Recent Pictures

Pictures from the last week.

Somebody's gentle pet at Redwood Acres and he expects me to give him a treat.

I should have changed to the 8-25mm but I was in a hurry chasing daylight for pictures.

Different horse, same hand.

I stopped by Gill's Garden and the pelicans were there.

This one is trying to catch the flying fish which were out that day.

The fish cleaning table I sit on while photographing birds. There's a lot of waiting for the pelicans to pose. It's nice to have a high seat.

Airing out the pouch. I would not want to be downwind of that. Altogether now, say Yuck! You're welcome.

Back at Gill's, another day. No fog, nice golden light for flower photography.

With the golden light only.

This one to show how that light popped the flowers more than anything else.

Headed home just after sunset. This from up on Humboldt Hill looking at southern Humboldt Bay.

A different day with nice clouds.

That's all. Rich

I keep getting signed out of this site. It happened on occasion at DPR but not often.

I good set Rich. I like the pelican shots and the last landscapes. What were you feeding the horses? I can't tell from the images. The roses are lovely too.

Have to say I am feeling more and more down as the days pass by. Hopefully this will pass soon!

My wife had the two knee replacements (same leg) in Oct and Jan. It is beginning to look like go number four may be required but the jury is still out. I suspect an allergy to the metal (titanium) used for the joints. The non metallic second revision was the most comfortable of the lot. Wait and see time now with a bunch of testing. I have an MRI scheduled for the early morning hours (2 a.m.) next week. I think I should get a hotel room nearby. The last one I had was at 3 a.m. and further away.

I have some youth baseball and bad images from a mustang car show from last week still in the can. Tomorrow night a grade 8 graduation to attend.

I have taken the camera with me twice this week on out of town trips and it never made it out of the trunk.

Still not sleeping. Lack of sleep doesn't do much to improve one's outlook! Craig always managed to stay chipper without sleep. I need to learn the secret!

Andrew

I carry a box of individually wrapped fruit and bran bars in the car, Andrew. That keeps me from buying fast food, which I like. Organic smashed fruit, no sugar, but still sweet from fruit juice added, wrapped in whole bran which is very crumbly and a mess to try to eat while driving. They will put lead in your pencil 🫣 and they have unanimous approval from horses, mules, and jackasses for decades.

Yes, I;'m down, too. At least I have a likely ending date for what's eating me. It just isn't that way with medical, I know. I wonder if Mrs. D is having pain, infections, or both. I also wonder if those joints are made in carbon fiber. I have a chicken egg size bubble on the outside of my right knee right now. I walked too much today and it got bigger. Almost all of the people I know who've had knee replacement had it successfully. But I have always had a bad feeling about it and didn't get it when recommended, 20 years ago. If I live long enough I'll be sorry. Just remember my motto. 'If nothing hurts, you're dead.' and that is not a joke, I say it to myself more and more often. Dark humor is better than no humour.

Eighth grade, eh? I remember the girl with the best legs in the eighth grade. Her name was Maddie. She was tall and I was always gratified to regard the way her legs reached all the way to the ground.

I made almost 1200 pictures today. Lots of pro capture and sequential with birds and the wind was intermittently still at the gardens I visited so I went crazy with focus stacking. (I have a stool for focus stacking now, or I'd quit it, too.) I hope I end up with less than 500.

We have different photographic practice. I take my camera every time I leave and put it on the floor inside the car. I will even shoot out the window then crop to what I want.

Coming back from Oregon last month. On a two lane part of The Pacific Coast Highway in Redwood National Park. Single vehicle accident, no injury. Big truck just went around the corner too fast and tipped over. Very lucky no other vehicles near. I had to wait for an hour so I knew no injuries before I drove past. A cop yelled at me for distracted driving as I drove by with the camera up high. I did not flip him off, but I wanted to.

And one from today. I used to get one like this once in a while. Pro capture changed that. Rich

Did you kiss the horse? There's nothing so soft and velvety as horse's snout. It asks to be kissed.

