Wait, What?

Wait, what day is it? 

What happens when all of your days blend together? 

Some times you don't sleep well and other nights you are just plain restless. One of those nights I woke up ... wide awake at 1:30 in the morning. There was no going back to sleep so I went out on the porch and decided to look at the sky.

Yes, I am very fortunate to live in a 'hollow' with the nearest street lamps 12 miles away. If I go up on the ridge, the yard lights of farms across the ridge do 'pollute' the night sky. So lucky lucky me. I can admire the stars from my porch and my driveway.

Porch view of that night's Milky Way. 
It was clear enough for the naked eye, but the camera can pick up so many more details.

Is it no surprise that I fell in love with the night skies while living here for the past 29 years? 
The stars give me a sense of peace and wonderment [as do most things in nature].

I went out to try a selfie of me looking up at the Milky Way. It didn't work. Other years I've gotten the beam from my headlamp to show up in the humid air...
Not so this night. I tried over and over. So then I turned the red light on and twirled it for a 25 second photo.

It is called light painting, which I never really got the hang of.

But I thought it turned out neat.

I'm going to try it again but wear dark clothes and use some glow sticks. 

Here are some random Toy shots I just felt like doing on an overcast afternoon. 
The Goat herder seems unaware that he is being watched. Squatch who is one of my favorite toys is still around Aurora! He often joins the Legos on adventures!
 

This Rock Monster set up on the cookie tray with a clay mushroom I made, along with bits of plastic leaves and chunks of wood.

Of course. the Evil King and Queen of ... hmmm, I don't know what to name their kingdom, do you have a suggestion?

While out watching the hummingbirds and the clearwing hummingbird moth, I placed an HO figure on one of the Blazing Stars just to see what would occur. 

And he looked as though he became a Bee Keeper! 👇

I spent some time outside yesterday morning with both my macro and long lens. I still have to go through a lot of photos of flowers, birds, bees, and other insects. By 9am, I had finished up outside and mowed a tiny bit before coming in for a shower.

The rest of the day was taken up with a morning visit with hubby's nurse and and afternoon visit for his sponge bath. Rich looks forward to these interactions.

So, yesterday was Monday. Let's see what today brings.

I'm  going to meet a friend I met at the gym and go see her place. 

I feel a bit wicked knowing that I have some free time to do something different.

So yeah.

Wait

What?

Hot Hot

We've had a pretty decent summer so far. Cool mornings and nights even though we had a lot of rain and bugs.

Now? Yikes, I was not ready for a 79* dew point, with 79% humidity and 80* temps yesterday morning. Yuck. Yuck and double Yuck.

I did outdoor work and my errands early. I made cold Italian pasta  salad for supper and retreated to the indoors for most of the day.

I continued to mess around with my Lego bricks and lights to make that Space Challenge Scene that was on for last month. Even though I didn't come close to 'winning' I enjoyed the fun in making interesting scenes to celebrate Lego's Space Theme for the past month.

This really didn't work out as I imagined but I had a lot of fun building the Labratory. I created a space environment with an AI generator for the background.

I placed the works on top of a wooden block on my keboard...

and ended up with this....          👇

I am learning now to build and then set up a camera and see what view the camera can see and use that area for details. It is different building for fun and building a little 'set'.

Setting up the 'set', lighting, and characters is hard! It is so much easier to do a Lego shoot outdoors in my opinion.

Here I just took my Little Tourist Alien and set him on the porch with some rocks and one of my garden Gargoyles.

It was rather easy to deal with the lighting and scene.

Since I was avoiding the heat and humidity, I thought I'd build something fun and unique to use a new character with. It was to be Spacey and have Cool Lighting.

I began with a plan. I wanted a blue eerie lit background. That meant making a part of a wall with see through blue bricks. I put it on a white baseplate and used irregular Lego 'rock' bricks to make the back wall for a cave or alien planet texture.

[The brick texture didn't show up because of the lighting!]

So the idea was to have a space creature walking down the path of blue crystals with cool lights. I noted that the back wall didn't really show up and how was I going to include that in the photo?

As always, I never take the easiest route when trying this out. 

I first tried it with two little blue balloon lights and a white light. I laid the face mister on its side and turned it on to add some glow to the light.

It was sort of cool but it was hard to tell what was going on.

So I went with more color. Of course. When in doubt, make it harder.

I like this version just because of how the red lit up the bricks around the Glaciator Power Miner Minifig and set a menacing tone. Apparently this Power Miner was the supposed to have the power to turn things into ice and explode them. There was a game based on these characters and sets that saw popularity from 2009-2010.
I just saw this guy at a garage sale and picked him up for $1. 

He is also partially made out of transparent plastic.

After all of that what did I learn? I learned that I made something fun and cool. However, the picture doesn't tell any story at all. Nothing. It is just a cool lit up minifigure. I learned that indoor photography with added lights takes a lot of experimentation and adjustments.

I kept this build so I can try again to re-shoot it to tell some sort of visual story. I realize that I should have had a little bit of light coming from directly above the 'set'. That might make a difference.

I was frustrated and pleased with the experiment.

So early this morning I went out with my pal Glenda and created an easy story on the porch.

Glenda rarely needs any explanation for what she does. 

She just does her thing and I follow her around....

It promises to be another extremely hot and humid day.

PS~
Welcome August.