A little bit of fence fixing

Off I go with tangled and salvaged hotwire and some nicely coiled wire to redo the fence down near the creek.

The backpack has gear in it, along with some tools and of course lots of water. I'd had this job in mind since last fall.

Over the winter I keep this section closed off as the deer run through the fence during rut and generally take down the fence.

Last winter, some animal chewed through both the lines and the insulators in some spots. I know that raccoon chew on plastic, but I never figured out who the culprits were.

I thought I'd turn on MapMyHike to see what my walking while doing the job would look like. I did get in a little over 2 miles of walking while restringing the fence.

At one time we had a 'ridge-road' or trail that was made by a bulldozer  all the way to the end of our land. Since I don't drive the 4 wheeler back there anymore... [very steep], I haven't had the trail redone. 

I just walk it and go around the obstacles. I am the only person anymore that moves through the land so no need to clear a new path.

Here is someone else who likes to use the 'critter' trail. It is used by the mules, deer, bobcat, raccoon, and coyotes. When I pull the trail camera about every two weeks we have nearly 700 or 800 photos of wildlife moving past the camera on this trail.

I pulled the old hotwire and began to get ready to string up new wire.

Just to the left of this photo is a steep bank that drops about 20 feet down into our creek bottom. With the past drought, the creek is mostly dry, but in good years it flows nicely.

At my feet is a pile of chewed electric wire. And no, the wire was not 'on' over the winter. I don't keep it hot unless the mules have access. 

The wire needed to be replaced this year anyway. It has lasted 5 years and had been patched quite a few times.

I finished everything up including detangling a big mess of wire that I'd brought with me. It took roughly two hours and a lot of walking back and forth.  

Below is the tangled up wire that had been in another pasture at one time. I had 3 lines with one low to the ground when we had Dexter Cattle in the woods and pulled it after we sold the cattle.

A good chunk of the time was devoted to de-tangling. But the wire was in perfect shape and there was no reason to toss it.

It was a big job I had been putting off for quite a while. All the summer lines have been checked and fixed. Next up? I'll go through and clear off anything that is under the wires.

Forest Fencing can be a never ending job.

It was like a dance

with the sun and the clouds.

The sky was clear in the morning and the clouds swiftly moved in along with cold winds. I was going to go to the Reserve to watch the eclipse and enjoy some peaceful quite time. I decided that with the heavy clouds, I'd stay home.

After all, if the clouds were going to obscure a partial eclipse, so be it. At least I could go in the house and warm up.

I set one camera up to do a time lapse, it took shots every few minutes. It lasts all of 3 seconds. You can see the conditions for the big eclipse.

I started the time lapse at 12:30 our time and until about 2pm. These photos were taken 5 minutes apart.

The heavy clouds presented an issue in that only once in a while would the sun get momentarily bright enough to see through the camera. The NOAA reported our area with an 81% cloud cover, so it was a great challenge.

My Camera Assistant. Little Richard.

It was great when we caught a bit of a break.

This is what I saw through the flip screen on my OM-5. I used a solar filter I'd purchased years ago and unless the sun was peeking out, the screen was black. That is part of what made it so challenging. The other part was being able to twist like a pretzel to re-aim the camera to track the sun when it glimpsed at me.

These were the shots I picked out of the many I tried.

By this point I was just starting to get the hang of catching the sun with the camera. I had to search for a bright spot and then zoom out and zoom in. When I found the sun again, it was sometimes so breathtaking with the cloud movement that I nearly forgot to hit the shutter.

At times the clouds were moving so fast across the sun that the exposure was up to a few seconds. Then the clouds blurred. I felt like Mother Nature was doing a painting just for me.

By the time it reached its peak, I decided to bug out and go inside to warm up. I was SO cold! I had been wearing my heavy coveralls and a stocking cap. My hands were ice.

I was not disappointed at all though. The cloud cover made it a huge challenge and also made the event in my opinion much more beautiful than stark photos of a crescent in the sky.

When I got in the house, I grabbed a blanket and a pillow and headed for the bedroom for a warm up nap. 

I'm going to remember this day for a long time. The work at getting the shots was a bit brutal with the weather [cold and windy] and the clouds. I spent from noon to 2:15 when the moon was moving past the sun outside.

Yep, that dance was worth it!

Light and Dark and Quiet

 There is always light.
If only we are
brave enough to see it.
If only we are

brave enough to be it.
~~Amanda Gorman

Sunday morning's sunrise was so amazingly beautiful. I dropped what I was doing [making hubby's coffee] and ran out the door in socks.

Charlie and I ran up to the pasture to the north and I just stood there and said OHHHH & AHHHH out loud.

