Stormy Day Revisited

It's kind of fun to go back to prior photos and find some interesting ones that I can post in the present on the same day they were taken in the past (still with me? ).

February 16, 2006 was apparently a bit of a stormy day here in North Texas, and I had my camera available to take a few photos...both on my way to work in the morning, and at my office in the evening.

These two in the morning show the sun trying to peek through the clouds. I rather like the rays effect myself.

In the evening, I was still in the office at sunset, and the storm clouds were just starting to clear in the west. At that time, I worked on the 51st floor of a building that was on the west side of downtown and so could go into an unoccupied (or at least occupant-vacated-for-the-day) office on the west side of our floor occasionally to get some decent sunset shots (I've since moved to another firm that's on the east side of downtown....so as with home, I don't get much in the way of good sunset opportunities anymore ). You can still sometimes see the window reflection, but overall they're not bad photos...and here are a couple of those.

As of the time I'm composing this post, we have sun predicted for this February 16...but then again, they totally blew the forecast for this past weekend, so who knows if it will be sunny or stormy!

More Texas Sunset

One thing I miss about the house I lived in until a few years ago is the fantastic western view -- my ex and I had several acres of land, most of it behind the house, and then the land on the other side of the creek that generally marked our property line was pretty much farm land so we had no houses anywhere near behind us and a mostly unobstructed view to the south and west (other than scrub brush and trees and one house way far off). Where I am now, I have houses behind me to the west, so I can't really get the impromptu sunset photos that I used to. Ah well, such is life.

So I've once again dipped into my well of past sunset photos to bring you these from February 2006. Enjoy!

It's funny, you can tell the second photo belongs with the first one, it's really just a zoomed-in portion taken about 20 seconds later and you can match the clouds up between the two. The third one, however, almost looks like it was taken another day, the clouds are so different. But no, it was the same day, about 20 minutes after the second one was taken; the clouds just changed that much in that amount of time...

Moon Me, Baby

I've mentioned my astronomy hobby before, and that I occasionally will take moon and sun photos. Here are a few I took of the moon just using a basic camera with no fancy preparation or set-up. As you can see from the dates on the photo labels, the first one was taken in January 2006, while the other three were taken in September 2007; the latter were all taken on the same night.

It's hard to get a good moon photo without using a tripod, because the slightest hand shake will result in a blurry moon; these particular shots out of many taken on those two nights came out okay though.

This first one you may need to biggify in order to see the clouds above and beneath the moon (it's hard to tell in post-mode how well the small post photo will come out!):

These next 3 you can see the clouds better, but you still might want to bigify to see the detail a bit more:

I hope you found these somewhat interesting!

Wispy Cloudy Birthday

Today's my birthday! Thank you, thank you... I thought it might be fun to post some photos taken on my birthday a few years ago...more because I happened to have them, than because they're particularly special. Heehee....

But I have always liked the wispy-white-clouds-on-bright-blue-sky look, and this particular February 5th in 2006 had plenty of that. It's been all too dark cloudy rainy chilly dreary wintery around here lately, it would be nice to have some days such as the one pictured below again, even if it isn't a warm spring or fall day. There may actually be sun late today; but of course they promised that earlier in the week and we didn't get much, before the rain storms moved through on Wednesday and Thursday. So who knows how the day will be!

In any event, enjoy the pretty wispy blue big Texas skies!

Texas Sunset in Days Past

[knock knock knock] Is this thing on? Yes, once again, life got in the way and I haven't been posting for awhile -- and just when I had thought I was going to be posting somewhat regularly! First one of my kitties got sick and, sadly, passed on a week before Christmas. A couple of other left turns here and there, being busy busy at work, blah blah blah, and before you know it, here we are in February. So let's try again, shall we?

Let's start off the month with a couple of Texas sunset photos from January 2006. The big skies of Texas allow for some really nice sunsets, especially when you get clouds involved. Enjoy!

Here Comes the Sun

And now for something completely different.

Astronomy is one of my hobbies. And while I haven't gotten into the sub-culture of astrophotography all that much, like some do, I have been known to occasionally take very basic moon and solar photos through my telescopes. So I thought I'd share a few solar photos with you from a couple of years ago, on the theory that most of you have probably never seen the sun in quite this manner before.

Believe me - these photos aren't that good, and I'm not just being modest. Really good astrophotographers take *amazing* photos, with so much surface and other detail. But they're still kinda cool. I recommend clicking on them for the larger version, to see the flares coming off the surface...

WARNING: Special solar filters or solar telescopes are needed to view the sun; please don't use a telescope or binoculars without special equipment or you risk not only burning out the 'scope, but also your eyes...and we wouldn't want that.

Hawaii, Part 3

I'm back! Those of you who read my other blog (and that's pretty much all 5 or 6 of you ) know I had computer problems the first couple of weeks of November, and then after that I just kept running out of time to do posts over here in addition to everything else going on. Anyhoo, I'm hoping to get into a regular twice-weekly posting schedule. We'll see...

Now that it's getting cold pretty much everywhere in the Northern hemisphere, how about some more Hawaii photos? If you've ever been to Maui -- more than just passing through the airport -- you may have done or at least heard of The Road to Hana. It's a fairly well-known thing to do, an all day drive along the coast on a somewhat dangerous twisting turning road. One of the mottos for it is "It's the drive, not the destination." Or something like that. But it is indeed a beautiful drive, with lots of hidden and not-so-hidden turn-offs and pull-offs to see pretty flowers, gorgeous waterfalls, grottos tucked away from prying eyes, and other gems.

To whet your appetite and warm you up on what may be a chilly day, here are just a few photos from the drive along The Road to Hana: