The Machinery of Night

Foto Friday: Phresh

Phreshest Foto Friday ever. I took this today:

Paraglider at sunset, Maui, Dec 30 2011

(Click to enlarge.)

This was the last of five paragliders at sunset tonight. We've had two at a time, but never five. If you had been there, you would have heard me saying, "No! No! Get away from the antenna!" "Not the tree you fool!" "Too low, dammit!" "YOU'RE RUINING MY PICTURE!!" They paid no attention, mostly because they couldn't hear.

This is a pretty good picture, considering it was a hand-held shot (I did have some barbed wire to rest my hand on) of a moving target.

Labels: Dec 2011, Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 11:40 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Through a Cloud Dumbly

I am totally cheating with this FF, because the photo was actually taken early Saturday. But I don't care.

Lunar Eclipse of December 10, 2011

I think it's not too bad, considering it was a hand-held shot, taken with the camera propped up vertically against a pillar. I love my camera, but it does have one huge nuisancey feature: there's a delay of a couple seconds between pressing the button and opening the shutter. This makes shooting in low light conditions...challenging.

Did I mention it was raining? The clouds would part, and I'd whip into position and zoom in. "All right, now! Now! Uh, where'd the moon go?" Back behind a cloud. (And it was really annoying that just a few degrees away, the cloud ended and Orion shone down as clear as crystal.)

I noticed the red star above the moon when I took the pictures, and thought it was pretty odd that the star was so red. Then when I looked at all the images, I saw that it was moving with respect to the moon. ZOMG! Aliens!

Either that or the red flashy light that allows the camera to focus bounced off a rain drop[*]. I tried to take a picture of Orion, and the red "star" was there, too. (And Orion was not. Too dark.) I like the aliens theory better.

Here's a gallery of pictures from people who didn't have to prop their cameras up against a post and shoot through the rain. Well, la-di-da.

[*] It bounces off the eyes of ginormous cane spiders, too. Creeeeepy

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii, Science