The Dirty Dish Solution

Posted for Thursday Challenge: Cups 

Dan Rayner

Asking "Aren't you going to take off the lens cap?"

EXIF DATA: Canon Rebel XTi, focal length 18mm, 1/13s, f/3.5 ISO 1600 (Please note the low level of noise at that high ISO)

And you wonder why I wanted the dSLR?

Indian Point

Taken with my new dSLR Rebel XTi 10 MP camera with a tripod perched precariously on a granite outcropping...

Oh...no....wait....

Taken through my passenger side window which hasn't been cleaned since summer with my little Panasonic FX01 point and shoot while driving over the Trenton Bridge (YO SPK!) at 45 mph.

Guard rail and telephone wires cropped out for aesthetics.

What Should Have Been Pxite: White

Gah, I Did It Again! I Prematurely Posted Again.

Trash Can at White Sands National Monument, White Sands, NM.

There is some confusion over who actually took this photo and I only mention it here in fairness. Heather claims she did. But I'm certain that I did because I EXPLICITLY remember taking it. Which means, she MIGHT have taken it because my memory is so terrible. I'm vaguely certain I went to White Sands though. I think.

Still Waiting for Their Ship to Come In

This lame use of a cliche brought to you by Pxite, The Color White, And The Thing of the Moment.

And yes, this means that Pxite is back. Go enter! 

The Thing of the Moment's Red Sock School of Posting®

I have no explanation for this other than it popped up as a screen saver shot like a red sock in the wash and I decided YOU should see it. You're welcome. Please send no money. You'll be billed later.

Balance

I knew I'd have a reason to use this photo someday.

Paper or Plastic?

Posted for Macroday: Paper 

Introducing the Canon Rebel XTi

Please note the i! It's not some freaking crappy Rebel or Rebel XT, or ghastly Nikon, or laughable Olympus, or noisy late comer Sony. Those are for children. Good children, but children, nonetheless.

I broke down bought a dSLR on Black Friday for no other reason than to SHUT YOU SNOBBY dSLR users UP! I'm not even going to take it outside because it's TOO EXPENSIVE and a meteorite will hit it.

Actually, I think it'll make a nice back up camera after my Canon Powershot S2 and Panasonic FX01 which combined are the Full Body Rubdown with a Happy Ending of digital cameras.

And now, in all its Rebel XTi glory with the fairly decentish kit lens 18 - 55 blah blah blah, I give you...

My kitchen sink. 

Sometimes Thomas Wolfe is Wrong.

You CAN go home again. You know. Like..umm..for Thanksgiving. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. But...uh..this isn't my house, so I'd not return to THAT. But it..umm... LOOKS like a house. It's like representative of everyone's house! If everyone... ummm... turned their house into this bed and breakfast. Sorta.

Happy Shopping Day after Thanksgiving, my Gentle Viewers from The Thing of the Moment.

Goodbye Fujifilm A210, We Hardly Knew Ye!

These are the last images ever taken with my beloved Fujifilm A210. I had dropped it earlier in the day and when I stopped to take this image I saw the focus was bizarre, sorta lensbabyish. I thought that I'd keep it and use it as a second camera for that effect until moments later when the whole lens came off in my hands. But it was a brave little camera right until it's very last photo. A moment of silence for it, please. Thank you.

Posted for Thursday Challenge: Misplaced Sentimentality Chair

Better Living Through Pharmacology®

I'm a hoarder. I'm never happier than when I have a bottle of pills to hold in my hot little hand although I rarely take them. I have prescriptions for things and bottles full of stuff that people will go to great lengths to get their own hands on. In fact, I am Death. I ride the pale horse. It is I who will breed the superbug that kills as all because I can never remember to take antibiotics as instructed.

In fact, I've recently been told to take some stuff regularly so I had to get one of those pill organizers to put pills in and carry around like a prattling old woman tending her garden. And I can never find it.

