Eclipse

I got super lucky to get this one for a variety of reasons.

First, lots of cloud cover, so didn't expect to get a clean view of anything, but stayed up late (for me - midnight!) just in case and got lucky with a gap in the clouds.

Got outside and realized that the eclipse is so dark compared to the full moon that I needed a tripod (d'oh!) - went back inside and my big one is set up with binoculars on it, so went with the small one, which is really a bit too light for that lens.

Managed to get the camera pointing up vertically on the ball head by shortening two of the tripod legs a bit, so the whole assembly was a bit iffy, and I was kneeling on my damp driveway in PJ's, a fleece and flip flops (ahh the mental image) trying to look through the viewfinder.

I didn't want to bung the ISO up too much 'cos my camera gets noisy, so took a bunch of 2 second and 1 second exposures and hoped for the best - two of them were in focus enough to be useful (for the web - won't blow up any bigger as the moon moves at that magnification even at 1 second and I had a static, somewhat wobbly tripod, so there's motion blur involved).

Oh, and there was either a raccoon or opossum (not sure which - only got to see its eyes reflecting by flashlight as it hid in the bushes) down the side of the house growling and hissing - hopefully at the weird moon rather than me, but I didn't really want to find out.

Out On The Town

It's the Cellfire holiday lunch, the women of Cellfire decide it should be a dress up affair and coerce the male side of the company into joining in. After getting help in choosing a shirt and tie from one of them, I surprise the whole company with my debonair look (they're so used to me wearing t-shirt, jeans and a beard, any slight variance from the norm could be considered debonair).

And after my eight women buy me lunch photo, the women of Cellfire decide they need their photo taken with me, and who am I to argue!

My Commute

I've been driving the Monterey to San Jose commute for four years now - it's about time it got immortalized, so I did.

Cyber Monday (the Monday after the Thanksgiving Weekend - basically the Monday after the last weekend in November), I loaded the camera into the car (attached to the passenger head rest via a SuperClamp), set it to take a photo every 2 seconds and off we went.

The resultant set of photos was turned into a time lapse movie, complete with all the fantastic cultural icons that I pass on my thrice weekly pilgrimage to Silicon Valley.

View the video here - and make sure you full screen it, after all, it was recorded in HD.

Condor day of days

After not seeing much in the way of condors for a few months now, combined with a strike out at Pinnacles on Saturday, I took advantage of the glorious weather this weekend and headed down the coast on the Ducati.

I got supremely lucky (along with Richard - a fellow condor/motorcyclist, who had already pulled over when I went past him and realized there was something going on due to the fact he'd pulled over).

Photos are here.

Stormy Weather

In past winters, stormy weather has kept me at home, catching up on chores etc. This winter, I intend to get out more and shoot potentially interesting landscapes - today was one of those days!