rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Eight

Some of today’s slightly unusual events included:

  • a rare sighting of a train coming down Island Avenue;
  • an accidental photograph (while grappling a shopping bag) of the friendly Walmart guy;
  • inspecting an old for-sale Passat;
  • spotting a pretty rare (perhaps for good reason) and probably over ten years old supercharged C230 4-banger Merc in traffic;
  • engaging the services of the Busy Bee furnace guy for an entire afternoon of cleaning the furnace ductwork in anticipation of winter

Exciting stuff, no?

Venice, Circa 1975

In my on-again, off-again project to scan and digitize at least some of the >80,000 black & white 35mm negatives from years past in basement storage, I returned to find something that I recalled, triggered by my recent moon and stars image.  It is this photo, taken of a dirty and broken window in my beachfront neighborhood of Venice, that for me then (and perhaps now) evoked a view of the cosmos.
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Venice was a gritty, roughshod place that suited my gritty, grainy, contrasty style of photographing at the time.  I quickly assembled a few more — all previously unpublished — that fell to hand to display below (I suspect that I have hundreds and maybe thousands of Venice images from this era), led off by a street scene near the beach and boardwalk in pre-gentrification, or early stages thereof, times.

Oh, yeah.  Come to think of it, this was where I was living when I met the love of my life — but she moved me out soon thereafter and eventually we found ourselves in Oregon.  And so on and so on.

rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Seven: Revisiting the Moon

Undeterred with the knowledge that last night’s eclipse occurred before moonrise here, we arise at 5am today to take a look in the opposite direction.   Here’s the initial view, followed by a re-exposure for the stars, and with the final combined post-processed overlay to show both moon and stars:
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Playing around a little bit by sequencing exposure changes, we can turn the moon into a sun:
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Here is the initial series for the above, captured at ISO 400 and f/4 aperture, from 5:13 to 5:23am in (almost) one-stop shutter speed exposure increments, still in total darkness and extreme cold, at 29 degrees on the street with bathrobe and slippers:

Many people don’t realize how bright the moon really is…

rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Six: Lunar Version

Failing an attempt to document the lunar eclipse in the way that was intended, we nevertheless submit these indications — ranging from about 6:30pm to 10pm — that there was such an event tonight:

As time allows, I may try to do a composite over time of the changes (captured in more than 60 images) and/or an animation of the ascent across the sky.

rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Four

Up early today, but not as early as Kim who took Charlie up Deal Canyon.  With a late start, I catch them about three (? — Kim thinks it is much less) miles in, as they were returning.  (You can see a work-in-progress experimental take on Charlie’s greeting as he spots me coming up the trail.)  After a couple of encounters with stranger dogs, we return into town, still crisp and cool from the fall start.  And a little visual automotive trivia is noted along the way, including a reminder of Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” debacle.

(By the way, in case you don’t know, the “TDI” rear badging on VWs (and some Audis) stands for Turbocharged Direct Injection, but is also known as Turbo Diesel Injection.  In any case, it designates VW’s diesels for the past decade or so.)