Part-time prevaricator
I’m not sure what the bird in the photo above is; anyone know? It’s a wading bird of some kind, spotted down on 1st Street North near the river.
Here’s a larger version of the picture, in case that helps.
Update: According to my sister, who I think is correct, it’s a blue heron.
Also on 1st Street North near the river: a lamppost reflected in a pool.
We didn’t get the worst of last night’s storms. There was some lightning and thunder, a little bit of rain, and a 2½ hour power outage, but we caught the edge of the storm as it went by.
We did get some interesting skies, though.
[twenty20 img1=“4043” img2=“4045” before=“Looking SW” after=“Looking NE”]
But I guess 155mm of rain in a single day—honestly, in about 6 hours—and then another, what, 30mm in about half an hour a couple days later will do that.
Taken on a 20km bike ride on Canada Day.
[twenty20 img1=“4036” img2=“4037”]
The white lines in the image above show roughly where the water should be.
Last night, about 11:30 PM, I set up my camera in the spare room upstairs, to try and catch some lightning during the storm.
The header image above is a composite of about 15 frames where I captured lightning bolts. Below are two of the individual frames.
And here’s a video of the whole show (10s frames at 6 frames a second means that one second of video represents one minute of real time).
Before it got too hot today (34°C again, with a humidex of 38), I hopped on my bike. I took it easy—it was already about 25°C at 9:30 in the morning—and I took some photos of BU.
I also took a few more Brenizer-style panoramas, as practice. One didn’t turn out, but three seemed all right. (There’s some weirdness to the pole behind the deer statue, but I’m posting it anyways.)
As always: if you want prints of any of the photos, here or elsewhere on my site, let me know.
There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.
Jo Walton
Today was hot. Like, “Hot enough for ya?” hot. 34°C. Thankfully, it wasn’t super humid, but it still wasn’t heat I wanted to spend any significant time in.
Then the clouds rolled in, and we had a brief thundershower. Afterwards, the light was that weird golden colour.
I just stepped outside, about ten minutes ago, to see if the storm had leached any of the heat out of the air. It’s still warm, but it’s not “Hot enough for ya?” hot anymore.
The clouds, though, were lovely. So I stepped back inside and grabbed my camera, and took the photo above.
1/320s, 50mm, f/1.8, ISO 100.
Taken on a side road just off Highway #10, about 15 minutes south of my house, at about 1:30 AM.
14 photos, each 25 seconds, 3200 ISO, 11mm, f/2.8. Stitched with Hugin.
96 images in the timelapse above, each one 25 seconds @ 11mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200. The video took almost an hour to shoot, and, at 10 frames per second, lasts about 10 seconds.
Some time ago, I started writing a short story, which at that point was titled “The Lake in the Library”. In its nebulous first lines, it featured a librarian, a library, and a lake in that library. Oh, and a lake monster of some sort.
Later, I had more ideas for the story, and a theme came to me like a bolt from the blue. I excised the lake and the lake monster, not without regret. (There’s no guarantee they won’t reappear; the story is very dreamy, in the literal sense of the word.)
Continue reading “Who is the Black Beast?”
I spotted some lovely flowers in a back lane on today’s bike ride. Since I had my camera, I stopped and snapped some photos. Enjoy!
I snapped about a dozen photos of a ’55 Chevy that was sitting on the street at a ball game this evening, and stitched them together, Brenizer-method style.