it difficult to get a clear shot but Kenzie did a great job finding interesting subjects that were nicely illuminated by light in this dark aquarium. Until we arrived at the aquarium (by foot, over one of the bridges from Cin...

W hile we were on our cross-country Amtrak journey to Ohio, Lukey and Kenzie were using a couple of my cameras.  They each had two lenses to use with their camera...  a wide zoom and a telephoto zoom.  At the aquarium, they were using the wide zoom lens with wide open apertures on each of their cameras.   Considering that both of the cameras that Lukey and Kenzie were using are about ten years old, they both did a great job in this very dark aquarium.  Aquariums are very low light which typically would lengthen your exposure time and what makes this even more difficult is the fish are always in motion which requires a shorter exposure time to freeze the motion in order to capture sharp images.  So, you need a longer exposure for the darkened aquarium but you need shorter exposures to freeze the darting fish.  Also, you need to time your shot so your subject is in some sort of light.  This is a tough place for photography and both of the grand...

F or the week or so that we were in Dayton back at the very beginning of this past summer, we visited a lot of different and historical places but we stayed on the campus of the University of Dayton during our entire time there.  I definitely wanted Kenzie and Lukey to visit a campus like this one and I'd like them to continue visiting as many campuses as possible.  Before we even made plans for this trip, I knew that if we were going to spend some time in Dayton, a UD campus tour would be something to do especially if we had the two of them in tow. I wrote above that I definitely wanted Kenzie and Lukey to visit this particular campus because it is a stunningly beautiful campus, it is an outstanding school and the people are unbelievably friendly both on the campus and off the campus.  This school is truly special.  There is a vibe, a feeling, like it has a life of its own.  You don't find that in a lot of places. I have very positive memories of UD and a fair...

I 've been out on my new bike more than a few times over the past couple of weeks since the bike arrived.  Some of these times, I mounted my Sony X3000 action camera on the handlebars.  This is a pretty nice little action camera.   Actually, I captured some underwater video of Kenzie and Lukey in the pool in Dayton earlier this summer that I haven't done anything with yet.  I need to revisit all those photos and video from that trip and share some of that here.   Anyway, back to my recent bike rides this autumn and having cameras with me during the rides... I didn't keep this little action camera running continuously but I did get some decent footage ten to twenty minutes at a time.  My plan was to eventually cut the long videos into four or five second clips of interest and then put together a video of those short clips.  I really didn't spent a whole lot of time on this but I managed to get a video put together this morning. ...

I was feeling relatively well this morning and the weather was very nice so I wandered out on my bike this morning for some exercise and photography.  I quickly took my morning dose of medications, had an English muffin and some iced tea then packed up a backpack with emergency medications and a little bit of photography gear.  Then I grabbed my helmet and backpack and headed out the door to my bike.   A small issue arose with my bike on this ride.  The gears were a little wonky today.  I need to adjust my rear derailleur because, on its own without any input from me, my bike kept changing gears on me when in the range of around gears three to five.  In the big scheme of things this really is a small issue.  It is just a matter of finding the time and energy to fine tune that rear derailleur again.  Actually, I need to spend some time refreshing my memory on how to make this adjustment first which adds some time to the whole task. Unlike my ...