We don’t even get rent: they’re squatters.
Or perhaps we’re the squatters.
photography
Spring Morning Sky
Sunrise
Old and New
I took an old lens last night -- a 50mm 1.8 from an old Nikon -- and put it on our D300 body. I don't know why: the thing didn't work with our D70, so why would it work with our newer model? Simple: the D300 has an aperture lever, which means I can actually dial in a given aperture and the camera knows which setting I've selected and can compensate the exposure accordingly.
The results were shockingly sharp. It's too bad the thing is virtually impossible to focus with the lens being manual everything and the camera lacking a focusing plane.
It's another reason to love Nikon: a 20+ year lens works with a modern, digital SLR.
Coal Delivery
I occasionally look through old pictures from the years I lived in Poland and find a picture that I’d forgotten about but which moves me to mutter to myself, “Wow.” Not that I’m so terribly impressed with my own photography, but more that I’m surprised to see by the reminder of how utterly different my life in Poland in the mid- to late-nineties was.
Clarity
After several days of rain, days of grey skies that look identical at ten in the morning and three in the afternoon, days of — let’s be honest — Polish-looking skies, the bright light of the dawn this morning literally stopped me mid-step. A ribbon of yellowish, pinkish, orange light (at least to this colorblind fellow) stretched across the backyard, with a muted blue sky rising above.
It was a day of clarity. The Girl, clearly growing older, conquered her first extended Lego-building session. Sure, there was a lot of help, but that was to be expected: the lower age on the box is still a year beyond Lena’s experience. We worked together, exploring the wonder of perspective drawings in instructions, how one could position the in-progress creation just right beside the instructions and see exactly where the next blocks belonged. By the end, I was only checking; she was doing the building.
Relationships clarified themselves further. That the Girl loves her little brother has been obvious from the start, but today she was able to sit and actually play with him for extended periods without the silly five-year-old drama (after all, she’s six now) that made every other playtime an exercise in self-entertainment for the Girl. Today, she seemed truly interested in helping E enjoy himself. Until the end, when the silly L returned. But still, progress. Growth.
And in the evening, with the clouds still at bay (they’re scheduled to return this weekend), the moon shone clearly through the branches of the trees, turning this morning’s watercolor into an etching. I went out with the intention of doing some bracketed shots for an HDR shot.
In the end, after merging the photos and doing the requisite tone mapping, I realized the original was better. It whispered the hints of mystery that have kept the generations looking upward and feeling comforted by the clarity.
More From Leaves
Family
A pile of leaves in the backyard cannot go to waste. It calls — begs — for family photos.
It’s not big, but it’s all we’ve got.
Reading in the Front
Promising Start
Some mornings seem filled with promise.
And then by the time the evening comes, that promise has dissipated into a whispering bed.