Rolling

This evening (I'm typing this on Tuesday and will post it on Wednesday morning) I went for a little walk in Memorial Park to take some pictures. I lugged my tripod along with me which is pretty usual...when light is fading - or I suppose I use anytime the light is low, like in the early morning - I use my tripod quite often. What is not usual, what I try not to do, is forget to bring along the part of the tripod that attaches to my camera. Whoops. Being the lazy sort I didn't bother to go back to get my tripod attachment...I just used shutter speeds fast enough to handhold and underexposed the pics and then used my computer to lighten them. Y'all can be the judge as to whether or not they turned out to be worth a snot. I'm of the persuasion that it's a good life strategy to play the hand you were dealt. So if you were, like me, dealt a hand that includes being forgetful enough to forget essential stuff you will have to learn to roll with the punches...and, in this case, take pictures even if you can't use your tripod.

Here's an example of a picture that I took without benefit of a tripod. It was severely underexposed but a little computer work made it decent.

These leaves were on a branch that had blown down in the wind I talk about later in this entry. They were floating in the water of the pond here in town.

Monday was a day I spent mostly in the car driving back from Marquette, MI. If you've seen my car you will know that I'd rather spend time in many other places than in my car. It's kind of beast. I was up there (Marquette is in Michigan's Upper Penninsula right on Lake Superior) to visit my “special friend.” It was a awesome visit since she was there...and it didn't hurt that I love Lake Superior...but I didn't get too many pictures. I got a few though. It's a helluva long drive and so I stopped several times to kind of decompress along the way. One place was at a waterfall where I managed to get some decent pictures. Well, I think they're decent enough to put on here. (I do take alot of pictures that aren't good enough for this blog)

This is Lower Daves Falls. This is a small stream. The average width of the river in this picture is maybe six feet to give you some idea of scale.

This is Upper Daves Falls.

This is a tree I saw while sitting taking a "rest" (remember how I said I'm lazy)

at Lower Daves Falls.

So on the final leg of my drive, as I was about to come into Lancaster, there was a pretty intense storm brewing off to the west of town (for those of you who don't know, I live in Lancaster, WI) and I stopped to get a few pictures of it. You can see in the picture that there was a pretty vivid line between the dark storm cloud and the rest of the sky. The place I stopped was just east of Lancaster on County Highway A and was on top of a ridge. When I got out and took some pictures the wind was picking up pretty good and the weather looked volatile enough to breed tornadoes...so I was kind of nervous about being there. Their weren't any basements around to hide in if I had needed to. I suppose that if a tornado had come along I could have hung out in a culvert 'til it blew over...but really now, who in the hell wants to spend much time lying in a culvert?

A picture to illustrate the clouds I talked about in the previous paragraph