Blue Moon

Not only is it December 31, New Year's Eve but we also have a Blue Moon. Despite some cloud cover, I got a couple of shots of interest. This first shot fits the title, as you can see the moon and the reflection actually looks more distinctive and even blue. In the bottom picture, while still getting a moon picture, the focus is on the trees. It feels more like a Halloween picture than New Year's in that "spooky" sense. The same moon on the same night only minutes apart, create two very different images.

Bright colors!

Now this is one amazing cookie sandwich! I had no idea when I bit into it how bright pink the filling was, the edges are coated in candy sprinkles in purple, green, white and black but the neon pink is the standout. The combination of colors just struck me :)

Reflections

This safternoon, the rain turned to a "wintery mix" which then moved on to snow. It's snowing a nice, steady bit now, the flakes have been large and wet. As the snow started to collect on the ground and trees, I went out for a few more snow shots, mainly looking at the large flakes and how fast it was accumulating. I found that this tree here was collecting not only some snow and ice but quite a few branches were gathering drops of water as the wet flakes fell. With the white background from snow, I zoomed in and focused on the drop and noticed not only the clarity of the droplet of water but the great reflections. I took a couple of shots, this main one I got just before it fell.

Dried Flowers

It is winter here, most flowers are not in bloom so this photo is timely in that it deals with dried flowers. I've focused my images lately on the outdoor weather and plants so it was time for a shift of perspective. I love flowers, not that I have a favorite but I do enjoy roses because they are so easy to dry and keep around. I have rose bushes in my garden and I keep the dried rose petals if not the entire rose off the bushes. These are just a few of the various dried roses I have dried. You can see how well they hold their shape and you can see each of the petals on the open buds.

Ice colors

Most things the eyes can see, the camera can capture, at least if you are patient and work with your resources. Color prisms, rainbows, are tricky to capture to the depth that we see them live. One of the nice things about ice is that when the sun shines through it, there are beautiful flecks of color. That can be on the grass or on a tree branch, anywhere there's a light frosting. We've had a lot of that lately and I played around with getting the reflections of light off of snow and various plants and trees. The photo doesn't do justice to the morning beauty but the variety of trees and the layers of branches along with the sun lighting then up is as close as I could get to what I was going for. If you look closely, there are flecks of color, especially along the pine needles. If you haven't lately, take a peek outside at sunrise and enjoy the view.

Icicles

The snow is still here, but more visually interesting this morning was the ice on the plants. The trees and bushes glistened in the morning sun and if you looked closesly you could see a thin layer of icicles forming a coating or at least an edging of the leaves and branches, as you can see here. It was another beautiful day here and as the day wraps up, we still have snow on the ground and another cold night ahead. I look forward to seeing what beauty tomorrow morning will bring.

A winter wonderland

After yesterday's snow, this morning was the perfect time to go out for a hike. With the camera, of course! Right at sunrise, we headed out ready for action. It was slow going at first, treading over the ice but once we reached the actual trail, the walking got easier over snow. There were quite a few beautiful sights, the snow makes everything pretty. We decided we got just enough, not too little and not too much. In this photo, you can see the sun touching the tops of the trees and the snow covered lower bushes and the trail itself. It just felt so much like a postcard winter scene. Beautiful!

Blizzard in Texas

Yes, you read that title right! We had an actual blizzard today. Fortunately the accumulations are only in the inches not feet but the snow has lasted all day. The flakes have varied from very small to large but the wind whipping around has been the most interesting with snow not only falling but also flying up and in circles. You can see some of the diagonal movememt in this photo, and I took some video that also shows the windy and snowy conditions we had all day.

Streaming light

The sky these last few days have been visually interesting, at least for me. This morning was very overcst and as I was driving west, the sun started to peek through in first one spot and finally several. Thankfully, yet again, there was traffic enough for me to stop and get some pictures. This is why I carry a camera with me *nearly* all the time. I hope some of you got to see and appreciate some of the beautiful skies I have this week.

Scrapbooking cats

My usually unsocial cat decided she really like scrapbooking today. Although, as you might notice, she wasn't as much interested in me as my box of stickers and papers. She did come close to "kissing" Rachel though ;)

Mostly she napped all day in the box...either curled up in a ball or stretched out to completely cover all my supplies!

