Before the flight

White Pelican Ascension

Pelican Take Off

The Random

It was raining lightly. I was frustrated. I was taking my mother to the Sunstate Bank to deposit money for my sister. I had not eaten since morning. The S95 was in the case, not out as usual. We came down the hill on Baya, approaching the Presbyterian Church. I saw the man changing the sign board, with another two letter message. I quickly got the camera out as we passed and had just enough time to point over and shoot. It was not the intended shot. He turned just as we passed.
But, like the unintended that sometimes works, I liked his position better. To me, it looks as if he is bowing in homage or reverence to the church upon the hill. The camera, in its haste to focus, chose to focus on the windshield, leaving him fuzzy. That worked, as what is usually preached from this pulpit is a bit on the may I say, liberal fuzzy,warm side.

The Mourning After

I am randomly working on a series dwelling on this bathrobe over at my sisters daughter Allison's house at Marion Place. It is a gated community, high brow and we are so Beverly Hillbilly visiting there. It is where my sister and mother are currently living while my mom rehab's her broken leg and my sister, in her recent retirement from the VA.
The place is like a motel of sorts to me. We do not in our house have bathrobes of this sort. We do not have such nice stuff. But still, I am intrigued by the robe and I am attempting to try and convey that. In this one, the lonliness of losing loved ones. The girl next door, just this week, lost her boyfriend to a motorcycle accident. She in her cookie cutter house(all the houses in this neighborhood, built two feet apart) no doubt went to her bathroom this morning, and there, hung his robe. Who knows.

Next Stop Sopchoppy

It becomes rather painful to me, that eleven days from today, I shall be a 57year old child. Last evening I took this photograph of myself from Sopchoppy, our now gone house in the background, taken when but two years of age, and submerged it in the geode nearest the front door. I have several of these scattered about the yard, taken from my dad's place. This one rested in the old place off the back porch under the tall spigot. I remember many a honeybee gathering around the rim drinking. I now make effort to keep it full of water.
For you see, it is the fountain of memory. A portal as well. Many a day I have bent as the bee and drank from the depths. And soon, before me rises the old photographs from Sopchoppy and Monticello and Kentucky. And I am for the time quenched, and I am not the aging 57 year old child, stooping painfully low and peering into the geode.

Night Watch Watering Crew

This photograph was taken last evening toward midnight. It was taken with the Canon S95 I recently purchased and continue to learn, testing the limits(and mine), seeing what it can do(and cannot). Any camera, when we know its boundaries, is capable of producing good photographs. And that is a subject long on opinion, of what constitutes a good photograph. Many of the photographs of mine that move me(me I said,not you), are the ones not so technically sharp, in focus and (beautiful). They quite often are the ones taken off the cuff(aka,while riding in the car), those where I am carefully composing(and suddenly a bird flys through), the unexpected, the mistakes(like snapping while carrying at my side accidently).
That does not keep me though from continuing to thoughtfully and slowly seek to compose and get everything in proper focus. That is difficult enough. But it does help when every so often, the unexpected intrudes and makes you look like you really know what you are doing. So, if you are reading this(guardian Angel), Thanks.

Night Visions

The night was on total darkness with the moon having done its monthly job of illumination. It was nearing midnight and Leno was quite uninteresting. The Facebook family had all gone to bed, leaving only the perennial posters to take over the scroll. The rain from the day had moved out, leaving a cool fifty and dropping, with mist night. I took the S95 Canon to the pool deck, set it on the baby high chair with its little jobo gorilla pod and pointed it practically vertical toward the pines and the little dipper beyond. Another 15 second exposure, the limit of the S95, aperture at 2.0, ISO 800. Off camera flash popping to light the pines. This is the same vantage point used for the snowmen exposure. I thought perhaps I would spot them somewhere up there.

Enter Black Hole Geode World

Migration of the Magnificent

by john clare

Once when the Northeastern winds sent off course the South bound
Magnificent Frigate
We enjoyed the time under the remote cypress hammock.
She told of how on calmer currents past she had glanced
upon me below
Continuing onward through the night to the great Southern Archipelago.
She said that had she known of such a hospitable friend
Here is where the migration that night would have ended.
But that was long ago when the winds blew fierce off shore and never since.
The seasons merge and come the first frost of winter
I paddle out to the remote cypress hammock
In hopes perhaps in the night
The Frigatebird recalled our friendly past.
But she never returns and I turn to paddle against the wind so slow.
Somewhere in a harsher clime I pray
My migrating friend finds her Southern Archipelago.

Promised Spring

This morning taking Meme Clara to her house in town, we passed the field, which today, saw the return of the turkey flock. Something told me before we loaded in the rain, take the camera bag along. No, I did not listen. I only carried the S95 with only a slight telephoto. Sure enough, I stopped on my return back home, only to find the S95 unable to get close enough. Lesson's constantly unlearned. Take the camera's along always! Today we needed the seldom used D5000 and it sat home.

Lord Micco Aura