Choice

It started with a fiery dawn… And then I shot a big transport plane making a training landing – from the car as I drove down the highway. Don’t do this at home kids. Dead thing? The vulture had a go. There, choose your picture of the day.

Point and shoot. I mostly just let the camera do the settings. Yes, it ain’t professional. No control. Do I need it? I let fly. And even thru the car window. The others were thru the windows of my home. Ha ha. Every year Colleen has the window washer come. It pays to have clean windows.

What to say

Everybody has an opinion about the weather…. Scotland. It is up and down. And wet. And chilly. Bring the right gear and you are wet but not cold. Yes, there is a lot of up and down. Nice views. Where else do you get castle towers with your sunset? Suddenly, I understand why the land calls to Colleen.

Bridges

We shoot bridges. Colleen does! I do! It became a thing with us recently although I have been shooting bridges from the car for quite some time. Lately Colleen shoots because she hates the idea that I am driving distracted. Nonsense, I am just navigating by the camera LCD screen. No!

Okay. I probably started many years ago holding my camera as I drove in order to catch the sunrise as I drove to Maine near dawn. No stopping. It would have delayed the trip. Ha ha. Well, it was fractured reasoning but it stuck. I have the camera on automatic/program mode. Simply turn it on, point and shoot. I don’t even look at the LCD screen any more. There are many reasons why this technique is inferior and doesn’t work. And sometimes the image is certainly ok. I liked the clouds and my position relative to the bridge in this image.

So, it’s simple. Point and shoot. Don’t overthink the shot. The camera will do the heavy lifting. If you don’t get a shot, no harm done. And I am amused that Colleen is such a good photographer even if she doesn’t know it.

Breaking clouds

Easy! No look camera shot out of the passenger side window. We had early morning fog that was lifting. Press the shutter. Auto focus? Nothing sharp to focus upon. Auto exposure? But, of course!

So, you get the sun in the picture. Nice. You can almost see blue sky behind the cloud. Neatly done. I would applaud the technical prowess of the photographer except this was a blind shot out the window. Purely fortuitous, or, skill?

Sunset

We are on the road. Yes, driving at (xx) speed. I take what I can get. We don’t stop. No time? Lazy? Not spectacular enough? Eh? The clouds all afternoon were spectacular. I was bedeviled by the telephone poles and wires that obscured my view. Finally! As we crossed one bridge the clouds over another were in view. No matter that my foreground had bridge and a car included. Hey! What you do you want from a one handed no look photo through the car window?

I coulda done better. The camera set on automatic did pretty good bidding for me.

Cloudy

I am in an introspective cloud period. White clouds are so stark against a blue sky. They are never the same or repeated. Cumulus clouds are there many times over. Shoot? Admire or ignore? One never knows. I shoot clouds. Then again I have a camera at hand most times.

Moon

It was the supermoon. I can do moon shots. I do it in manual. It’s pretty easy to get a shot of the moon into my camera. Super moon – full moon when the orbit is closest to earth. The moon is 250,000 miles away. It looks better/closer in my mind. Meanwhile, I got moon shots. And clouds. And the moon in the clouds. And the moon covered by clouds.

The settings are critical to the exposure. Automatic actually does a fair job. But the moon itself is too bright and the craters and mountains are washed out if you go with automatic. So there is a bit of tweaking needed too. It ain’t perfect. But I got some shots and can show you. I learned and was surprised that the camera could capture the moon thru the clouds. Clouds have few enough details in daylight. The house and trees provided some sharpness for the eye to focus upon.

Correlated

We have a beach cam in town. It has a view west toward my house. and out my window I have the same clouds on views. How neat!

Win some

You would think I know everything there is to know about photography by now. Learning? Does it ever end? As a surgeon I learned new tips and operations all of my career. So, I guess the learning is never done. What?

Shooting out the car windshield is not recommended. The passenger may do it. So, grab shot – one where you just press the shutter for luck…. I got one. Colleen got one. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. You guess. And meanwhile there is plenty to be critical about either image. And it is a small miracle that I am able to share them with you. It was for the clouds that the image was taken on the road to the Verrazano bridge. And it was for the moon on the NJT at dusk. Neither shot really had a chance. Surprise!

The clouds show. There’s plenty of foreground clutter. But the clouds are cool! And the moon shows up easily enough in the image. The evening afterglow shows up too. …counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike…

It’s early on in the resurrection of this blog. I wonder if anybody is listening?

One

Clouds. No two pics are the same. Dramatic. I go for the dramatic formations. It was pre-storm. When you travel with a companion no matter how tolerant and loving, she will eventually object to stopping every minute or every ten feet. So, I have learned to shoot on the run, or, in the car while it’s running. Zoom a little to crop out extraneous road stuff and let “auto” do its exposure. Not bad, eh? No question, I got dramatic. The only problem? Pick just one image.