Traffic...and trees

Although I love the spring, the new leaves appearing on the trees and all that lushness, I truly appreciate the look of trees in winter. Today as I was sitting in the long line of Christmas shopping traffic on Copper Canyon, these trees caught my eye. Especially against the blue sky with the wispy clouds. I may play with some of the photos I took and change them to black and white, the light and dark stand out so well already.

Moon shot

As I was leavnig the grocery store this evening, I looked up and saw the moon and a planet, sorry, can't remember which one that would be. The sky was so clear and the moon a crescent so I tried to get a shot with my "baby" camera. I was able to capture the moon with a bit of blur but not both the moon and the planet. I could have gotten the DSLR camera and the tripod and attempted a better shot, but this caught the moment well enough. I think it looks like the moon is smiling.
:)

Cookie Exchange

Today was my annual cookie exchange party. It's a great holiday get together with friends and family as well as a chance to try out different cookie recipes and also go home with an assortment, while only having to make one variety. There were about a dozen types of cookies today, this is just a sampling of the many types I have, including: two types of rice crispy treats, holly cookies, bourbon balls, no bake chocolate peanut butter cookies, cake balls and almond roccha.

Lights, camera, focus

I was playing around with lighting in a few shots today and I happened upon this. I glanced over at the Christmas tree and just thought the lights would look great out of focus. I took one shot with flash as well but as usual, I preferred the natural light. The orbs of multi colored lights against the dark outline of the tree came out great.

Cutie

One of my soccer players added a little something extra to her cast and I just loved it. The cast color with the "Cuties" tag is a nice touch. She is apparently quite accident prone as she has had several injuries but this is the first cast...this semester.

Dancing Flames

The picture does not do this justice but there's a tube of gas, flame and music...the flames were dancing to the music and a single tone produced a perfect sine pattern in the flames. At this point, the pressure in the tube was such that the flames were only visible at one end of the tube. This was a presentation at a faculty meeting...the music, Christmas :)

Bradford Pear

Our Bradford Pear tree is always nice looking but of course fall colors are a nice touch. Our tree is a bit behind the others as it's just now turning, halfway through December. I love the colors of fall and the sky in bright blue with the sun lighting the top of the tree brings out the colors even more vividly.

Solid colors

I was making the bed with these red/maroon sheets and our little black and white kitty jumped right up and decided to "help" as she likes to do. I just liked the definition of color with her black and white against the solid background. This pose is so cat as she was rolling up to clean. What I liked specifically was that it catches her face and eyes without the usual cat eye glare and also there's none of the white out the flash usually does to her when I get too close. The angle and lighting worked out to get her looking like she does, not in the harsh light or washed out.

The wonderful bamboo scarf

Messing with the cats is fun, and even entertainment for company. When the family was over, JJ was playing with Gus and a scarf and Ken entertained the kittens with the laser pointer. This picture was a moment of calm while he is modeling Erin's scarf. The cats were really enjoying the handmade bamboo scarf, each took turns curling up on it and Gus got to play with it.

Trees

I missed a day in posting because I didn't actually get a photo although I will describe one I wished I had gotten. Our temperatures have been below freezing but it's been dry, however a business let their sprinklers run yesterday morning and they hit just the bottom half of the trees along the road. There were beautiful icicles drooping from the bottom barren branches of a row of trees along the road. It stayed cold enough for the icicles to last the day and as I headed home, there was a guy out trying to clear some of the ice on the ground ;)
So today's photo is a tree without the icicles but I like these big old trees in the winter. The white winter sky against the leafless (or nearly leafless) trees are a great contast.

Sunset

The sky this afternoon and evening were gorgeous, first with the blues and whites and then as the sun set, the oranges started to come out. I got this photo right as I was finishing up putting out the Christmas lights outdoors and obviously losing my sunlight for the task. I got up on the hood of the truck to be able to get the full view here. The clouds were moving at a pretty good pace and so from one picture to the next, the colors and locations of the clouds changed.

Winter Bird

The sky was very interesting on my way home from work today, I could see a front moving through. I wanted to get a shot of the sky from a big open space to emphasize the depth of the weather passing over. However...I got home and instead of heading back out to find that open space, I discovered several birds were playing in our trees. There were both male and female cardinals, as well as finches and then this guy who I caught sitting on an upper branch of the Cedar Elm.

