Tag: Venus

And The Winners Are…

Timothy Price60 Comments

Spunk waiting with AantíiciipÁation!

Gabriela announced the winners of her Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose poetry contest this morning. I am very excited to announce that I shared Third Place with D. Wallace Peach. Congratulations to Virginia Mateias for her First Place poem, and Ingrid Wilson, and Eric Daniel Clarke for their Second Place poems. You can read all the poems at: The Winners of The Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

My poem is One Side Sacred The Other Side Profane inspired by Gabriela’s poem Between Sacred and Profane. I based my poem on W. Eugene Smith’s activism against mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan in the 1970s. He published a book titled Minamata: Life Sacred and Profane in 1972 that brought the issue worldwide attention. I first saw the book when I was a photo student at the University of New Mexico in the early 1980s. I wanted to buy a copy of the book back then, but I couldn’t afford it as a student. Now copies sell for hundreds of dollars, so I still don’t have one. W. Eugene Smith was one of the most important American photojournalists of the 20th Century. I don’t think he ever took a bad photo. His County Doctor series is brilliant. Chisso employees attacked and beat Smith in 1972. Smith lost sight in one eye and never really recovered. He died in 1978 at the tender age of 59. His death was a huge loss to the world of photography.

Dawn

We have cloudy skies tonight. The photos below are from last night before I encountered the zombies and sprites.

Christine’s Tree with the moon in the background. Mia’s Tree under Venus. Christine’s Tree with a bicycle in the background.

Sunset

Lunar Lineup

Timothy Price51 Comments

Jupiter, Crescent Moon, and Venus in a bent line. Saturn’s between Jupiter and the Moon, but it’s not bright enough to show up in the wide-angle photo.

Moon over the Rio Grande at dusk.

Moon over cranes in the Rio Grande at dusk.

Moon in the Tangle Heart Tree.

Jupiter with moons and stars.

Cranes: What’s the big deal? We could fly up to the moon if we wanted to!

Happy Halloween

Timothy Price114 Comments

My birthday cake. Costco didn’t have any cakes with Happy Birthday!

This is a display along Corrales Road. I’m happy I got it early. The skeleton disappeared after the high winds last week.

All the cats got to try on the bat wings. Loki in photos 12 and 13 was the best batwing model. Glenda (3rd photo) and Gwendolyn (last photo) were pretty good, also. Black cats know they look good in bat wings. Spunk, on the other hand, told me exactly what he thought about wearing bat wings after I took them off him (7th photo).

Hunting The Hunter’s Moon

Timothy Price63 Comments

At dusk looking south with Venus overhead.

Jupiter only had two moons tonight. The bazooka is such a blast as it got a tiny Saturn with its rings.

The Hunter’s Moon making its way over the Sandias. Sandhill Cranes in the moonlight.

The Hunter’s Moon rising.

Moon tunnel. Moon glow through the trees.

Mia’s Tree under Venus.

Venus in Purple Sky

Timothy Price50 Comments

Venus in focus through blurry tree (Bazooka). Mia’s Tree with Venus (iPhone 13 Pro). Tree in focus with Venus in the background (Bazooka).

Jupiter with three moons shot with the Bazooka. Moon shot with iPhone 13 Pro. Moon blasted by the Bazooka.

I traded in my iPhone 12 Mini for an iPhone 13 Pro. I decided I wanted the camera with the LiDAR scanner†. As you can see from the two moonshots, the iPhone has a long way to go before it can compete with the Bazooka, but I’m really impressed that I was able to control the exposure well enough to get as much detail as I did shooting a bright moon at 15x zoom†† on the iPhone. I had to lock the focus on the moon while I adjusted the exposure because the moon was jumping all over the screen with the slightest movement at 15x zoom.

Here’s the kicker, since I got a decent discount on the iPhone 12 Mini when I bought it, between Apple’s trade in allowance and T-moble’s trade in allowance, I got $75 more in trade-in value than I paid for the iPhone 12 Mini. The iPhone 13 Pro is larger than the iPhone 12 Mini, but I think it will be worth the larger size for the camera upgrade.

†The Wiki article on LiDAR states LiDAR scanners are available on the iPhone 12. That is not true. It’s only available on the iPhone 13 Pro, currently.

††15x Zoom on the iPhone Pro 13 Pro is equivalent to 390 mm. The Bazooka on the Canon 7D Mark II body is equivalent to 640 mm.

Moon & Venus, Cator Mortis, Lizard, and A Dilemma

Timothy Price71 Comments

The moon, Venus and binary star Spica were aligned tonight. I got the Moon and Venus from the office parking lot. I never saw Spica. I believe Mercury was in the alignment, also, but it was below the horizon by the time I could see Venus.

Loki had a bad case of Cator Mortis this morning.

Spunk was worn out from keeping us safe from monsters and evil spirits during the night.

Silver was chilling. In the chilly morning temps.

Lizard at Laurie’s parent’s house.

The dilemma was that one of the motors on one our HVAC units at the office stopped working. I needed to send a photo of one fan running and the other fan not running to the maintenance person. The photo on the left was taken in regular iPhone mode, which had a shutter speed fast enough to stop the fan that was running. I used an app called Slow Shutter to take the photo on the right, which shows one fan running and the other not running. I had installed Slow Shutter in hopes of photographing lightning on my iPhone. No lightning so far, but it came in handy to solve the dilemma of showing one fan running and the other one not running.