dunelight

C-Scow Nationals Regatta

I’ve been gone for about a week and a half. I was spending all spare time processing the 1,100+ photos I took during the C-Scow National Regatta back on it’s first day, June 18.

And what did we learn? You can meter for light conditions but when you are shooting outdoor sports where your angle is constantly changing in relation to the light source you are still going to spend a lot of time pushing levels. You see the value in something like PhotoMechanix so you can do fast sorting, ranking, stamping etc. I’m thinking of buying it. The hours of labor saved would be sweet.

The thing about shooting in RAW is HUGE FILES…and when you are doing that first quick sorting job sometimes all you need to do is to push the levels a wee bit and crop well to find you have a great shot. That takes so much time.

These one design sailors are dedicated, crazy good sailors.

I had an opportunity to do two cross lake (Lake Michigan) races with the position of photographer/rail meat. (I’m usually pit halliards/pit) Had the weather report been ‘friendlier’ I would have went but I am now 2 months out of a broken back. That fact plus the fact I lack a high quality water proof housing kept me from participating.

Burnished

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

I should say hello, summer, but I’m taking one final look at my late spring iris gardens. This iris looks black in most light, however, the rising sun makes it glow from within. Cool trick, that. You see yellow iris and peony buds in the background.

Till Summer Folds Her Miracles

Till Summer Folds Her Miracles,
As women do their gowns,*

Even as one iris flower wilts another is blooming.

*(Excerpt from Emily Dickensen Nature’s Changes)

Lens-Artists Challenge #152 Shade and Shadow: Spectra

This is Spectra during a race back in 2015. There is so much wrong with this photo…but there is so much right. The lens-flare, the distortion of colors from an oddly-streaked, hazy sky play against cracking sharp shadows and silhouettes on sails and water.

This is after the race with sailors chilling and talking with people on other boats. The background boat has already taken down their jib while Spectra’s jib curls around her captain.

https://lagottocattleya.wordpress.com/2021/06/12/lens-artists-challenge-152-shades-and-shadows/

Cars

“Drop a gear and disappear.”
~Anonymous

It may be difficult for others to understand the American love affair with cars. We’re a big country with a lot of highways. A good century ago our Captains of Industry got together to certify that we would never have public transportation on the same scale as Europe and further ensure that we would indulge in their products and get about our vast nation in cars.

I enjoy cars. If you’ve got a ticket for me and I’ve got the ear plugs I’ll go to the races. I also appreciate a good car show.

I wonder if future generations will have the desire as well as the means to sustain and indulge in this love affair.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the car they drive.

I would qualify that statement by amending it a bit; you can tell a lot about the people who have extra money to spend on cars by the cars they bought and which ones they choose to drive and which they keep for show.

A lot of older Americans enjoy restoring a classic car then hitting the car show circuit. I can understand the love. I sincerely hope future generations can pursue such a pastime as they enter retirement.

This show on Tuesday, June 8th, was part of ‘Back to the Bricks’ Visionary 2021 Promo Tour.

We went because our next door neighbor entered one of his cars.

Frail Aristocrat of Time

She Sped As Petals Of A Rose

She sped as petals of a rose
Offended by the wind.
A frail aristocrat of time
Indemnity to find.
Leaving on nature a default
As cricket or as bee.
But Andes in the bosoms where
she had begun to lie.

~ Emily Dickensen

It got up to 80 degrees today.

Lysander

I present Andy Pandy the Pandemic Pandemonium. Variously known as “Get OUT!”, “Stop That” and “Who’s a Good Boy?”

As denizens of the internet, proper online etiquette suggests you now worship this cat.

Andy, the most, stubborn, hard headed cat on the internet.

Andy is lovable. He likes us but worships our older cat, Boris. Boris is spectacularly, and at times aggressively, indifferent.

Boris (Bastra’s Boris of Youschef) and Andy (Lysander of Lonecat)

Lens-Artists Challenge #150 Let’sGet Wild; Moose

In 2012 I visited my brother in Alaska. If you live in Alaska you have moose encounters; one broke into my brother’s garage and started licking, chewing and then ripping apart my brother’s new snow blower. There was nothing my brother could do but watch in relative safety from the second floor. He later had to get another snow blower.

Moose are large, cranky, extremely dangerous and move on only when they feel like it. They stand much taller than a deer and are much larger than a deer so if you hit one with your car it will total your car, kill you and further irritate an already cranky animal who will casually walk away from your destroyed vehicle.

This juvenile male was between us and home and so we waited. Luckily he was a chill little dude not interested in us. It is good to be ignored by a moose. Eventually he moved off the road and we went home.

Lake Freighter Entering Harbor

Muskegon is a working port. I caught this lake freighter entering the harbor at sunset on a June evening in 2015. They sound their horn when entering or leaving a harbor.

While searching for a link to freighter horn meanings I found this article. What a headache:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article225937580.html

Have a lovely weekend!

Sometimes It’s Just The Rain

I hope the pain this morning is just the rain. Please, God, it is not tension on vertebrae L-5 due to the burst fracture of vertebrae T-8. This is the stuff of engineering 101; Where is the load on my spine now? Where is it going? What will deform next as my spine seeks equilibrium?

Engineering stress is the applied load divided by the original cross-sectional area of a material. Also known as nominal stress.

True stress is the applied load divided by the actual cross-sectional area (the changing area with respect to time*) of the specimen at that load.

* This is what is known as the, “WTF, in High School I was captain of the football team! I had a body to die for!” factor.

Engineering strain is the amount that a material deforms per unit length in a tensile test. Also known as nominal strain.**

** This is what laymen refer to as “Oh, Mother of God, please, make the pain stop!

True strain equals the natural log of the quotient of current length over the original length as given by… ***

*** I got nothing. My head just exploded. Math is the language of physics and while physics simultaneously intrigues and frightens me I have no clue what’s going on. I embody the mental equivalent of “Don’t mind me, I’m just banging rocks together.”

This morning I would like to think I am a unique and individual human being blessed with singular gifts. Turns out I am just nominal strain’s b^tch. ****

**** Google Translate does not do Idioms well. Here is hoping this translates correctly.

While cowering under my blankets, hiding from the morning pain a neighbor came by to let me know there was a faun in my garden. This is the “Life still comes at you no matter what you are going through factor.” This is a dual factor; 1) Cute, or good, 2) In five years this faun could become 5-10 more deer ravaging my ‘sustaining native pollinators’ gardens or bad. Sometimes this factor just is; so much background actors sent up from Central Casting.

My husband came in and found me wandering in pain circles. When I shared my health concerns he looked at me with dumbfounded revelation. “I’ve been in a lot of pain today. Huh.” And so, he assuaged my fears, refilled his coffee and went back to tinkering on the boat.

Sometimes it’s just the rain.