To keep warm, climb a mountain.

You might think we are crazy, but we've noticed that the temperature usually rises an average of 8 degrees as we drive up our mountain.

So a few days ago, we took a picture of the thermometer in the car, 
as we headed down the mountain from 9,370 feet.

Then just west of the city of Blanca, at 7,700 feet, here is what we had:

That's a 24 degree drop in just over 30 minutes, as we drove about 1,700 feet down the mountain.

We first heard something like this while in Denali National Park. Aparently, in the 1920's the first ranger had been given a cabin near the river which was to be his home.  Being a "local", he knew his stuff.  So, he abandoned that and personally built a new cabin at the top of the mountain....where now you see the hotels used by the cruise ship companies for their land tours to the park. The temp was 20 to 40 degrees higher up there.

If there's a lesson here......
maybe you should always take extra clothing when you go on a car ride,
no matter how mild the weather might seem when you depart,
'cause you never know what you're going to get.

Hibernating on the snow

My dog and I passed this guy on our way down the mountain,
as we went to throw out the trash and pick up the mail.

I wondered why he was in the shade and not the sunshine.

But, he laid there so still that the dog completely missed seeing him.

About 15 minutes later we came back up the mountain, and there he still was.

But, now the sun was shining on him and he'd rotated ninety degrees.

So, we continued on our way, with my dog still oblivious to him.

Looked back from a little up the road, to see if he'd run away.

No, there he stayed, just basking in the sun.

After an afternoon's cross country ski

or just a hike in the snow,
it's so relaxing to sit back
and watch the setting western skies.

The middle mountain looks like an island in a fiord, don't you think?

We know what you're asking, though. The answer is NO.
We are too wise and cheap to buy that now legalized weed in Colorado.

Shooting the moon

is not as hard as it might seem.

Admittedly, it is a lot smaller than what we've shown you in our pictures. 
This is what it really looks like with a 300 mm lens.

Pretty small. But if you have a 12 or 18 megapixel camera, 
you can crop it to look as big as we've shown you.

You might also notice that it is too bright; can't see it's mountains and valleys. We'll work on that.

How about exposure?
Unlike pics of stars, the full moon is large enough so you can place your focusing spot on the moon and use auto focus 
(as long as you use a tripod to keep the moon in the focusing spot of your lens).

In fact, you can even set it to full automatic and let the camera do it all. 
But, it is better for you to select a high ISO speed so the exposure won't show motion.

Here is a fully automatic shot at ISO 1600 (after cropping to make it look big). 
The diaphragm was wide at f5.6 and the time was really short, at 1/4,000 of a second. So you you could have taken it without a tripod.
The original pic looked like a white ball in the sky. So, in order to see the mountains and valleys, we told the camera to under-expose it by a factor of 2.0 to 3.0 using the "exposure compensation" button. We even got some good ones at - 4.0.

Looks good, but a little grainy.

So, you can lower the ISO and shoot it on auto again, with negative exposure compensation to get the same brightness but with less noise.


There is another way of taking it….completely manually, and it is simple. But be sure to use a tripod.

Since the moon is reflecting so much of the sun's light, you can use of rule of f16. 
On a really bright day, you can shoot pictures at a small diaphragm opening of f16, if you set the  the shutter speed to the inverse of your chosen ISO. 
Say, you use ISO 100. Set the shutter speed to 1/125, and fire away at f16; most pics will look just fine on a real sunny day here on earth. 
(That's the way we did it back in the dark ages of film cameras without light meters.)
If it turns out too dark, just open up the diaphragm by lowering the f-stop one or two clicks.

The moon is real far away, so we'd expect to loose some brightness from there to here.
So, here is a manual shot at f11, 1/125 of a second, and ISO 100.

(Please, ignore the halo around the surface of the moon. 
That is an artifact created by the download to Blogspot; it is not on our real pictures)

It has a little less noise or mottle than the one shot at ISO 1600.

And shooting it manual makes one feel proud. "I took that picture", I say to myself, "not the auto functions on the camera".

And….Just think what you can do when it is closer to Halloween!

We bet you can use your imagination.
Maybe put something like this into a Photoshop-like add-on program and drop in a few bats to make it real scary.

Hopefully you'll pick up shooting in the dark as a new hobby. 
It's a lot of fun.

Shooting at the night sky

There sure are a lot of stars up in the Colorado skies,
at least a lot more than I can see elsewhere.

Being at 9,700 feet and 50 miles form a city of 20+K folks must surely help.

But I advice you, to get out when it is dark and there is no moon,

'cause if you wait for the moon to come out and shine,
you'll get a pretty blue, but a lot less individual stars.

So take advantage of that magic time between when the sun has completely set and the moon starts to rise.
And take note of the following fact: around this time of year, the moon will rise about one hour later each day.
So, if you noticed when the moon appeared tonight, you'll have an extra hour tomorrow before it comes out and its light hides some stars. 

So...... Get your tripod ready, pull your long lens out, (200-300 mm), set it to manual cause there's not enough light to either auto focus or to auto shoot. 

Open up your F-stop diaphragm to its greatest width (4 or 5 are my widest ones), and set the ISO film speed to as high as you can (6400 is as high as mine will go). Yes you'll get some mottle or noise, but that's OK for this.