BTW what's a horses nose called in English? Google translate says it's called "mule" but I don't really think so... 🤔

Rich: I started to reply yesterday but then got distracted (accidently deleted all my RAWs from this month unrecoverably 😡).
Anyway, quite a varied and interesting set. When I saw the first few of the horse, I thought for sure your last photo would have been of it's other end. 😀
Like the pelican and sky shots, and your flowers are good as always. I got a very distant shot of a broad winged hawk today, so this is a severe crop!

Nothing like your hawk shots.

I don't kiss a horse until the third date, Charlotte. I encountered a horse roaming a pasture with no fences up in the mountains , a few years ago. I called it and it galloped to me and was very friendly and wanted attention, which I gave it plenty of. I turned away to walk to my car to get it a treat. It didn't want me to leave so it followed me and put its muzzle, or nose, gently in the center of my back and gave me a gentle push. Just enough to make me take one quick step. I was delighted and turned while laughing to throw my arms around its neck and hug it. Then I led the horse to my car and got it a treat.

I looked up muzzle in Swedish, munkorg, what a great word. It sounds like a character from Tolkien. "....whilst being pursued by orcs and munkorg allied, Dorothy remarked to Mr. Toad, ....I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore....." Time for my Thorazine. Rich

Those translators can't be trusted!

THIS is a munkorg (literally means mouth basket). 😂

This is another version (in case you sometimes feel the need).

Thank you for muzzle. It's mule in Swedish. So in my case google translate did what it always does when it doesn't know. It just didn't translate it.

Nose? If you bet on a racehorse here in the US, you place your bet "on the nose". I'm not sure if there's another term for the horse part in question. I've bet on exactly two horses in my lifetime. The first was scratched at the gate by the track veterinarian, which I saw as a sign. But years later, a personal system I had developed for handicapping horses for fun indicated that a particular 30 to 1 shot was a good bet, so I figured $2 wasn't a bad risk. Long story short, he won! I found out later that Buzzard Bay had been a champion in his younger days and this was sort of his last hurrah. I've since forgotten how that system worked 😿

BTW, a mule in English is either the hybrid offspring of male donkey and a female horse, or a type of shoe (for people). If you go the other way with your hybridization (female donkey and male horse) you get a hinny.

Lynne

I know. That's why I knew google gave me the wrong translation. Or, actually it just skipped the translation and repeated the Swedish word. That's rather bad form. It should denote somehow it can't do the job, print UNKNOWN_WORD or something.

Mule is a genetic term meaning a hybrid mammal with an odd number of chromosomes which makes it impossible to reproduce.
I call a horse's nose a horse's nose. Muzzle includes lips and chin, in my vernacular. Language is one of my hobbies, Charlotte. So I like to dig into translations between languages. The name for the dog mouth basket in American English is muzzle. The name for that part of a dog's face, or a horse's, is muzzle. There are also muzzle baskets for mean horses. If someone talks too much we say, 'put a muzzle on it' Regarding noses, our nostril is your näsborre. Nare is the same in both languages. Our nose is your näsa. I also found nasalljud for talking funny, but I think that must be from some other North Germanic Scandinavian language, perhaps Faroese or Icelandic.
They all come from the Latin word schnozzola, which also means Jimmy Durante.

As far as muzzles go, I like this one. Rich

I had a faint idea that muzzle could mean that. But in Swedish munkorg is munkorg and not snout. After all, it's a sensible language. 😀

Thanks, Jim. Ouch, sorry for your loss of those files. I have had that happen, too.
I like the broad winged hawk and hadn't seen one before. I looked them up and they don't frequent this area. Thanks for the picture.

Here's one of mine from yesterday which was also too far away and very cropped. I made a few of it anyway because pro capture lets me get the strikes. So, with pro capture and sequential shutter I got a hundred pictures of an egret which was too far away to photograph. lol Rich

😂
I see you, Andrew, and Charlotte have all been back to DPReview.
I visited there today and made a couple replies to posts.
It seems to be running a little slow, but seems to have much more traffic than here, and, I was reminded how nice the threaded view of conversations is.
Not as much traffic as it used to have, but if the new owners can keep it going, I may have to become a regular there again.

