My online journal sharing interests in photography, nature, coffee life, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, spirituality and asking deep questions.
“You don’t choose your life; it chooses you. There’s no point in asking why life has reserved certain joys or griefs, you just accept them and carry on. We can’t choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys and griefs we’re given.” — Paul Coelho
It is cold this morning: 22 degrees. I don’t think I’ll be going on any picnics today. The snow was wet and heavy causing some damage to a few trees. You can see in the image below the depth of the snow on the bicycles and how the smaller trees along the pond at my condo are bent over. Heavy fog this morning but is suppose to be get all the way up to 40 degrees today. Warmer tomorrow and then more snow late Friday night and into Saturday.
The snow is pretty much gone after a couple of warm days but Nature is planning on sending us more moisture in the form of snow on Wednesday. I took this image last Saturday after our snow on Friday. Nature makes simple and pleasing art.
Well the First Day of Spring will be on Sunday so winter decided to remind us that it is still winter. Mixed snow and rain began falling early yesterday morning and continued through the night. We received between 4 and 5 inches as of this afternoon. And, tonight is expected to drop down into the low teens.
As I mentioned I was off line for a few days as I traveled with my sister to the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle area for a funeral. We knew there would a storm moving through Colorado on Monday but felt it would be okay to travel. We headed home on Tuesday morning thinking we would be just fine. As you can see we discovered some very high winds and blowing, drifting snow once we entered into the southeast corner of Colorado. These conditions lasted for about a hundred miles then we had much better roads and sunny weather to travel in. We just followed two semi trucks, figuring they knew what was ahead. The Fort Collins area receive 12 inches of snow. And, of course along with that comes the colder temperatures.
Yesterday morning on my walk to coffee I noticed this man riding his bicycle. That’s not anything unusual especially in a college town. What was unusual is the temperature was 1 degree. I’m layered and shivering while he pedals away. I prefer warmer riding weather. Different strokes for different folks. Stay warm.
“The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis, but first of all by living. For until we have begun to live our prudence has no material to work on. And until we have begun to fail we have no way of working out our success.”
Thomas Merton
Well, I guess that means I need to take a few more bad images. I posted this image previously in color. For this image I converted it to black and white with Silver Efex Pro.
I have several images of this farm at sunrise. It is a place I enjoy going to and is not that far from home. Here is a link to one of my favorite images of it.
I decided last night to drive out there in the morning and prepared everything before going to bed. I woke before the alarm to the sound of blowing wind. Discovered later those winds were gusting up to 30 mph. I made a mocha latte, put it in my mug and headed out.
Needless to say, way too many images were not usable as it was difficult to keep the camera and tripod steady. For the image of fence below I parked the car on the west side of me as a wind block and then placed my tripod low to the ground to reduce as much shake as possible. I’m down low in the snow, in a bar ditch where most landscape photographers hang out.
Even with nylon wind pants, the wind found ways to penetrate and, as usual, it did not take long for my hands to get cold. I shot everything prior to sunrise and then headed home to warm up, shower and download images. These are the two images I think best represented the morning.
I also seem to have a rather large dust spot on my Fujifilm 18-55mm lens. It’s not a drastic spot and is almost impossible to see it. Only noticeable on light open skies and when you look for it. It has shown up that last few times I’ve used it and gone through the process of cleaning it. This morning I spent more time trying to make sure I have it cleaned. If not I may have to take it in. Stay warm and hang on to your hat.