Charlie's Fake Blog

A cold swim below Cucumber Falls  This waterfall is within an easy drive from my house.  Flowing water makes for good long exposure photos.  As I was framing up this shot and fiddling with my settings the young man you see in the water came scrambling across the rocks and politely asked if I would mind if he went for a swim.  I said, no, not as long as you don't mind me taking a picture of you suffering in the water.  He said no he did not mind and there's the photo. As someone that has swam in a mountain stream in early spring I can defiantly say this young fellow is learning the true meaning of a cold, cold bath.      Also, I want to credit Pieter Bruegel’s painting, Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus as an inspiration for the framing of this photo.   A Cold Swim Below Cucumber Falls_A7R1764  Another view of the Falls from a slightly different angle. Cucumber Falls, Rocks, Trees, and Rhododendron Leaves_A7R1776  

 A thunder storm to the North in August with a Perseid meteor.     

 A storm was happening in the west this evening and I went out to take a few photos of the clouds and the sunset.  This is one.  See if you can spot the lion.

Lycopodium digitatum Running Ground Cedar  A plant that grows in the woods at the top of the hill behind the farm. Lycopodium digitatum or ground cedar This is a type of club moss.  A detail from the above picture.

Two Vultures Twice I left the house this afternoon to take some test shots with an old lens that I had just.  A Pentax Super-Takumar 135mm f3.5.  Two turkey vultures flew up from their road kill and headed off in a more-or-less southeasterly direction.  I snapped two quick photos as they circled around and went on about my walk.  Later on when I looked at the pictures after I'd imported them it struck me that I had a panorama I could put together.  A few minutes with Afinity Photo and this is the result.  Two Vultures Twice Here are two more normal pictures one might take with a "Bokeh Monster". At f3.5 At f11 Later on, back at the house, a doe and her two fawns were grazing in the field just across the road from my house. Same lens and a pretty heavy crop. Doe with one of her fawns.

A Pin For Getting Hitched  I participate in a couple of weekly themed Photo challenges on Flickr.   Once in a while I have a hard time making a picture to follow the theme for Flickr Friday or Macro Monday. The Flickr Friday theme for April 30, 2021 was "Pins".  Two ideas popped into my mind. Dowel pin and Hitch Pin.  Below is hitch pin.  I have a wagon I can haul behind my riding lawn mower.  This is the pin that is used to make the connection between tractor and wagon.  I walked out to where I keep the wagon and took the picture with the back yard as background.  It's one of the top viewed pictures I've posted to Flickr.  Go figure. ISO 800 1/500 sec. f/4.5 Sigma 70mm DG  DN A Macro Here is Dowel Pin just as reference.  The table the objects are setting on is a broken TV.  I use this whenever I feel like a low key reflection photo. 0.3750 Dowel Pin My submission for Macro Mondays only required a change of props. Exposure 3 se...

A Table, a Bird, and Grammy's Kitchen  I had an idea for a Flickr Friday theme "Circles".  I titled the picture "Set The Table and Gather Round".   A7RIII with Zeiss 16-35 f4. at f4. aperture 1/250 shutter speed ISO 2500  I didn't think that this would hit like it did.  One of the few pictures I've posted that made it to the Explore page.     I pulled in the driveway this past week and since I had the Sigma100-400 mounted on the A7R3  I sat for a while snapping some pictures of birds at the feeders.  This Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)  perched in the barberry bush long enough for me to get this picture. Sony A7RIII, Sigma 100-400 DG DN C, f6.3, 1/80 Shutter, ISO 100 This is a rather common composition for a bird photo but I like it because there are subtle lines in the bush that echo the line along the birds back and tail. Grammy's Kitchen is a demo of how hard it is to mix tungsten light with daylight.  Changing the white ba...