Category: Prose

C/2022E3 Stuff

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I have a name that is meaningless to most
I am mostly invisible and can only be seen by those who are diligently searching
Once found, I can be disappointing
In order to see me fully you must freeze and perform a tedious, deductive search
To know me fully you must look at me over and over again in the same context
Then process what you see to reveal any detail

My poor wife
I am a comet

Photography can be about self exploration sometimes. This frame was a bit of a cold night effort, +50 frames made to render this mediocre result. It was just too cold for these old bones.

Goodnight Ramona

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Even as retirement looms
Tension unabates
Everything is important
Costly
One mistake
Can ruin everything

Detail and compliance
Rule my life
A sense of hurtling
Through space
Its friction
Burning
Tearing through my space suit

This new place.
A walk behind the house
Up the side of the mountain
Signs
Reading “Property Boundary –
National Forest Behind This Sign”

It’s quiet here.
A bark in the distance
Children’s voices bounce endlessly
Across the vale

Ten weeks
And I hit the wall
Or
Fall off the cliff
Either way
It will be an adventure

In 1984 I started my glazing apprenticeship. The last 32+ years with the same company.
We have grown to a sizable concern, glazing many hospitals, universities and such.
April 1, 2023 will start a new chapter.
https://www.towerglass.com/

(Photograph -a sunset in Ramona CA)

Banished

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We stand upon the precipice
A thousand story edifice
The constant threat
All comes to this

What shall I do with my day?

I have heard it said many times that photography is dead. Too many cameras. Too many photographers. Now, with AI, the human element of photography is superfluous. Humans are simply not needed any more for this endevor.
Perhaps.
This brings fear to the surface and it is only at the surface.
A photographer performs this for themselves first. It is cathartic. It is the challenge that brings us back. It is discovery that makes our pulse race. It is the satisfaction of story and message, nuance, detail and blur, color and tone, and the mastering of the sun’s energy that drives us.
Too many cameras? Too many photographers? Ok. Each have their own journey.
AI? Ok. Without photographers, AI would have no reference to make its art. Machine art. Souless, lifeless machine art. If that is what the masses want. So be it.
Photographers know each other and the shared struggle to create.
Machines, not so much.

A simple walk:

Birds on the trail

Mist in the Towers

Oak Among the Boulders

Wide is the Trail

Western Blues

Stay frosty, keep shooting

Sky Trippin’

on By

Searching for Andromeda
Finding Cassiopeia
Tripped over Jupiter
Looking for Saturn

These first renderings are so amateurish and yet so satisfyingly fun.
What a ride this is becoming.

Spent some time processing the Andromeda Galaxy. It took some searching, but I found it after multiple tries.

Andromeda

While searching for Jupiter I found Saturn! Very tiny. Barely 40 pixels wide on the originals!

Saturn

Jupiter was a horrible mess to process…too much atmospheric interference. These are all good lessons for future imaging. Looks like there are a couple of rogue pixels in there still. And the moons are a little hot as well.

Cover photo is of the Cassiopeia constellation…though I’m not sure it really looks like that!
Here are the separated channels it took to get to the final output:

By a Thread

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Our little world
Hanging by a thread
If you look up
You see the spin

I’ve been exploring the sky. Finding the north star (Polaris) was my latest goal.
It’s set directly above earth’s northern axis so there is little movement. Every thing else appears to spin around it, though it is earth’s rotation that causes this. The cover photo and video below is the resulting image after stacking several hours of photographs.

On another note, the heat wave here in Cali will be abating and making way for some rain. Rain?
High winds are expected as well (80mph gusts) so it’s batten down the hatches here.
With the clouds here, I will not be able to make any full moon work.
This one is from last light.

Hello moon!
Photos that make up a star trails photograph