My favorite picture of the lunar eclipse turned out to not be a straightforward picture of the reddish moon, but instead one where I intentionally underexposed to reveal just the sliver that was coming out of the earth’s shadow.
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Cat In The Moon
I went out to photograph the moon last night and noticed it was being eclipsed — but I couldn’t tell by what. To my naked eye, everything seemed normal.
But by taking a long exposure with my camera, lo and behold the picture revealed what the eye did not: a giant cat was taking a bite out of the moon! And in so doing, solved a puzzle that has riddled astronomers for millenia — how did the moon get its craters?
Little Mister Sunshine
Little Sam hasn’t seen too much sunshine in his young life with us (I mean that literally, not figuratively), but last week we had a spate of sunny days and Sam discovered the joys of sleeping in sunbeams.
Frost
I arrived at Ridgefield at sunrise but only had an hour before needing to head home to take our cats Sam and Emma to the vet. I thought the refuge would be fogged in given the heavy fog when I crossed the Columbia, but the refuge was clear and a lovely frost coated the meadows. I wanted to take advantage of the frost since it is not typical here, so I continued around the refuge until I found a good subject.
This female juvenile northern harrier was sitting in the large meadow at the end of the auto tour. I’d never gotten harrier pictures I’ve been happy with, so since she was a ways off I put the 2X teleconverter on my biggest lens and hoped for the best. She’s all puffed out in the cold looking a little larger than she is, and you can see the ring around her face that helps give harriers an owlish look.
As she grows older, she will develop streaking down her chest and her eyes will turn from dark brown to yellow.
Creature of the Shadows
Friday as we were about to leave for work, the rising sun created this shadow on our living room wall of Sam sitting on the window seat. I grabbed the camera for a few quick shots before heading out the door.
He and Emma had a good visit to the vet today, he charmed them right up until it was time for his vaccination and then he let out a pretty good howl. Emma has recovered nicely from her bumps, she had some darkened spots on her skin that we were afraid might be the phage but which turned out to be a harmless reaction to the bumps. Whew!
Scout is still struggling a bit with a respiratory infection that she got from the newcomers, her left eye started bothering her so she went to the vet last week. The drops have really cleared up the eye nicely and hopefully she’ll beat the virus for good pretty soon. Fortunately she never learned how to take her medicine from Templeton, she’s not happy about it but she takes it pretty readily most of the time.
And despite the germ warfare waged against her, Scout has really warmed up to Sam and Emma. She actually instigated some roughhousing with Sam today, she’s snuggled with him for a while but this is the first we’ve seen her initiate play. All three of them were crammed into my window in the afternoon when I opened it up to enjoy the warm weather, the birds and squirrels provided good entertainment for the trio, who all got along happily despite the cramped quarters.