... at first i thought it a bit odd, that in the almost two weeks since i returned from nicaragua even less than actually taking photographs, i've not been much at even seeing them ... i've come to think that it's a combination of the intensity of that experience coupled with the fact that while i was there i got to focus my lens in the direction i most enjoy, people ... also, i suppose i must be truthful admitting that this time of year i'm a bit tired of winter and eager for two-wheelin' across the countryside on clear roads ...
... john's been offering up some wanderabouting medicine, but all i've managed is a single image ...
... it's interesting that even as i slogged my way through the deep snow to gain this vantage i knew that it was a rather busy scene ... that'd usually put me off, but for some reason i was drawn to this rather complex composition, and even as i raised my camera to eye i was already "seeing" in black & white ...
... later i snapped a shot of john as he continued learning to master his new canon "L" super-duper zoom lens ...
... i'm not really concerned about this little "slump" ... has happened before, will happen again ... as relates to photography, all i need do is look at the pictures i took in nicaragua to remind myself what a lucky man i am ...
... and, as it is, i know that wanderabouting requires nothing but the doing ...
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... john texted, "want to go out and photograph the zodiacal light" ... nice warm living room, cozy slippers, and piles of blankets with which to wrap in while i'm watching a movie vs. snow on the ground, cold, windy—was an easy decision, "pick me up in front of my apartment" ...
... my toes're still frozen, mostly because i dressed for spring instead of winter, but that doesn't matter because i managed to both see and record the zodiacal light ...
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... john texted, "want to go out and photograph the zodiacal light" ... nice warm living room, cozy slippers, and piles of blankets with which to wrap in while i'm watching a movie vs. snow on the ground, cold, windy—was an easy decision, "pick me up in front of my apartment" ...
... my toes're still frozen, mostly because i dressed for spring instead of winter, but that doesn't matter because i managed to both see and record the zodiacal light ...
... this time of year, just after twilight, if the air's clear you can see the light of the below-the-horizon sun reflecting off the "zodiacal cloud" ... never heard of that ... ??? ... it's the layer of dust surrounding the sun ... imagine the sun is a marble in the center of a plate and the planets are little dots spread out along the plate ... well, the zodiacal cloud is the plate itself ... it's composed of wicked tiny grains of dust, 99.9% of which are less than 10,000,000 years old (on the cosmic scale, that's very, very young) ... the other .1% is stuff that's floated in from the vast spaces between the stars ... how much dust is up there ... ??? ... if you gathered it all from the entire solar system, which is 178,333,532,172 miles across, you'd only have a pile maybe 7 miles deep ... in other words, there's not much of it—
—which, of course, makes it even more cool that i managed to get a picture ...
"Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious."
STEPHEN HAWKING