The pony looked at me as if I was from another planet and Charlie sniffed around for interesting things.

I guess I was the only one excited about the amazing colors.

When I got back to the house I notice the clouds coming in from the south west. I had to do a double take as there was a rainbow too!

This has happened more than once so I usually check the skies in both directions. 

I imagine the moisture in the air along with the angle of the sun created the rainbow. I like to tell folks that our pasture must be amazing and full of gold as I've seen this more than once now!

The rains and high winds are preventing me from really going out and looking for other signs of spring. I expect that this week when the weather clears up, I should be able to wander about and look for spring beauties and other wild flowers poking up out of the leaves.

Hubby's daughter and her husband came to see us on Saturday and she cooked an amazing meal. It was to be our Christmas Dinner that we would have had in December but too many people were sick or getting sick.

It got put off until the timetables worked out for everyone involved, which happened to be this weekend.

Today is the big hulabaloo regarding the eclipse. I think we'll have about 75% or up to 85% for the eclipse.

I plan on going to the Reserve and doing a time lapse of one of the ponds. I think it would be interesting to observe all the waterfowl as the sky darkens and then lightens again.

In August of 2017 there was a very partial eclipse here and I was working in the garden and noted that the birds got quiet and the bees stopped what they were doing on the flowers.

Taken in 2017:

I think it will be an interesting couple of hours.

Plus it will be some great quiet time for me after having 3 weekends of visitors in the past month!

Wait you did WHAT?

I often have to wait for hubby to do something. 

He says I'm going to: ___________ fill in the blank. It is something he needs assistance with because he can no longer do it.

He then will sit down for a bit while I get the ___________ ready. His next move is to proclaim that he is tired and he needs a nap before ___________ing. I'm stuck. He needs to get this done and he puts things off and off and off and ... off. Ask him to get moving and the petulant child rises up and he trundles off to the bedroom and lays down. Another tactic is to ask for a cup of coffee and then sit with the cup for a half hour and not say a word.

I'm not going to get into what _________ was. Just know that it can refer to everything...EXCEPT eating. If it is something regarding eating, he gets to the table OR asks loudly from the other room. *What's for supper, what's for lunch?* You get the idea. Meals? Right now please as if I am a short order cook. 

Meh. Calling me a Cook is really quite the fallacy. I'd rather be a princess.

So during my time periods where I have to sit and wait for him, I generally do some research into something like flowers. What kind of flowers would I like to plant? What kind of flowers would I like to photograph? Which flowers attract butterflies?

And how on earth do some of those photographers get such incredible and ethereal shots? Some photographers use special lenses such as a Helios or a Lensbaby. There are also something called the Sigma Art lens. 

I look at tutorials and sigh at some of the incredible shots these pros take. I don't want to purchase any of those lenses. But I'd like to figure out how to do some of those incredible shots with just a regular lens.

One tutorial suggested some great tips. I know the tips she suggested, but it never hurts to review them after a long winter. Isolate the subject, find a spot of interest, watch the lighting, and a bit of cloud cover is helpful.

Then YouTube suggests another video with 'lens hacks'. I'm curious so I watch it. The guy suggests an interesting idea. Or a horrifying idea!

He suggests putting Vaseline on the lens. It creates a a soft vignette with a lot of bokeh on the edges of the photo.

OH no. Nope Nope Nope.

I watch another tutorial. This guy suggests putting a sandwich bag over the lens to create a soft focus. I try it and it just seems like I'm taking a soft shot. But it is pretty interesting and the photograph he takes looks like Orton Photography.

What if... I place Saran Wrap over the lens and use a hair tie to hold it in place?

And then? What if I use Vaseline on top of the Saran Wrap? 

I pulled the wrap tight and held it with a hair tie. I went outside to take any shot just to see what the results would be.

I couldn't find a flower to photograph but I did find an old Creeping Charlie leaf sticking up near the spring garden.

I was surprised by the circles of light that appeared. They were obviously from the Vaseline. Shooting into the light wasn't really the best thing to do.

So I tried something else.

The effect was pretty neat. The shot through the wrap and the Vaseline did provide a bit of glow around the subjects. This is exactly as I shot it without any touch ups. 

So now I'm wondering how I can use this trick again more effectively.

Another video showed a photographer using a plastic bag like the kind you get when you purchase groceries. She poked holes in the bag over the center of the lens and shot through it. The result was a milky soft looking vignette around her subject.

As I said this is what I am doing while waiting. Waiting for the other half to get ready to do you know...something. 

This isn't always the case. Sometimes the ___________ can be put off until another time. 

This behavior is in his DNA so to speak. Even when he didn't suffer from dementia, he would drag his feet if we had to do something on schedule. I am that person that shows up to a meeting 15 minutes ahead of time. He was that person that figured he'd just show up on 'whatever' time.

