And the animals come in....

I believe this herder was supposed to be taking care of his small flock of critters. However, it looks like he had a bit too much wine and didn't properly put his farm animals away...

In the early morning, it seems they pushed open the door and decided to help themselves to whatever the herdsman had in the house.

This is a building was from FunHole Wood-Cabin set. It is a Lego like build with the same sort of bricks. It was the very first 'build' I did over a year ago. It has two floors and came with lighting that integrates with the bricks. 

It was a difficult build and the bricks don't fit as tightly as Lego bricks do, but I enjoy using its detailed inside once in a while to have some fun. It has a kitchen, a wood stove, and a bathroom complete with a tub, sink, and mirror. The upstairs has a bedroom and a desk. There is a ladder that goes from the first floor to the loft.

I've used the outside of the building and porch for other photo scenes and I've taken this room apart and rearranged it several times. My favorite part is the wood stove that actually lights up. Most of the wiring and the contacts do work on this build but to my dismay or ineptitude, not all the ones do.

I took the roof and the upstairs off. Under the first floor, there is a circuit board with wires that runs through the bricks and lights things up. The porch lights, stove and bathroom lights work in this shot. There is a battery box in the lower right side of this photo.

I used a warm light [which actually looks green in this shot] to shine on the partially open front door.

I used another tiny Ulanzi light in a warm color to light up the interior.

And lastly, I stuck the face mister and turned it on so it would make the open door glow like morning sunlight. It also made the wood stove light glow. [I put it in the bathroom and opened the door!]

The herder kept falling off the couch so I had to use a tiny piece of sticky tack to hold him in place.

I had several tries before I was partially satisfied with a shot. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't so easy and it takes a lot of adjustments!

This was another idea I had just pop into my head Sunday morning while I was waiting for our company to show up. I couldn't go out in the heavy rain and winds to work on Princess Sara's story, so I had to fill my 'waiting' time with something else.

I ended up using a 30mm lens with a smaller aperture to try and get all of the animals in focus. 

It was not a one and done. I had to really experiment with settings and lights because I kept getting things too dark, too light, or too many harsh shadows. I had to be careful with the mister also especially when I let it run too long and everything in one photo had droplets on it!

And then! Yesterday the sunshine in the morning was brilliant and beautiful. So I could take Princess Sara out....

and begin another part of her wandering story...

Night Moves

The alarm beeped and I reached over to turn it off. Dang thing.

What did it go off for? Who set that alarm for 1:30 am? Oh. I did.
I was going to get up and see where the Milky Way was and I'd set up my camera to try a shot of the night sky.

I had pre-focused my Nikon D5200 just before sunset and had it locked on infinity in hopes that using the 35mm prime lens would give me enough sky to capture some stars.

I shot this at a 20 second exposure with an f stop on the lens of 1.8 and an ISO of 100.
What I saw on my screen afterwards was nearly totally black.

I took another shot on the other side of the house looking north.

I could see a bit more of the stars on my screen. But I wasn't happy with it.
So I changed up the settings and did some light painting.

I used a LED flashlight for about one second on this shot, just clicked on and off quickly.
I could see this on the monitor.

So I tried another experiment. I wanted to take a shot of the porch.
Note to self. Once I took the camera off from the infinity setting and used the Auto focus to take a shot of the skull, the camera would not focus for me. I even tried manual focus.

Frustrated, I set the exposure to 10 seconds and then flipped the little flashlight I had across the porch...

Early this morning the alarm went off at 1:30 again. I sighed and shut it off. I shut my eyes and soon I was wide awake. I glanced up through the window and the stars were bright. The weather folks were wrong!

I grabbed the camera. I thought I'd set it up properly.
However...

I hadn't. The focus was off and I didn't know that until I opened the photos later this morning.
However, I do know where the Milky Way is around 2am now.
And have an idea of where to get shots of it from the yard.

So I will set things up again for another try tonight.

Settings for these shots were 20 seconds, f 1.8 [35mm lens], 640 ISO and 800 ISO.

Tonight I will set up the 35mm lens again and set up the 18-55mm lens to see if I can't get a wider angle.

My husband thinks I am certifiably crazy.

I say, I need to keep experimenting and challenging myself.

Sunrise to Sunset

I didn't intend on getting up early, it just happens. I do like sunrises and this winter I avoided a few spectacular ones because I was too lazy to walk to the ridge.
And it was terribly icy and cold.

However there was no excuse Sunday morning.
Our temperatures had been warm and overnight the temperatures had fallen into the 20's. The gravel roads had firmed up.

I warmed up the car and off I went. I didn't go far, but the car makes it easier to get more than one view of the morning sky.

I was able to do a hand held panoramic of the land at the end of the road.

Then I zoomed in towards the old farm buildings and the silo with no top.

I took off towards the other side of the ridge and parked next to a neighbor's cattle pen.

Indeed, the colors seemed worth getting up for.

I got back to the house and had coffee with my husband before the sun peeked over the horizon. Once the sun did make an appearance, the color of the sky was washed out.

We had coffee and I asked Rich if he'd ever been to the Kickapoo Dam, or if he was familiar with that trail. He said he hadn't ever been there, when he was riding the land it would have been a rather boring trail for the mules.

I told him I was thinking of checking it out for a place to go watch the sunset. I wasn't sure I wanted to go alone so when my neighbor Lauren came down the driveway with some fresh eggs, I ran the idea past her.

She mulled it over. I told her that the trail from what the Kickapoo Reserve site map indicated, it would be rather short and fairly easy.

We agreed on a time and I went back to doing farm things. I watered the stock tanks and we fed some large bales out to the cattle.
Buster was feeling lazy and posed for me...

Rich worked in the shed and I wandered out there and took some shots of him working. I've asked him to be my model numerous times. He never seems to mind me pointing the camera at him.

I made a batch of chocolate chip bars and then decided to take a quick nap before our late afternoon adventure.

We headed out to KVR and started our hike.
It was a rather nice one too. Not hard at all.

It didn't take us very long to get to the dam. The project was halted in 1996, you can read about it for yourself. History of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.

I'm happy that this land is here and we are able to do so much on it. How lucky can we be to have so many parks, reserves, and county parks in our county?

Very lucky I say.

The sunset was not spectacular as I'd hoped for. It was rather dull, however the kids enjoyed running and playing until twilight set in.
Then we passed out flashlights and started back down the trail towards the Administration Building.

My conclusion is that this could be a great area to watch either the sun rise or the sun set. And it is always somewhat of a crap-shoot to find out if the skies will bring you something fantastic.

Note: The sunrise shots were done in 'sunrise' or 'sunset' mode on the camera. Most cameras have them. However I find that the colors are often overblown and unrealistic. I prefer to use the manual setting on the camera to get truer colors.
The panoramic shot was done in a sequence of four shots. I was able to bring some of the cropland back from the dark shadows.
A slight underexposure of a sunrise or sunset will also give you brilliant colors.