Friday, May 15, 2009

Nifty Fifty

The trials and travails of parenting continue to fill our days over at 'in the valley' headquarters; the most recent challenges involving weening the little girl from breast to bottle...



Hard fought battles to be sure. Bloggerette won't relinquish a foot of ground without a fight...

So it was a welcome diversion last Friday when my sister lent me her 50mm camera lens to experiment with; it's a higher quality piece of glass than what came with my little Nikon. I immediately squirreled it away in my backpack, mounted the mighty interceptor, and headed for the hills...

Mt. Pollux in Amherst, to be precise. On the way I pit stopped for a quick pic of these two ladies a-kayaking. One of them asked me if they were going to be famous, to which I responded "noooot really". But I gave them the web address, in order for them to decide for themselves.



Fame is a relative thing, after all....

Onward and reaching Mt. Pollux just as the setting sun disappeared behind a wide band of clouds on the horizon. One of the attributes of sis's 50mm lens is it's very wide 1.8 aperture, which allows it to capture a healthy amount of light even in cloudy, dusky situations. Also, the big aperture allows for very shallow depth of field, giving a nice blurring or 'bokeh' effect (sorry Jeffrey, had to)...Thus if one was to get down low...say, low as the grasses...maybe even low enough to risk a tick encounter, well...what the heck, if one was to lie down on the grass; one could get a myopic bug's eye view of some dandelions...



Then a quick jump up and brisk shake-off of the imaginary bugs, the thought of which were giving one a tingle down one's back...

The cloud cover in the west brought the night-time on quickly...



Over in the east; May's full moon, or the Full Flower Moon, or the Algonquin Corn-Planting Moon, or the Full Milk Moon, (take your pick), was rising fast and turning from red to yellow, looking for breaks in the thickening clouds.


It was a beautifully warm and slightly humid evening. Almost summer-like.

One more stop in Amherst center before going home, and I was surprised to see a full-fledged fair going on. Not an extravaganga, not a world arts and crafts bazaar, but a good, old fashioned, American fair...





Where was I...?





Had I kept up with the local news and blogosphere lately, we would have known about this and rounded up the crew for a fair-visit proper.



But as it was; it was late, I was on the bike and, was that a drop of rain..? Time to get home, and quick...

2 comments:

Mary E.Carey said...

Wow. The dandelion and the people coming down the roller coaster are great!

Anonymous said...

With that drop of rain, I hope you kept that lens nice and dry:) Great shots!