I finally gave up. I turned to my photo table and decided to just occupy myself with portraits of two Lego Gym Characters.

No Vaseline, no bags, nothing fancy. Just a piece of foggy plastic with a light under it and my CrossFit Viroqua water bottle behind them.

I thought about the Stud Shooters Challenge of Bad Weather and tried to figure out how to use Vaseline across the bottom of the lens to produce a foggy effect and Baking Soda to create snow.

It was a failure. I spread Vaseline on the bottom of the lens and then used Baking Soda smeared onto the Vaseline to create a fog effect. In retrospect, the Vaseline and the Baking Soda should have taken up most of the lower half of the lens.

However, one experiments and learns. Failure is part of learning.

So yeah. I am experimenting with Saran Wrap, Vaseline, and Baking Soda on a lens. 

Crazy, right?

Yep.

I had to quit because the other half got up and proclaimed that HE was not going to do _____________. And he'd wait until tomorrow.

Well. Tomorrow will come and I'll pull some more patience out of the air somewhere.

But now I have some cool ideas to try.

I can't wait for some spring flowers to appear so I can try these odd and weird methods on them.

April delivers

 

It didn't look bad when it started on Tuesday morning. But roads immediately got bad and went to much worse as Wednesday went on. The shot below was taken Tuesday afternoon of our road through the woods.

One could still see where the road was. Even with the forest on both sides of the road, the winds were blowing snow through the trees! It was fierce!

This was the view in the afternoon of the 2nd just after my neighbor had gone to pick up her son from school as they closed the schools early.

The snows were wet and heavy.

I walked up the next morning to see what I could see. Olive reported high winds on the ridge and whiteouts.

She was not kidding.

Back home I thought I'd take a peek at the woods across the pasture and...

This is what I saw from the porch. The line on the left is a porch support.

Soon reports of businesses closing on Main Street filtered in. Most of the stores and even the DQ in town closed up. The company that does garbage collection pulled their trucks off the road.

Our township grader got stuck in a drift and had to have other equipment dig it out.

The mules had plenty of hay and warmed water. They hid out in the deep woods for most of the time except when they came up for water.

It wasn't particularly cold, as the snow was very wet and very heavy. I was surprised that the wind could actually blow the snow around. At our municipal airport, they clocked 48 mph winds, so I guess that answered that question.

The worst part of it all was knowing that I had an appointment in town that we surely could not miss. I had called for my plow guy the day before and waited and waited and waited. He didn't come. It was probably a good thing too as the roads were so bad.

I did rearrange the appointment for the next morning and by late afternoon, I texted my plow guy to forget it....and started my own snow removal project.

I decided just to work on the hill part of the driveway and get two lines so that the tires would have a good grip on the gravel while going up the hill. I pushed the snow and yes, it was heavy. By late afternoon though, it was starting to melt.

My neighbor at the top of the driveway walked down and asked if he could help. His wife had let the dogs out and saw me shoveling. 

Justin go out his 4 wheeler and cleared a path up the hill for me. 

In truth? I could probably got out with my Subaru without shoveling. I'm glad I didn't try with hubby in the car though. After all the reports of vehicles in the ditch and even town plows having trouble? Why chance it?

This morning I can get hubby in the car and drive safely to the appointment we thought was written in stone. 

Then last night I got a phone call from our plow guy. Frank was just gushing with apologizes and everything else for not getting out. He didn't make excuses, he just admitted he messed up.

You know what? I can deal with that. He said it slipped his mind because...well, his brain was dealing with other things. He told me if that ever happened again to keep calling his cell over and over and over. He sounded so upset that I ended up telling him it was OK. 

April always seems to deliver some sort of frightful weather. I recall April 20 in 2018 when we had a blizzard. 

So there you go. Hello April, you sure know how to deliver weather!

In the Zone

Right now the fun is never ending. I keep ignoring my Nature photos at the moment as Nature is teasing us with all sorts of wild weather.

I had a really nice compliment on a photo I did of Princess Sara in an email from a Lego Ambassador last week. I used a tutorial by FourBricksTall and tagged her in my write up on Flickr. I read that and felt inspired and had an AH HAH... moment.

I won't be a pro toy photographer ever or be hired by Lego any time ever. But I felt like my efforts of creativity and explorations were somewhat vindicated. 

Any...way...more about getting into the Zone. After that my head burst with all sorts of ideas. You know, the stuff that bangs around in that empty space of a brain. That echo chamber. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I first got this Lego minifig last Spring. I had her in my pocket in May while I was hunting fungi and other things as they came up from the forest floor. I decided her name would be Sara the Brave and she would be a Princess when I first set her on a mossy stump.

