Mannequins

In the village

Foggy moon

Tonight the moon is only a soft glow as it tries to penetrate the fog and tree branches.  It looks pretty mysterious.

By the way, my iMac is having its' hard drive replaced this week courtsey of Apple. I received an email telling me that the drive may possibility fail (after three years of dependable use). I have had excellent service from the iMac with no indication of any issues, but Apple offered to provide a brand new drive free of charge... so it is hard to pass up. Which brings me to this and any other posts this week... they will be edited and posted using my iPad, so the images may (or may not) be a bit different. The editing process certainly is.

Second day of spring 2013

Not sure

There have been times when I have uploaded a photo and been pretty unsure if it was worthy.

This is one of them.

It can be dangerous. My most viewed blog photo (which I will not include a link to) is one that I am pretty uncomfortable with from an artistic, technical, processing, and content standpoint... yet it has almost 400 views, which is a lot for my little blog.

Which brings us to the photo above. Kind of an interesting garage, nice textures, subtile color... but frankly not really anything I am particularly proud of.

So I am unsure, but up it goes anyway.

Past by

This little spot is right on the edge of a road... a road I have driven dozens if not hundreds of times... but until a few days ago I never saw it. I think of myself as be an observer, but I missed this one until now.

The road has no shoulder, is narrow, and there are twisty bits that are fun to drive in a spirited matter, so perhaps that is my excuse.

But it does point out how easy it is to slack and just pass something by.

Clouds or contrails?

I pretty good bet is that they are contrails.

Contrails are condensation trails, or vapor trails, formed under certain conditions by the passing of high altitude aircraft. In essence they are artificial clouds of water vapor formed from the planes wing tips.

I am not sure why there are so many East/West parallel trails on this morning, and the resulting apparent convergence into the sunrise, but it does make for an interesting sky.

So if contrails are actually clouds, then I guess my question is irrelevant.

Dramatic sky over a sea of cars

Erie Canal Park

As we move toward spring I look forward to morning light. There is something very depressing about waking and getting ready for work in the dark.

Recently each day has added 3 more minutes of daylight, but now we have (for some strange reason) moved the clocks forward, meaning I once again wake in blackness.

Of course we will soon again see brighter mornings, but for now it is back to headlights during the morning drive.

Honking above

The last few days we have heard the geese making a lot of noise overhead. It seems we are on the flight path of their return to the north. But perhaps they may be a bit early... today is indeed a wonderful spring day, but no doubt there will be more winter soon.

The picture on close inspection (See those tiny dots? Click to make it bigger!) shows quite a number of birds flying in V formations. Perhaps it is well known, but the V provides a dramatic increase in efficiency, providing a reduction in drag by nearly 65% according to Wikipedia. That makes a big difference when you are flying many hundreds of miles.

Pretty smart... no bird brains up there. Something to honk about I guess.

Pretty

I enjoy pictures like this, but somehow they seem a bit too easy, conventional, and certainly not in keeping with my blog theme: "Observations of the trivial and unnoticed."

Who would not notice this blossom? But what the heck.

We bought this orchid plant at a home store last year when it was in full showy (and I suppose forced) beauty  Once the blossoms dropped we did not expect any more flowers... but a bit of liquid fertilizer, some water, and many months later, we feel lucky to have a return to pretty.

Dirty snow pile

Fresh fallen snow is really pretty. Snow that has been plowed-up and well aged is not quite the same.

Yet it does have character that is lacking in unprocessed powdery white. It seems more organic and natural... even Alp-like in a miniature way.

Back hall