Snow Peaks - Close and Afar

Another great 'summer' day!! ;-)) Seems like it was just a week ago that I put on my raincoat to go shopping and today had a light flannel overshirt, that came off as soon as we arrived at Marino's for breakfast. After shopping we blew off some of our local high-priced fuel to take a drive up to Oregon Summit and take some pictures of the snow on our higher mountain peaks. And that is melting very quickly. Our local newspaper, The Trinity Journal, had a snowpack update in the last issue, April 26th, stating that we had higher than normal snow depth and water content this year. So hopefully that's going to be good for my well, right!! ;-))

I used my tripod, but it didn't really do that much good because of the wind gusts that was hitting me. I had to try and time all of my shots between gusts and hold the tripod with one hand, while taking the shots. In some of my shots way off to the SW you can barely see the peaks of snow, so I shot some at about 50% zoom and a couple at 100%. I didn't even think about it till I was looking at all my pictures on my computer, but I should have used my polerized filter, because all of my shots came out to 'hazy blue', eh!! But you'll get the idea anyway, right. I think my very best shot is the last one. As I was turning about 180 degrees to collapase my tripod and put it away, I looked up to the north and saw those beautiful swirling clouds!! ~ Later, 'Viper'

Misc Shots Around Town Today

Today I needed to take a truck load of aluminum, plastic & glass into one of our recycling centers, get gas for my truck, file some paperwork at our Courthouse & pickup our mail. So when they weighed my stuff and I signed the form, the attendent handed me $43.33. I then drove to our lowest priced station in town so I could save a dime per gallon and filled up my truck which was at the 'half' tank mark, right. I try to not go below that level, because of the cost of filling an empty tank. The price for 87 octane was $3.199 and I knew that it would take about 10 gallons, so I handed the clerk $40. It took a little over 11 gallons at $38.92!!

Then after filing paperwork at the Courthouse to request a review by a Judge, on my eviction procedings of my non-paying tenants, I headed over to the PO to pick up my mail. As I drove into the parking lot saw this beautiful Red Cobra, so of course I had to take some pictures, right!! ;-)) Yesterday, I had taken a couple shots at my friend place, Norman Heryford, of a creek and his cute little dog, Kismet. Then today on the way home I stopped and took a couple more shots of our Spring blooms and then cropped out sections of one to give some different views. Hope you enjoy all of them, eh!! ~ Later, 'Viper'

Another Beautiful Spring Day

Just check out the 'panograph' above and you can see what I'm talking about having such a beautiful spring day, eh!! Since my last garbage/trash run in January, I've been using my truck bed to store the next load, till all of our rain and snow stopped. Well, today was that day, so I added a few more bags, grabbed my tripod and diddy bag with my camera and misc extra batteries, etc, and headed into town about 2 pm (Tuesday the 25th) today. I take a lot of my pictures of our Trinity Alps from a turnout area right at the enterance to what we call our 'transfer station'. It's call that because they closed our 'land fill' dump years ago and we now use large dumpsters or trailers to haul everything out of our area.

So when I came out after unloading my truck, I pulled around to the turnout area and set up my tripod. The 'pano' above is 6 shots 'spliced' together with my FREE AutoStitch software and as you can see it does one terrific job. All I need to do is allow maybe a 10% overlap with each new shot and the program aligns everything perfectly. Anyway, I hope you enjoy viewing our snowcapped mountains as much as I do, eh!! In the rest of the pictures you'll notice by the file names that I played around with some of my shots, so be sure to check out the 'posterized' and 'exposure*' shots. ~ Later, 'Viper'

Spring Has Finally Sprung!!

Spring is showing all around us now, even if it's in the form of snow, eh!! I made a run into town today to pick up a prescription & new eyeglasses for Kathy and our mail and got to see all the pretties blooming all around town. We're about 800' higher and it takes a few more weeks to see all the new blooms and leaves up here, eh!! The shots thru #7579 were taken on Oregon Street about 1/2 mile from town. Then I shot the next 2 just below our property of distant mountains to the south of us and the rest were shot just across from our driveway of Weaver Bally to the north. As you can see I was shooting thru the trees and had to do a lot of manuvering to get a good focused shot. Then for fun when I was editing all these shots, I tried playing around with some different framing, but doing a different one for each shot. Hope you enjoy all these pictures, including a couple 'bonus' pictures from our local newspaper, The Trinity Journal. ~ Later, 'Viper'

Our 3 Days of Easter Weekend!!

Last Thursday the 13th & Friday the 14th were the first days of NO raining or snowing in about 6 weeks, with the sun peeping out every once in awhile, right. So I was so happy to take these pictures of our 'Spring Days', eh!! Then on Saturday the 15th as we were heading into town for our breakfast and shopping day, it started to lightly raining and while we were shopping and moving from store to store, we'd have a little cloud burst and some heavy rains and then back to drizzles.