I really liked her but couldn't for the life of me figure out her 'Story'. Well, that is until I set up the photo I did a while ago. I plucked her off the shelf where she spent nearly a whole year and made her a central character in an adventure. 

Truly, I don't know where that adventure will take me, but I am glad to have Sara out and about. She makes an interesting character that wields a stick horse and a sword.

I walk around in the forest looking for cool things. The minifigs bounce around in their containers in my backpack. Some days I hike and never take them out. And then some days, things just click and I know that I found yet another clue in Sara's journey.

Of course she will find exotic looking plants and...

well...

it looks like those other forest critters may be watching her!
That looks like Big Foot is spying on them!

Will she meet some of those other fierce warrior women?
How about Ariel who also wears the blue knight armor just like Joan of Knight? 

She is an exceptional warrior who loves to fish.

Sometimes she even gets them to jump right out of the water!

 [Trick photography! I hot glued floral wire around the fish tail and pushed it into the stream bottom. I took the shot with the wire in the photo and took a shot without the fish there.👇]

I set the camera up to take 5 photos in a row while I threw rocks into the stream for splashes. 

The magic happens when you stack the two photos on top of each other and simply erase the wire. The photo in the second layer is just a shot of the Lego figure by itself. This was a trick I learned by watching a video by a Toy Photographer who goes by SirDork. 

While I was at it, I found another spot where Hannah the Hunter was. It seems she is looking for something in the forest also. 

Will all of these characters eventually find each other? I don't know. 

For now? Anything can happen.

One other note. Spring will be emerging all over the forest. I see the signs of Spring Beauty leaves poking up out of the leaves. I saw bluebells emerging too. It feels like this next snow/sleet/rain event is just telling us to be patient.

Suddenly Spring will emerge like a racehorse out of the gate.

But for now, I'm in the Zone... 

the play Zone.

The Quest continues...

I am pretty lucky to live in a very remote area with a large tract of wild woods that surround us. I thought I'd take advantage of the overcast skies to take a hike and try out some more things I learned from doing a bit more research about Lego photography.

Below is my backpack that is a Kurgo backpack made specifically to carry a small dog. My dog said no. I put a camera bag insert into the 'pet area' years ago and this became my go to backpack.

I can carry water bottles, snacks, and all sort of other goodies in the other section of the backpack.

Old plastic sandwich meat containers are perfect for carrying Lego minifigs or pieces.

 

When I got to the creek, I set my pack down. Did I mention that it is made to sit up straight and that it has a rubber bottom on it? Perfect for setting down in damp places.

I wanted to test out an idea I'd seen a Lego Photographer use when trying to photograph Lego's in a puddle or stream. If you have ever tried it, the boats sink or tip over, the kayaks and canoes don't really float. I've stacked rocks up against Legos in the stream to keep them in place only to back off and get the shot ready...

and the Lego minfig tips over and floats away.

One person suggested hot gluing a piece of metal to the bottom of a Lego minifig stand. I tried that method and it worked well for a while. After bumping around in my backpack and being repositioned several times, the metal washer came off. But it was a fantastic solution and an easy thing to do.

I also took a flat 6 X 6 plate and stood a horse on it. The stream still wanted to pull on the horse, so I put some rocks on the plate to hold it in place. It worked like a charm.

Anyone who has ever ridden horses [or mules] knows that sometimes horses don't like streams or even shy away from puddles.

I imagine that Princess Sara's faithful steed, Ice, wouldn't want to cross the stream. Princess Sara had a tough time convincing Ice that it was OK to go in the water. She even waded into the stream to show him.

Apparently he had none of it until Joan of Knight rode her workhorse into the stream to show Ice that it wouldn't hurt him.

At this point, I was not using a tripod, but was standing in about 8 inches of water in a little pool in the creek. I had to squat down and get the camera close to the water. I felt something cold on my rear end and realized I'd squatted right into the creek.

[Yeah for CrossFit squats!]

Phew!

Princess Sara and Joan got across safely and continued on their Quest. The frog had said that they just needed to go into the forest and the Quest would make itself known to them.

The camera settings were pretty basic. I use an f stop so I could get both figures in focus. But I also set them in the same focal plane.

Getting low was the key. Very low. My hands were resting on top of the water and since I was wearing knee high waterproof muck boots my feet didn't get wet. But my rear end did!

The sky was cloudy so I was able to shoot without worrying too much about highlights on the minifigs.

Processing the shots were fairly straightforward, I have presets that I've developed for certain kinds of looks.

Stay tuned. The Princess and the Knight continued their Quest.

I am just following along.