See this thread if you haven't already...
dprevived.com/t/when-and-why-do-i-get-logged-out/3962/post/45122/

I never appreciated threaded view enough, Jim. lol I sure do now! I miss even more the old group of congenial people we had. I wonder if that group could be recreated. And then, if the old forum got back going, how would I feel about dumping this forum which gave us a home?
This group came together because of Andrew. I look at it as his thread. When this crap started I decided I would simply follow what he decides to do.

I do hope I will get to see your coming pictures from Central America. I want to see you holding a full grown Boa constrictor imperator. I used to have a ten foot Boa constrictor constrictor. She gave great hugs. Don't miss it if you can. Rich

Don't think there are any Boa Constrictor hugs in my future, but you never know.
I'll gladly post photos from my trip(s) and look forward to your comments.
I feel similarly, I'd hate to desert this forum, but the other looks more active.
May have to do both.

Jim, I don't really think there is more activity at dpr than here. They are about the same other than the fact that Craig posts almost every day, if not every day, a new set of images. There those actively taking part are Craig, Dave, Dicky, and Peter. Paul posts there as well but the same images he posts here and WN similarly. I have recently posted there as has Rich. My posting there is because I miss our friends that don't seem to want to take part here. I am getting depressed by the dissolution of community built up over many years. DPR is slow! I don't know what they did to their servers and bandwidth there but it went down hill greatly before the closure announcement and even more since. The traffic overall there is much less than before and yet the response time can vary from instant to several seconds of wait. This site is much more responsive. I miss threaded view. You don't need it as much with threads set up for a single poster but it made a Weekly Thread possible. I think that is missing here. DPR Forums I have visited but I really don't see much happening there. Less than here.

I have no answers, only questions.

Andrew

I miss the threaded view and all the traffic DPR used to have too.
Thanks for the feedback, but I'm not sure evidence supports it.
I replied to a post there 21 hours ago "Is shooting at 50 fps overkill?"
- there have been 50 new posts to that thread alone since.
Though, that may not be a good thing as so many are argumentative ...
I may post a few pics there but I'm not giving up on this forum.

I have not looked for new posts there, just Craig's mostly. I will have to go and have a look Jim!

Andrew

Interesting set Rich ... Never was comfortable with horses and they seem to understand that ... Had one I had to push up hill until he got his footing and then when I got to ride a bit over the plains he got the bit in his mouth and took off leaving me to look for a suitable place to get off ... fortunately one of our better horsemen caught up and reined him in and he behaved until we got back to the barn .. and his feed bag ...

Like your rose by evening light ... and we really need a couple pelicans over at the marina.. they certainly look more entertaining than the heron.. I occasionally see a flock of pelicans migrating to and from a large lake somewhere north of us -- not sure if that is Kentucky lake or Lake Michigan (however I don't remember pelicans in Chicago!)

I'm just keeping a toe in the waters over in DPR until everything settles down and we see how both these site age under the new management ... But then Craig's enthusiasm is difficult to ignore!!! ... I think he should restart the 'Scapes thread he use to bring .....I don't miss the threaded view that much as long as we can keep the conversations going and coherent but not try to work this thread into a non-threaded view.. C&C here is interesting but I can't follow the conversations or even the replies .... and it is difficult to make coherent replies there --- IMHO!!!

Yeah. I agree with most things already said. Not much we can do but wait. It's frustrating though, not knowing how it all will end.

Thanks, WhyNot. Horses for rent often have hard lives. It's not unusual to find angry ones in that venue.

Pelicans are great fun to watch and photograph. The ones around here aren't much concerned with people and photography of them is much easier than of any other wild birds. I enjoy them more than any other bird because they make me laugh.

I am also having trouble keeping up with posts and conversations in this flat view. I intend to stay with it and hope things straighten out. Rich