Gotta' Love a Gal Who Has A Favorite Mud Puddle

... we do...

... on the other hand - we don't think she's ever met a puddle she didn't like...

What Not: Shooting Long, Shooting Straight, Lowe and Lewis

... unless needed, was never much into zoom images - when it comes to still photography we're basically just wide angle to medium length landscape shooters with some humans, critters or mechanical contrivance (or combination thereof) thrown in for scale - however - picked up a new long-focus lens back in July and had hoped by now to have acquired several hundred images... well... have been a bit lack in that regard and have yet to get beyond the few (low science) test images we shot the first Saturday morning in the back yard after taking it out of the box...

... maximum 600mm focal length - brickwork near the top of a (maybe) 400ft tall chimney-stack from a distance of around 425ft (according to our rough trigonometry) - hand held with the optical stabilizer (OS) turned on, early morning sun at around 4 o'clock viewing azimuth (no filter), camera auto setting (point and shoot - not much thinking on our part), don't recall what ISO, shutter speed or aperture (we usually set one or two out of the three ourselves) and usually don't pay attention other than when we use the auto function as a meter... some decent latitude in the Canon 7D Mark II image sensor if you look into the shadows...

... top of said 400ft chimney-stack... same shooting settings and conditions - again, some nice detail in the underexposed shadows...

... early bird catches the worm - 'Robin Red Breast' gatherin' some breakfast for the family - was probably around 50ft distance - all these images were hand held, set at camera auto function with lens OS turned on (unless noted otherwise)...

... another early bird - don't know what it is - about 30ft away - OS turned off...

... PA Mountain Lion (at least he thinks he is) - maybe 30ft distance...

... couple 'Morning Glories' - maybe 20ft distance...

... have a few more but you get the idea... hey, look good to us and all camera/lens systems functioned A-OK...

... drag races upcoming in a few weeks - that will be our moon mission...

-----------------------

... hey - get this cop out to the gun range and get 'em some practice, unless Barney fired his one allotted pistol round for the year... (yea - the "perp" escaped)...

-----------------------

... last of the buffalo's...

(Internet Image)

... Jeff Lowe, 1950 - 2018... 

... influential father of modern ice climbing... had a chance to meet 'em back in the late 80's - he was touring the east coast with his lecture/slide show, "Vertical Wilderness" - we had a chance to catch it at the University of Maryland - the audience was somewhat sparse, to say the least, which was fortuitous for us as we got to assist 'em with setting up his show then hung out with 'em next to the slide projector throughout - very approachable guy and bullshi**ed with us throughout the evening... the show was mainly a collection of his personal mountain and mountain-related images, with not one climbing shot - we thought that was pretty cool - nothing was about him personally, which is how he came across with regard to his climbing... one memorable image and related narrative described his working as a technical assistant on a 'Pepsi' commercial shoot in Alaska(?) - during a lull in the filming he got the helicopter pilot to fly over to a nearby peak with huge rock wall and follow a continuous crack system, bottom to top, for nearly 2,000 feet (while hovering about 50 feet off the wall the entire ascent) while Lowe scoped out the route for a potential later climbing attempt - don't know if he ever returned or not... 

(... coincidentally, around the same time we attended a similar lecture/slide show in Pittsburgh by the late/great climber 'Fred Beckey' which coincided with the publication of his book "Mountains of North America" - again, mainly a collection of mountain and mountain-related images with nary a climbing shot and no personal "braggadocio''... to us that spoke a lot of the character of both men...)...

... so long "Lewis"...

(internet image)

... Burt Reynolds, 1936-2018...

... one good tale we read recently concerning the filming of "Deliverance" - the director, John Boorman, commented that he filmed entirely in sequence so that should any of the cast members get injured or killed he wouldn't have a disruption in continuity to contend with... ha - we guess that to explain their disappearance he would just film a dummy being swept downstream, rewrite a drowning, and keep moving on...

"... it doesn't have to be fun to be fun..."

                   

                                                      -Jeff Lowe