One problem with doing handheld closeups with the lens wide open using auto-focus is that the slightest movement causes the focus to change.  Since the depth of field is already super-shallow, confusing the auto-focus often results in soft focus. Tonight I got smart and set the lens to manual focus which worked pretty well.  Even though most of the subjects are soft or blurred due to the shallow depth-of-field, the areas I focused on are sharp. The roses in the bouquets I got last week are drying nicely, and the edges of an orchid made a nice shape.

We put Laurie’s Master’s Thesis on a poster for a math conference in Lubbock, TX in March.  We plotted it today and were looking at in on the counter, when Rosencrantz decided he needed to check in out and then help roll in up by providing resistance while Laurie rolled it up. He rolled with the rolls and managed to stay on the paper to the very end.

 

I went to work before sunrise this morning the birds were stirring in the semi-darkness. One crow landed on the left-turn arrow to help direct traffic at Alameda and Corrales Road. On my way into downtown on Lead, the pigeons were lined up like insulators on the the power line. On my way home there was a five car pileup on 528 in front of Cibola High School. I could only fit 4 of the 5 cars in the frame, as the fifth car was blocked by the tree on the left.

 

 

 

Things are against us, and the perfect ending to a rather annoying day came when I got to the Walmart pharmacy a few minutes before closing to pick up a prescription for Laurie and they didn’t have it. The dentist had called in the prescription and left a message, then called a few minutes later, got a person, and asked how long it would take for the prescription to be filled — “an hour and a half” was the reply — so Laurie called me at the office  and asked me to pick it up on the way home.  For whatever reason, the message didn’t get through and there was no prescription.  I picked up two bottles of cream and a half gallon of milk, and got in the “10 items or less” line. Walmart was a zoo with people of every “challenge” imaginable swarming the Valentine’s isles.  When the woman in front of me got to the checker and stood beside her cart to unload it, I noticed she had well over 10 items, mostly multiple fruit she hadn’t bagged. I suppose if she had bagged the fruit like a normal shopper, she would have had ten items, but loose she had more than twenty. Even worse, the checker weighed and entered the code for each individual piece of fruit, even though there were only 4 different varieties of fruit.  If there is a hell I can imagine it would be an eternity of standing in line behind people who don’t bag their fruit and checkers who can’t assemble and weigh like items.

 

Snow was falling under a uniform gray sky, laying down a thin white blanket in the subfreezing temperatures, when I got up this morning. The geese and cranes flew to and fro as dry flakes gathered loosely on the plants, falling off with the slightest movement caused by wind, bird or beast.  The temperature slowly made its way above freezing, so by 10:00 am no snow remained.  Puck played with a wood chip after rolling in the dirt where the mulch had washed away, while sparrows and finches scratched in the driveway taking refuge on a far post and thick branches when I approached them.

 

 

 

 

 

I got a couple new bouquets of flowers when I was at Costco today.  They had a fresh shipment for Valentine’s Day, and I couldn’t resist the combination of daisies, roses and carnations in these bouquets.  BTW. A flash ring is a flash that fits on the end or the lens for doing flash with macro (close-up) photography.

 

 

 

I got a ring flash for my macro lens. These are my first photos with it. I still need to do a lot of experimenting with exposure, but I’m happy with the results so far.

 

 

 

This installation is in a yard at the top of our road. When it was installed around Christmas, I thought it was decoration for the holiday, but tonight I gave it a closer look and realized it is an installation of night art.

Among the memorabilia at Cecilia’s Restaurant on 6th and Silver is a rusty New Mexico license plate from 1957.  Apparently the plates in those days had green numbers against a white field, and since the year is embossed in the plate, the DMV must have issued new plates every year in the 50’s.

If you are downtown looking for good New Mexican food, I recommend Cecilia’s. The food is spicy and as close to homemade as you will get in a restaurant. Cecilia’s was even featured on a Food Channel show that was called something like “Dives and Diners on Route 66” a couple of years ago.

 

I had one of those days with no real breaks. But as I was leaving the office this evening, the full moon, under a veil of thin clouds that obscured its detail, looked like a big city light hovering in the sky.