Christmas Dog

Lest you all think I have only cats for children, I decided to get a picture of another one of my children with the Christmas tree. Rolf is usually not particularly difficult to photograph as he is pretty laid back but today he wasn't having it. So, this is not the grand photo I had hoped for, but it is a photo of one of my canine children rather than a feline one...in front of the tree.

Kitten Helper (part 2)

The rest of the tree decorating today was helped again by the kittens, of course! This time, Dottie grabs the beads and drug them into the other room. We played a bit of tug of war and they tried to tug them off the tree once I finally got them up. In the end, I did get all the beads and other decorations up...though it did take some time.

Kitten helper

Today as I was trimming the tree, Sophie decided to help...again. She attacked the branches and laid down in the pile and rearranged the cut branches, among other fun. I finally picked up some branches and played along with her. I got this photo of her jumping up to grab a piece as we were playing. I actually got all the cats out to the same place at the same time for the decorating today. The next fun of course came when we pulled out the lights...

Rainbow

I followed a rainbow to work today. I first noticed one end just a couple miles from the house and watched it all the way. As I got within a couple of miles of work, I saw the other end as well. Neither were very large or clear but I attempted to get a few images. This one was best shows the colors, although some of the others I got are nice visually but the actual rainbow does not show up as well. This photo was taken at the corner of Dixon and FM 2499 in Flower Mound. The bad news is that there was no pot of gold or leprechaun at the end, I got to work and suddenly both sides of the rainbow were gone...need I say more?

Winter moonlight

This December has already given us some unusual weather, but mostly it has been quite cold. One of the things that is so nice about the winter weather is that the skies tend to be mainly clear with some nice wispy clouds. I saw the moon shining through a few clouds, creating a halo effect in the sky. Then as I stepped down a bit farther, I saw this view through the trees and loved it! I didn't have a tripod, but I was able to brace myself enough to get a decent photo despite having to shorten the exposure more than I would have liked.

Snow!

It snowed this morning! So, the question is not what to photograph today but which one of many to post. I have quite a few photos which show the quantity of snow that was coming down.  There are others that give some perspective of how much started to collect on the ground and a few of our kittens in the snow, all taken at home. However on the way to work, I stopped to get several photos I felt were more unique or telling. This first photo shows the mix of trees in their fall colors laced with snow and I like the combination of fall and winter in one image.

Crochet

While this isn't the greatest photo, it is a good picture of my recent projects. I had gotten out of the habit of working on crochet, time and motivation were lacking, but I decided to make a couple small items for Christmas. That gives me a deadline and small items are fast, and portable and that keeps me going. These are a couple hot pads I finished up. I also started on some coasters in the same color scheme, those are super fast and I am flying along on those when time permits me to sit down with nothing else to work on.

Flooding

Our little Fletcher branch of Hickory Creek can really move some water, when the need arises. However, it is surprisingly low most of the time. We have seen several occasions where the water came so high as to actually close the road out of our neighborhood and yet normally you can walk down 10-15 feet from the road to do some fishing. I have taken pictures of flooding and finally remembered to go back and photograph the same area during "non flooding" times. The fist picture was taken on October 13th of this year, the day after the road opened back up following a flood. The next picture was taken now,  look in the center of this top picture, you will see the very tops of the concrete posts and pipeline that run across the creek. Then notice the water level in the new picture. Obviously the trees show the difference that fall heading into winter has made on the area but hopefully I captured a bit of the depth of the water in comparison. Timely as it's started to rain again here this afternoon...

Christmas Trees and Kittens

We got our Christmas tree this morning...the kittens have seen one before, we had one last year with them. However, you would have thought they never had seen one! There was sniffing, exploring and running circles around it as it came in. Admitedly, these are the same kittens that crawled through the bushes forever back on the farm so maybe they were reminiscing. They have been running around like crazy all day but I caught this, somewhat peaceful moment, although you can see the look in her eyes that says something is coming.

Nature and ...

I asked everyone to pick up something unique on our hike to make a collage. I got an interesting collection of natural and not so natural items. A couple items didn't make it in the picture but I got most of them in here to form my image. My item was a seed pod with wispy seeds bursting out, other items were various colored berries, flowers, tiny as well as full size hinged shells, an acorn and other seed pods but we also found air soft pellets in various colors as well as a tennis ball. It was quite a collection and gave me an interesting photo.