By the time we arrived back home about noon, it was back to more steady raining. A little later while I was working in my office, something caught my eye out my window, so I turned to look and it was SNOWING!! ;-)) This is a first for me since moving up here in 1976. Kathy (my wife) has only lived up here since 1982 and she said she can't remember us having this much rain so late and having snow in on Easter weekend, either!! So I grabbed my camera and took some shots, thinking that this was so unusual, that I just had to document the snowing, right. Well, I didn't have to worry about that because about midday on Easter Sunday it was snowing even heavier!! Some very strange we've had this past year!! ;-0 ~ Later, 'Viper'

P.S. ~ Here's some miscellenous shots from today, including some shots of our local Ravens. The one on the left was taken after 6-7 trys at getting one or all 3 Ravens flying by this cloud and I kept missing the shot by a millisecond, eh!! Finally, I focused my camera on the cloud area and then just watched with my eye the circling Ravens, till this one flew up close to the cloud and just snapped the shot!! Success!! ;-)) I also took a lot of 'burst' shots of 2 to 5 shots at a time, but threw most of them in the trash.

More Variety & Spring Shots!!

Well Hallelaujah!! The month long off/on rains have finally stopped, even if for only a day, eh!! Just check out the 'SpringDay' shots, eh!! ;-)) All of these shots were taken right from my front deck. Be sure to check out 'Clouds_OddShaped' and use your own imagination to see what you can make out in the cloud shape, ok. I will not tell you what I see right now, as I don't want to influence you in any way, right. But you can tell me what you see and I'll tell you what I see, ok.

Now, here is my try at some 'macro' shots of ice cubes. I tried a variety of 'lighting' tools also, to see how that would make the same basic shot look different. I also used other tools to make take away the yellow tint of our flouresent lighting in the kitchen where I took these shots. Anyway, I had fun to trying out various tools that I don't normall use, right. Hope you enjoy my Ice Sculptures. ;-))

Now this 'twin' shot is of two pictures taken at the culvert that is about halfway home from town, right. The shot on the left is looking 'up' the creek to the North and the shot on the right is looking 'down' the creek to the South. I also took a very short 9 second video of the 'south' shot so you can see just how fast the creek is flowing and hear the sounds too. All of these culvert shots were taken in a misting rain, so I had to keep careful to not point the camera up above level and get water on the lens. I did cover the lens a couple of times with my left hand, like when I was taken the shots of the trees up high. All these shots were taken on Wednesday the 12th, because I just had to go into town to do some banking and pick up our mail. Then today the 13th we get all this beautiful Spring weather. Just my luck, eh!! ~ Later, 'Viper'

Variety of Shots

Well folks, I have a mixed bag of pictures for you today. The first 2 are of our local Ravens. This one was raising hell with me for being outside on my deck taking pictures of the clouds and sunset. I can't tell if they're saying 'Feed Me!!' or 'Get back in the house!!' ;-)) The 3rd picture is of our cat Lucy. She'd go to the door, I'd open it, then she'd just set there looking outside, but not going outside. So I told her if you're not going out, I'm taking your picture. You can tell she didn't care what I did, right!! Cats!!

The next 3 shots were taken at night, with my camera on the night setting and my tripod. The pictures were totally black excepting for the moon, so I did a little creative editing, eh!! The 'moonlightORsnow_NOT' shot was an odd one. I'm really not sure if it was moonlight, my porch light or both that gave the leaves that snowy look, but I thought I looked great so I got a couple shots, right!!

All the other shots are of our area landscape shots, till you get to the last 3, eh!! I was about 3 weeks+ overdue for a haircut and trim and Kathy had went into town today to get a new hairdo, so I took a picture of her new 'do'. Then I had her take a 'before' and 'after' picture of me too. I cut my own hair/beard and Kathy does the back trimming for me. So I thought I'd just add them here to so you all can get a good laugh at my doings, eh!! ~ Later, 'Viper'

Snow, Quilts, Glassware & Misc

Hi!! ... Today I have a lot to share with you, eh!! First off, on the first day of April we had a light covering of snow at our level. Surprise, surprise!! ;-)) But we did get to do our weekly eats/shopping, as the driveway was clear of the snow. The cloud cover was so very low in the morning when we left, we could only see 'sneak' peaks of our local mountains. While we were in town it kept raining in little clouds bursts, but no more snowing. Afterwards we drove out the back of the elementary school where I take a lot of my pictures of the Trinity Alps and you can see all of them here, plus there are a couple extras that I throught in for my family and friends that know how much trouble I've been having in 'evicting' some really nasty non-paying tenants!!


We also stopped by my cousin's business, B & T Enterprises, to see Terrie's old glass and bottle collection. She wants to sell them on eBay, but hasn't gotten around to setting up everything. So in the meantime I took some pictures and have included them within my Blog today.


Then to top off everything, their son Bobby Jr's girlfriend Donna, make 'hand-made' quilts and they are selling her handi-work at B&T's and putting them on eBay too. So I took some shots of Donna's album of quilts and you can see them here.
Plus I'm still transferring all my old stuff over to my 'New' computer 'VIPER'. Just when I think I've gotten everything ready to switch computers, something very tiny pops up like not having my name/password for my Blog in Viper, so that I could do this 'update', eh!! Busy weekend, eh!! ~ Later, 'Viper'