an unusual sunrise, fwiw

Or, Additional Adventures in the Blogo-Doldrums.

I happened to be up at dawn the other day, something I usually go to great lengths to avoid. The sunrise looked a little odd, so I took a few photos, and here they are. Are sunrises always like this? I ask, because I don't see them very often, and when I do, generally the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet. I'm curious now, but not quite curious enough to get up early on a regular basis, so I was hoping maybe someone out there on the interwebs knows. And then I can just say I'm sure it's true, because I saw it on the interwebs. Or something.

I also took a few photos with the "antique" film SLR I bought recently. But you won't see those photos here because I managed to ruin my second roll of film in a row. Last time I just didn't know how to thread the film into the sprockets properly so it didn't advance. The second time, I forgot it was 24 exposures, not 36, and tried to advance the film anyway, and it broke clean off. I blame both mini-calamities on bad habits I picked up with my last film camera, an 80's era fixed-focus point-n-shoot. It's not a great camera, by any means, but it did protect you from shooting yourself in the foot, which is something, I guess.

I did manage to get a third roll exposed and rewound without incident, and it's at the photo shop as I write this. I'm curious how it turned out, and I suppose a bit nervous too. I really shouldn't be nervous, since M42 SLR gear is extremely inexpensive these days. I'm having the pics put on a CD too (a medium only slightly less obsolete than film itself, if you ask me) so if they don't completely suck I'll post a few when I get 'em back. I might post a few even if they do suck, just for kicks.

I figured I'd post the sunrise pics anyway, since I'm kind of short on material at the moment. I do have one batch of mini-roadtrip photos I still haven't posted from way back in June, and I've seen a few bad movies recently, so I might write about those. But overall things are in something of a rut right now, both blogwise and otherwise. I'm not sure what sort of action is called for, however. Maybe we'll move overseas for a while or something. That would certainly shake things up a bit. This humble blog might even become interesting again, if I'm lucky.

Anyway, about that sunrise: It started out innocently enough...













As the sun came up a bit more, it got weird:











At the time, I was sort of thinking these might be mammatus clouds, but they weren't quite that dramatic, and we didn't get any severe weather afterwards. Unless you think 50 degrees and drizzly is severe. Which I sometimes do, if we get it day after day for weeks on end.







Things eventually tapered off...






... and ending in a perfectly unremarkable October weekday. Sigh....

assorted forays & follies

Or, further adventures in the blogo-doldrums. Today's post is an assortment of pics I took for posts that didn't pan out. Either I didn't have enough material for a post, or I just couldn't get excited enough to do the research, or the universe failed to cooperate. Seems like it's always something these days.

So the first 3 pics are of Wahkeena Falls, out in the Gorge. I suppose these are fine so far as they go, but I was out there because I just bought a new toy and wanted to try it out. My "new" toy is an old film SLR camera from the late 1960s, all-manual, all-mechanical, no handholding of any kind. I need to track down a battery for its light meter (which I understand is a bit rudimentary anyway) so I was using my lil' digital camera to make exposure guesstimates: Set the ISO to match the film you're using, and zoom a little so the field of view is more or less the same as the camera's 50mm lens. Then tinker with aperture & shutter speed until you get a photo that looks ok, and transfer those settings to the old SLR and take the same shot with it. Lather, rinse, repeat. It sounds kind of tedious, but I'm just trying to learn how to use this new toy right now. I don't expect miraculous results, and I don't expect any results quickly.

That last bit is something I've been telling myself a lot lately, because it turns out I hadn't threaded the film properly the first time around. I was doing all that work and not actually taking useful photos. Dammit. I think I've got it figured out now, so I ought to have something to share here sooner or later. I'd intended to post these waterfall pics along with their film versions, and that's obviously not going to happen. Oh, well.

---

One recent morning I made a trip up to Smith Lake in North Portland. The lake is part of the Smith & Bybee Lakes wildlife area, a large wetland preserve right in the middle of a heavy industrial part of town, and next door to the former St. Johns Landfill. With neighbors like those, the lakes don't get a lot of public attention, even though they're huge and right on the city's doorstep. So I thought I'd do a post about the place, but I'm convinced you can't properly do that without at least one nice photo of a bird or two, being a wetland area and all.

So as soon as I showed up, all the birds relocated to the far side of the lake. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.

At least the moon was out. That's something, I guess.





So the photo below is the best bird I came away with, and I'm sure you'll agree it ain't much. This was taken at maximum zoom + max "digital zoom", and then a heavy-duty bit of unsharp mask to make the thing halfway presentable.

Obviously I just didn't show up with the right gear for the job.









Ok, there were a few things here and there I could take closeups of, at least. Nothing too spectacular, just the usual flowers and Raindrops On Stuff, but my little camera does a creditable job of it, at least when the flower isn't whipping back and forth in the wind, which it was.

The path to the lake had this sign up, which might explain why nobody else was there. Jeepers! West Nile virus! I haven't had any flulike symptoms lately, so I'm probably ok, but still. Freakin' West Nile virus! Yow!



Ok, here's the gross part, which I barely managed to avoid stepping on/in. I'm not a zoological CSI type (if such a thing exists) but I'd bet a heron did this. Every time I visit Smith Lake, I run across something like this, something that indicates this place is the real deal. Sometimes it's just various animal prints in the mud. A few years ago I ran across a tree freshly felled by beavers.

I thought about posting these frog pics separately, and titling it something like "'What's Grosser Than Gross?' Edition", but that seemed a little crass and juvenile. Ok, so I still posted the photos, but I didn't make them the main event. That counts for something, right?

---

Ok, returning within the bounds of good taste, here are a couple of fall foliage photos from downtown Portland. These are taken from the same spot, one through a pair of cheap sunglasses, and the other with the homemade infrared filter I put together a while back.





I've gone too long without any Tanner Springs photos. So here's one.



And I believe the moon requires no introduction. Had to do a bit of cleanup on this one, but I think it turned out pretty well for a handheld shot at night. In other words, it's due to luck, not skill. Story of my life, or so it seems sometimes.

don't know why there's no sun up in the sky....

A few pics of this afternoon's meteorological thrills, chills, and spills. Enjoy...

Even more VuPoint toy camera goodness

Yep, it's time for another batch of pics from the VuPoint keychain digicam I picked up for $14.99 a while back, taken mostly around Jamison Square in the Pearl.



I guess if we're going to pick nits, the price is really $14.99 plus the cost of a computer, plus the price of an image manipulation app unless you use a free one. The VuPoint usually overexposes stuff, so I ran most of these through GIMP (which is free). I don't think that counts as cheating, really. Besides, I restricted myself to darkening the pics a bit with the Levels tool, and sometimes boosting color saturation with the Hue-Saturation tool, but other than that they're exactly as the camera spit them out.



Previous batches of VuPoint pics here, here, and here.



The stuffed animal you see here is Firefox schwag I picked up at OSCON. This was taken with the wide-angle doodad I picked up for my real camera. I don't think the wide angle is very obvious with this photo though. You can also see how noisy the VuPoint's photos get in dim light situations, like indoors at night. And this isn't even close to the worst example. What I think it's probably doing is boosting the ISO sky high to compensate. Your expensive digital camera could do that too if it wanted to, but perfectionist types out there would complain about the noise if it did, and besides, your fancy camera has one of them newfangled "flash" thingies, and the VuPoint doesn't.