Perspective

One of the assignments from last week was photography of children. I have quite a few pictures of children and several from yesterday of my nephews...but instead of using one of those, I took a concept from that to implement in this photo, although I used it on adults ;)
Perspective can be defined as "The relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole" so in this photo, the focus is on each of the individuals compared to the others in the group. For your reference, Jason, the guy in the blue shirt is over 6 feet tall, while at the other end, Shelly, in the black, is actually about 6 inches shorter. In composing the shot, the tallest people stood at the lower end of a hill and so forth on up, with the exception of Melissa, who is standing in front of her husband Jason at the bottom (left) and thus you can see her real height as compared to him. Just something to think about...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We went down to my parent's house in DeSoto for Thanksgiving this year. Not only was it us, my parents, and my brother and his family but also my grandpa, aunt and uncle, one cousin another cousin and her new husband. It's really nice to get to see everyone and to spend time together. We talked, played with tractors and building blocks, played Guitar Hero, ate lots of food, went for a three hour hike, saw the end of a police chase, watched a football game, took lots of pictures, had dessert and just all around had a great time. Here's a picture of mom testing out the food...
Happy Thanksgiving!

Kitten in a bag

No, it's not like a "Bed in a Bag". As I was putting out the Christmas decorations, the cats decided to help...this involved getting into boxes and bags. I got a blanket out of this zipper bag to put it on the couch, I set the bag down and immediately heard the "crunch crunch" of Sophie crawling into the bag. She looks a bit unhappy here with her ears squished down by the bag but she was really quite content and after snapping a couple shots of her, I had to really encourage her to get out so I could put the zipper bag away. Dottie helped by just squeezin herself into boxes...

Fall life

This morning, while I was out for a hike I got some good pictures of some of the wildlife. This egret flew from one side of the lake to the other to land on this dead tree. The fall foliage in the background is slight but it adds a touch of color against the stark white of the bird and the brown/grey of the dead trees. The composition of this shot makes it my favorite of the day but below are a few of the other shots I got along the way. The ducks were out again, although not as many as last weekend. The fall colors are vivid on a few trees and the sun on the water made for a gorgeous view across the lake.

Kitty Room :)

I have a kitten, well actually she's a cat at about 17 months old now, that has her own "room". It's actually the little nook in the headboard of my bed. There's a sliding door on either side and this open space in the middle where we plug everything in and keep phone books, etc. She claimed this space and every night, she goes to bed in her room. I decided to try to get some photos of her in her room and I caught this face! So, it's not a great view of her space, but it's so funny I had to post it.

Kinetics

This week's homework assignment is kinetics, where the only moving object is the camera, or a part, as in this case, the zoom. I take a lot of movement shots, baseball, basketball, soccer, etc. but this is completely different and quite fun. I was considering doing some work with lights, an extension on as assignment I had in a class last semester that was so much fun. However, I decided to try something new, always a good choice in learning, so I went for "standard" lighting and zoom movement. The top picture is of a candle pot and my goal was to make it look like the stars are shooting. I took several other shots of different items for more of a blur effect, such as this shot of fall flowers. I will definitely try more of this type of shot in the future.

Referees!!!

This was a four game weekend and I'm only going to put up one basketball picture! This is the one I chose because I have something to say...I hate it when refs try to join the game. Their business is to stay out of the way, be invisible, keep the game safe and let the participants play! That's it, their job, their duty, but sometimes, they just feel the need to exert themselves on the game and tonight was one of those nights. For some reason the refs really wanted the red team to win and they certainly helped them along to a 13 point lead with under 8 minutes to go, by calling not just a horrible but an unevenly horrible game. If you are just that bad, be bad in the same way on both sides of the court, not only calling on one team! So what this picture shows was definitely a charge and yeah, he calls a block. One of many such calls in the game, but give it to the ladies, they came through, put their all out there on the court and pulled the game up to tie it with 23 seconds left and pull ahead to win by 2 points! Yeah, I love my sports :)

Pedro el pinguino

This pinata has hung in my classroom for several years now. Some students of mine made him, years ago and he draws all sorts of attention and I forget to take notice of him. But recently in thinking of photos, I wanted to get some fun pictures of him and this is my favorite. I got the flag for a nice background to his cute face. This next picture is the rest of him for the full effect. The kids did a great job in making him. So go out there and make some pinatas!