Then try to focus as best you can. If your lens has distance measurements, use "infinity" or just below that.
But if yours is a kit lens like mine, it might have no numbers to help you focus.
Just take a few shots and magnify what you see, to get it as sharp as you possibly can.

Then test a few long exposures, depending on how bright the sky might be. 

I thought that 30 seconds would be great for me.

but,  do you see how the stars are little dashes and not round dots?
That's 'cause the earth is moving and 30 seconds is just too long to get them sharp.

So down to 10 seconds I brought it then.

Lots better I would say. But maybe 8 sec would have been even better.

So now its time to shoot a few groups of stars, then go inside the house and check the Internet to see what "dipper-like" constellation live in the south-eastern skies.

But, as I came back from doing that, I saw a plane come into view and shot before it got away.

Yes, its pretty crappy. I did not do what I said I'd do: 
focus any time you move your camera.
That is because it is real easy to accidentally move the manual focus while you move the camera or zoom in and out for a different field of view.
And in my excitement I probaly moved the camera or tripod.

Well, at 17 degrees, I was not going to stay outside and wait for another airplane.
I had enough, so I came inside for a hot cup of tea.

Just 2 days after January's full moon,

the right upper quadrant on the moon is getting darker

between the 12 to 2 o'clock position.

Compare it to about the same relative time,
two days before the full moon:

when the invisible surface was at the 6:30 to 8:30 position.

Maybe I have too much time on my hands……

But, do you wonder where that Chinese's Yutu rover landed?  
Where in the moon is the Bay of Rainbows? 
(I could tell you, but it'll be more fun to Google it yourself.)

And what about that "navel" looking thing, between the 4 and 4:30 position of the clock,
has it rotated up so much in just 5 days?

Yes, there's a lot to wonder about when you have no television. Thank God.

Chasing rabbits

Taking a walk in the snow can be so much fun.

But, you must keep your attention up,

'cause you never know when something interesting might appear….
like a rabbit, hopping in the deep snow.

Alas, it's not always a successful hunt.

In fact, it is NEVER a successful hunt.

But, we'll try again on the following day.

And the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and…...

Going down Fox Canyon

Years ago I read a Louis Lamour novel that took place close to here. He described the protagonist traveling through  a series of canyons on his way to the Spanish Peaks. It sounded so much like the land around here.

Of course, all canyons seems pretty much the same on paper. I think the ones he described were called Cougar and Coyote canyon. The ones right behind us here are Coyote and Fox Canyon. 

The latter makes a right angle bend and comes to the edge of our property. In fact we own down to the bottom of it.

I've tried taking pictures of it, but it just doesn't look as steep as when you try to climb it.

The gran kids have built a tepee about half way down and like to go play there. 

It's so calm and secluded.

It makes you think you are at the last scene of Kevin Costner's "Dances with wolves".
You can almost see the tribe spending the winter in this place.

Looking at the almost full moon.

Up in the mountains, without TV, we get entertainment by looking up at the nigh time skies.

It is strange to realize that we, the common folk, can now snap a picture of the moon
and make it look almost as good a one form NASA or National Geographic Magazine from a few decades ago.

The future astronauts.

I was going outside, to set up my tripod for some moon shots later tonight,
when suddenly a jet shoots straight up behind the moon.

Then heads straight west, towards the setting sun.

And finally three others break sonic speeds, right over the horizon.

No, those are not UFO's over the San Luis Valley.

They're just pilots in training.
But, at least the first one is aspiring to reach the moon, and perhaps the sun, 
as a future astronaut!

Watching daylight go

near 5:30 PM, in southern Colorado.

"Amarillo by morning...

up from San Antone"
was the song we used to sing while trying to stay awake when we drove up to Colorado.

That was back in the days of 55 and 60 mph speed limits.

But now that we can drive at 75 for most of the trip (and 80 in IH10), its more like…..

"Trinidad by morning….."

Yes, thinking of a combination of the mesas of the SW

and clear Rocky Mountain snows

in the early morning gives you a boost to keep on driving 


and make those 765 miles as the sun comes up.

Who would have thought...

......that San Antonio has the first bookless library in the country!
 

 

Its on the other side of town, so we have not seen it yet ( We copied these pics off the web).

Apparently the costs of the I-Pads that are lent out, the computers on site, and the purchasing of the e-books by the city was the same as just purchasing paper books.

But it was a lot cheaper to get space in a strip mall than build a whole building to house books.

Check it out:

http://www.click2houston.com/news/san-antonio-library-offers-glimpse-of-bookless-future/-/1735978/23758560/-/a7nm9oz/-/index.html

It's surprising to us that half the e-reader machines are checked out at one time and none have been stolen or damaged.

Happy New Year

from San Antonio

where 250,000 showed up at the Hemishere Plaza to celebrate the New Year.

But, this year, because of the recent rains, they allowed people to fire off their own fireworks.

In the neighborhoods, it seemed another quarter million people were firing away,
almost making the ground tremble!

Happy New Year!

(PS These are pictures I got off the  Internet. But, it sure looks like a good party to photograph!)