Pining for spring

Despite what some large mystical rodent may have divined it's still very much wintertime in NW Pennsylvania.  March is quite a schizophrenic month, it melts then freezes then rains then freezes and snows over the ice then rains over the snow.  Everything is white then brown then brownish white then brown again then greenish brown then finally Spring truly arrives.  I love spring.

Here's some shots from this week.

And don't forget to text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10  to Japan relief.   It's a great way to help such a huge need, and it doesn't get any easier.

Winter fog

I'm so ready for spring but I couldn't pass up the foggy goodness this evening, I had to get out and shoot.
I promise, this blog will be exploding when the snow recedes.

This was taken in darkness, the orange hue was from my parking lights far to the right.
The foreground lightpainted by Droidlight.

Country blizzard

Some more shots from my drive yesterday.

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Happy New Year everyone!

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Ten days to go and I'm as void of creativity as I've ever been all year.  So when you're all out of creativity do something completely random...like toss some citrus out in the snow.

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Special request from my Auntie out west.  This is my Grammy's house.

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I took little walk my little girl tonight.  There's 50 inches of snow out there.

This is a car dealership

French Creek

Couldn't decide which I preferred

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I know I caught hell here for the same sentiments last winter but... I really loathe snow.  A few inches is tolerable and manageable but there's 3+ feet of it outside and it's not supposed to let up until tomorrow night. If human's were meant to live in conditions such as these we would look more like Sasquatch and less like naked mole rats.
 Why don't you move, you grump!  You say?    ...I'm working on it.

"Moon and Half Dome" (3 foot snowdrift + photoshop)

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A spectacular frosting this morning!  
I really need some snowshoes. I had a great time but after looking through the shots I took, the images just seem to lack something.  I don't know maybe I'm just grumpy.  Most of the salvageable pictures need a lot time to process on my P.O.S. slow computer but here's a few that were finished tonight.


After a movie with the wife I'll be off to the same field to shoot some stars.


[EDIT: I got called for work tomorrow morning, damn beeper!  AND it's friggin' cold out there.  I'm gonna wuss out on this star trail project for tonight...maybe I'll get psyched up for it next weekend...or maybe it'll wait until spring.  I'll bring my camera with me tomorrow morning, so you may be seeing some more frost.]

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We got hammered with another winter storm.  It didn't accumulate much more than a foot and some change but due to the high winds there are some impressive drifts.

The photo below is the view from our dinner table which is not too spectacular normally because the moron that designed and built our house decided that the garage roof was a nice sight.

Later I went for a walk across the street in knee high snow.  This shot is actually four frames stitched together vertically.  I don't have the proper Panorama equipment [thus the fish-eye look] but it's still a fun technique.

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I went for a chilly walk in the snow today. 

It was chilly and snowy.

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Today is my beautiful wife's birthday.  I would have loved to take a portrait of her today but I can't tear her away from the Olympics.  We don't have cable tv and NBC is too weak for our antenna to pick up so she will be camped out at my parent's house for the next two weeks.  I know is awful to say but save for a very few events the Olympics bore me to death.

I did manage to take a couple interesting shots over at my parents this evening.  There was a big sparkling snowflake outside the kitchen door and oddly enough there was a fly sitting in the snow next to it. 

So it was macro-time.

I tried another focus stack on the fly.  Without the precision of my Wacom Tablet and only the crappy fingerpad laptop mouse I think I did fairly well.  The image is actually 6 different frames stacked in Photoshop layers then tediously erased layer by layer.  The snowflake is just a single frame.

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Totally unmotivated today...

I did take a short uneventful drive while my daughter watched The Karate Kid for the 5th time in the back seat. 

Here's one of two shots I took. 

pretty exciting huh.

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So, it started snowing Friday and has yet to cease.  Wondering when FEMA will arrive.  My roof is concerning me, there's at least 3 feet on our garage. 
After shoveling the cars out I decided to make some soup, so I headed out to the store and took the scenic route outside town.  I came around a bend and soaring above the road in the blizzard was one of our local bald eagles.  They've made quite a resurgence locally, it was pretty exciting.  I took a few shots and continued down the road.  I did my shopping and returned home to shovel...again.