Super Moon

While in Raleigh, North Carolina, this weekend, I slipped out to take a shot at the Super Moon.  It's trajectory brings it closer to Earth than it has in 18 years.  Fear mongers were crawling out of the woodwork, predicting more earthquakes, tidal waves, and natural disasters bigger than Al Gore's global warming head.

I admit, the moon would have looked better had there been some other objects in the frame with it but there simply wasn't anything near me that would have worked.  Plus, I really needed something in the 1000 mm range to make it really work.

On a tripod, Nikon D60, 200 mm digital (equivalent to a 300 mm in film cameras), ISO 100, Aperture 5.6, shutter speed of 1/500 second.  Cropping was necessary.

In North Carolina

A couple of weeks ago, I said adieu to Sonoma, California wine country and headed east to North Carolina.

Being in North Carolina.  Pros: the food is down home and folks here do not have that much of accent.  Who am I kidding, they think I talk like a Yankee.  Cons: the hardwood vegetation hasn't developed it's green yet and it's hard to find something that isn't gray.

This has been the first weekend I've had free to roam so I spent most of it hiking through some of the parks along the Blue Ridge Parkway such as Linville Falls. Waterfalls, yep there are a few.  I've hiked so much, my bunions are complaining but it's been very nice.

The falls on the right were only .7 miles from the parking lot but the experience gave me an intimate knowledge of North Carolina's rock, mud and tree root system.

From the Blue Ridge Parkway

Near Linville Falls

I am a fan of Timothy Allen

If I could go back and change a few turns in my life, this is how (at least on the surface) I would have done it. 

In 1993, after receiving a degree in zoology at Leeds University, Timothy Allen spent 3 years traveling Indonesia before signing onto an aid convoy to Bosnia for a report while working toward another degree in photography.  Six months later, he dropped out of school and began working with the Sunday Telegraph.  Through a series of changes, he has worked all around the globe.

If you have 7½ minutes, entertain yourself with collection of some amazing photography.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12618167

 If you have even more time, here's a a lot more.

President's Day Weekend (or "Doing the City")

Instead of flying home for a quick turnaround, Darlene came to see me, arriving Wednesday night.  Years since she had once lived on Travis Airforce Base, she wanted to see how it had changed in 43 y......er...a few years ago.

Darlene doesn't travel well so it takes a day or so for her to catch up after flying.  With that, she pretty much laid up in the bed Thursday while I worked.  Friday turned out to be a wet and drizzling day so we pretty much went shopping, did a winery/olive tour and changed hotels.  Stopping off at the Jacuzzi Winery and Olive farms, we had fun tasting dipping oils and a moderate amount of wine tasting.

Saturday proved to not much better weather wise and eventually wound up in Old Sacramento for a nice dinner after the kind folks at Travis AFB deemed Darlene a threat to national security and wouldn't let us on the base.  Actually security, as you might imagine, is pretty strict these days and since we had no sponsor to vouch for us they told us to hit the road.

Sunday, we could see Mt Diablo from our hotel room in Suisun City so we did the city, the whole ball of wax....bridge, downtown, trolley cars, cheap camera shops, Ghiradelli, Fisherman's Wharf, Lomard and pretty much the whole nine yards.

It was Chinese New Year so we thought we'd see what that was all about.  Driving up Pacific, we see this guy in the middle of the street pointing at us and yelling something.  As we got a little closer, I rolled the window down, I found out he was a street person engaged in free enterprise.  "Mike", it seems, found street parking signs for people, held back cars while they parked and insinuated he would watch over the cars while we did China Town.  Unspoken, it was a GREAT idea to tip Mike so that the car would not be broken in to while we were out.  It was worth the five bucks.

Monday, Darlene and I had a great time traveling over to South Lake Tahoe.  The place recently had a huge snow and snow machines had left banks of the white stuff so deep we couldn't really get out and take pictures along the way.  However, we did get out near the lake and play around.

Putting her back on the plane Tuesday morning, I hated to see her go because we had such a great holiday weekend.