Above are some OTC things I've photographed in the past. The orange are those 81 mg baby aspirin they suggest taken to avoid heart attacks, gout. They taste like orange candy. UNLESS YOU A CHEAP AND BUY THE STORE BRAND IN WHICH CASE THEY ARE NORMAL COLORED ASPIRIN NOT INTENDED OR FLAVORED for chewing. If you catch my drift. I think you do. *spitspitspit*

Mugging For The Camera

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Posted for Moody Monday: Embarrassed 

The Gideon's Bible

"What is that?"
"Ummm...a Gideon's Bible." I said, hoping that would end it.
"Well, Ok, I mean, Where did you get it?' Pleeeease tell me you didn't take that from the hotel."
"Yeah."
"Which one?"
"The Flamingo."
"You'd had that in your bag since we left Vegas?" She continued unpacking and I thought I was in the clear. "They AREN'T prizes, you know!!"
"You mean they aren't like the soaps and shampoos?"
"NO, they aren't like the soaps and shampoos."

This post vacation debriefing submitted to Macroday: Religion 

JKirlin, Visual Preservationist

I have a confession (As I sometimes do). Your lowly and humble photographic servant only SEEMS like the greatest thing to happen to photography since the flash cube, but really, brace yourselves, he's just a guy with a bad memory who knows that once something disappears, he won't remember it anymore. You know how babies, before they develop 'object permanence', don't know an object existed once it's removed? That's me. Only older. But with the same hands. Only bigger.

Anyway, this little bridge was the very first thing I ever rushed out to get photos of before it disappeared. The opposite side had just fallen off and they weren't sure how to fix it. That tunnel leads to a cow pasture and if you click to enlarge the image you can see the log suspended by ropes used to keep the cows on one side of the road or the other.

As it is, they saved most of the bridge but now where they nice white fence is sit a regular metal guard rail and the opposite side that fell in is now sort of cemented back into place and repaved over. I might go back and see how it looks now. That's the most fun of being the Visual Preservationist, going back and not having to say "You mean it wasn't always like this?"

One Last Weather Check

 

For Fellow Photoblogger, Gary J Wood

Because I know what he likes. 

Mars Hill Wind Farm Nov I

I'd like to welcome the many new Gentle Viewers from Save Our Common Mountain Environment. They very kindly linked me and I'd like to return the favor, if not the sentiment. I'm decidely pro Wind Farm because I think it's cool.


I encourage my regular Gentle Viewers to look at their website. Apparently "The Duke of Beaufort, as landowner, wishes to build a large wind power station on the profoundly beautiful and historic Mynydd-y-Gwair (The Hay Mountain), North Gower. The developer is National Wind Power.

The proposed site includes Penlle’r Castell (Summit of the Place of the Castle). This motte and bailey castle, which is documented from 1287, sits above the boundaries of Carmarthenshire and Neath and Port Talbot and is the highest altitude point of Swansea at 1200 feet above sea level. It commands panoramic views across the Bristol Channel, along the Somerset and Devon coastline, much of Glamorgan, North to the Brecon Beacons and West to the Preseli hills of West Pembrokeshire. Mynydd-y-Gwair is a large, unfenced, grazed common of significant conservation value. (from their website)


THAT IS THE CUTEST THING EVER!

I can picture the evil Duke in his castle erecting windmills against the wishes of the commoners because their sheep graze there. I love it. My delight grows in leaps and bounds. I just looked up the Duke and he lives in Badminton House! YES! The one the game is named after!


As I told my local power company prompting them to write me back as though I were a child: "I really like your electricity and I try to use some of it every day" And they have to make it SOMEPLACE and this is the cleanest way that I can imagine. However, Sir Evil Duke, if that's some special mountain, please build it someplace else in your Dukedom. (I've never written a Duke before. The Queen, yes, but never a Duke)

(Dear Commoners, Or you can do what we do and simply behead him. No, wait, that wasn't us, that was the French. - the eds.)

Mars Hill Wind Farm Nov II

 

Mars Hill Wind Farm November III

 

Mars Hill Wind Farm: Tower Assembly

Bonus for those who click on the image: You can see the tiny little construction dudes. Well, I'm sure they are full sized, but you know what I mean.

Cassiopeia

As Photographed by the ROTH* Space Cam

I'll never know what my Gentle Viewers like after all. I had shown this ealier image to torekimi and she suggested I post it, given that I was reduced to posting plastic bag updates in the tree (this same tree, btw). I didn't like it but decided to throw it up for SeeItSunday: Space because I couldn't think of anything else and torekimi likes it when people do as they are told.

This morning, while telling her that people actually COMMENTED KINDLY on it, I noticed that I got a decentish image of the constellation Cassiopeia. No amateur astroner, I, but I think it's the only constellation with a breast.

(Roof of the Honda)