Oops... "Acts of God"... they can suck

So a few weeks ago we had an incident of large branch (200+ pounds and 12' long) falling from a dead tree in our backyard. Funny thing is, it was only mildly breezy that evening. When it hit the ground it sounded like an cherry bomb going off, followed by what my wife said sounded like someone trying to break into the house as the smaller branches exploded and sprayed the backside of the house.

We were lucky. No damage.

So today I get a text message from my wife with this image attached: 

That's right, one of our trees fell onto our neighbor's house and the sad part is that it wasn't the dead tree mentioned above. Now the two trees that were downhill from the one that fell are leaning more, looking like they might come down as well. So now we have three trees needing to come down, including the dead one, one to clean up, a fence to repair and trying to console our neighbors who lost the backside of a nice little shop/shed structure and could have damage to their roof. Now we have to talk with our landlord about removing the three trees. Scary stuff, just glad that nobody was hurt.

Tree removal - $0

Fence Replacement - $0

Roof Repair - $0

Shop Repair - $0

Insurance Deductable - $500

Everyone's Safety - Priceless.

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Keep yourselves safe and make sure to watch the sky... it seems to be falling more and more frequently.

Experimenting With Nathan

Nathan of SmithFineArt.com came over to my house yesterday with an idea. We set up, settled in and began experimenting. It is so much fun to experiment with photography, especially when the idea comes from the creative genius that is Nathan.

We set up a projector as a light source and my finest bottle of Vodka as the subject... I know.. it's not Grey Goose, but I do happen to be on a budget.

 

By projecting different images on the wall, we were able to shape the light. Many of the projected images were made on the fly, as we shot.

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Nathan also has this nifty little program on his Mac that creates varying patterns. Using some special techniques, we were able merge multiple patterns to get some cool results.

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Nathan will be teaching this method at the March monthly meeting of the Salem Digital Photo group, salemphoto.org. Come check out this amazing Salem Oregon Photography Club.

Thanks Nathan for all of fun and education you bring to my creative life.

 

A Winter Wonderland

So today marked the first snow of the year for our little region of the world. At my house, we got a light dusting, and I wasn't too inspired to go out, but that changed over the course of the morning.

I wasn't initially inspired to fo go shoot because I suffer from Fibromyalgia or FMS. It is a condition that causes chronic fatigue, constant pain and a slew of other things and is thought to be caused by hyper-active nerve receptors. There are time where being touched can cause pain.

FMS can be a real demotivator when what is called a flare (when symptoms are at their most impactful) happens. Today is a day where I am flaring. Flares are triggered by stress, anxiety, physical exertion and even changes in the weather and extreme cold or heat.

Well, the last week has been particularly brutal for my symptoms as the weather hasn't been all that kind to those of us in the area with FMS. So this morning I got up and knew that I wasn't up for getting out. As the morning progressed, I became more and more restless and more and more irritated that I wasn't out taking advantage of the rare snow day. I knew where I wanted to go, what shots I wanted to get and damnit, I was pissed I was letting my FMS keep me from doing that.

At 9:30 I told my wife I was going out and asked her if she wanted to go for a drive. She jumped up, threw a coat on and we headed out to a location I knew would have more snow that we did, one that I photographed just before Christmas. Below are the results.

Now the first of the two images in the set immediately below is from today. The second image is from a few weeks ago. I wanted to show the difference a change in weather can have on a scene. It is the same scene with a change of the weather. This is proof that a scene can and does change with different variables.  

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The below image is from today. This is from the cemetary I stood in as I shot the two above images. While the skiy in the below image has been enhanced, the image is not a composite. The sky is how the sky was.

The below image was shot as a single image, then processed three times for different exposures and then merged to HDR to balance the snow, sky and non-snow elements.

All in all, it was an amazing day out. It took only an hour and a half from leaving the house to getting home, and took about 15 miles each way. I shot for a total of 15 minutes in two different locations. My pain levels are high right now, but I very happy with the results and feel it was worth the trip out of the house.

I love winter, even it isn't nice to me all the time.

Be safe out there.