We got a little snow before I went to class at UNM this afternoon, then the clouds broke up for a couple of hours, regrouped and it started snowing again. We got over an inch in Corrales, and I drove most of the way home in a blizzard. The storm let up as I got on the west side of Albuquerque, where I was able to get a panorama of it snowing on the east side. The snow had hardly settled on a wall at UNM before a student walked in it.
Interesting find in downtown Albuquerque.
I got out my big tripod, got all bundled up, put on my 17-40mm super-wide angle lens, snapped a self portrait, and headed out into the sub-freezing temperatures to attempt to photograph the Quadrantids Meteor Shower last night starting at 9:30 pm, thinking I could get photos in the darkness before the moon came up at 11:00 pm. But when I got outside, I discovered there was a light cloud cover reflecting a lot of light off the city from the south, southeast. I followed the suggestions about how to photograph meteor showers on Spacedex.com’s Meteor Shower Guides, but it looks like I failed to capture anything but stars, planets and clouds. After an hour making exposures from different angles, I got pretty cold and went back inside. I woke up at 2:15 am, bundled up in the dark and went out the front door and tried some exposures from the front porch. The moon, at 65% full, was up to about 10 o’clock in the southeastern sky, so I made my exposures looking west and north. I got a nice shot of the Dig Dipper in the northern skies at 2:30 am, but again failed to get anything that looked like a meteors.
No wives were bothered in the making of the photos of this dress rehearsal (see Inspirations).
The moon had a really nice ring around it when we got home last night. The fast moving, thin cloud cover formed ripples and streaks under the influence of my 1/3 second exposure and 17mm lens at ƒ/4. You can still see a few stars twinkling behind the clouds and Jupiter next to the moon at about 1 o’clock.
I helped out in three of the five services at Central United Methodist Church yesterday: I played accompaniment for Silent Night at the 1:00 pm service and discovered the fuses were missing from the spotlights when they wouldn’t come on for Jerri before the service. One of the maintenance men called around and found fuses, and ran out and purchased them, so the spotlights were working for the evening services. I ran one of the spotlights and took photos for the 8:00 pm service, and then ended up running both spotlights at the 11:00 pm service. Jerri got the idea to add guitar and castanets for a Spanish song the men’s ensemble performed at the 11:00 pm service, so I also played guitar and Laurie played castanets with the piano on “From a Distant Home”.
A different couple played Mary and Joseph for each service, and Jerri or someone else who knew how to dress the couple got them in costume for the first 4 services. I was in the chancel area when Ronzel, the sound tech, came up to me looking quite desperate and asked if I had photographed Mary and Joseph in costume in an earlier service, because he was trying to get the couple playing Joseph and Mary for the 11:00 pm service dressed and he didn’t remember what all they had on. Fortunately, I had photographed one of the couples in costume, so I ran back to the dressing room with Ronzel, and we were quite a pair looking at the screen on my camera, finding all the pieces of the costumes and getting the couple properly costumed.
We got them ready about 4 minutes before the start of the service, then the couple asked me when they were supposed to start walking up the aisle with the elements for communion — since I didn’t know (all the services were different) I ran up and asked the pastor, ran back told the couple, then dashed up the stairs to the balcony to run the spotlights for the candlelight portion of the service. After the lights came back on, I walked around to the front of the church and slipped in with the choir, and acted like I was singing on a couple of the hymns before playing on “From a Distant Home”. Then I slipped back out, helped Mary and Joseph out of their costumes, and then hung up the costumes and accessories. Laurie’s brother and parents commented after the service how they thought it was funny how I kept appearing and disappearing during the service.
Tristan and David had their annual Solstice party tonight where we all sat around waiting for the end of the world and then reflected on it — it didn’t happen — AGAIN! The end of the world and all that is getting to be a bit of a bore — Firefox, Cat’s yellow kitty, was mad about it, Gia thought she saw it, but was mistaken, and Firefox gave me an appropriate “Blah!” Cat celebrated, Gia consoled the kitty, then she peeked around the corner and gave me a nice smile. After having a lot of fun we all finally had to go on our merry ways until the end of the world comes again.
This cowboy, lighted and leaning against a post is a nice symbol for an easy going holiday season.
Here’s one way to line a driveway for the holidays.
The lights are starting to go up on houses and buildings, and the sky had its own decorations late last night.
Off Center & Not Even 