I normally see Herons as they are rapidly flying away from me. I recently was able to have 2 opportunities within 2 days of each other to photograph one standing before it took off. This first one, I was looking across the pond for ducks and heard the hubster going "Heron, Heron, Heron". 😆 I almost missed it as it was much closer to me than I was looking or expecting! Obviously though, I finally looked in the right place.
Happy Monday and happy new week! My Hibiscus plants have been inside over the winter. One of them had some struggles but one has done really well and was blooming again this past week. I took this image which is actually a 2 image stack to get both flowers in focus one evening when I noticed how nice the flowers looked. I shot it against my white background thingy. 😄
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! I usually share train photos but today I am sharing our roller. We took it to the KESSA Steam School in Meriden Kansas. It got it's boiler inspection there and students had an opportunity to operate it if they wanted with us. It was a nice place to operate it as it has a large open field. Steering of this steam roller is rather challenging. I was finally getting the hang of it near the end of the afternoon. We were burning wood in it this day, it has a very easy to fire boiler. If you are interested, I have a video Here where you can see it in action.
Today's image is another astrophotography one that I have been trying to learn and get better at. I have been working with this image off and on since I took it on the 4th of this month. This is Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks that has been able to be seen with binoculars or a telescope if you know where to look. When I captured it, it was visible shortly after sunset in the constellation of Aries and somewhat near Jupiter, which appears as a star in the image due to the longer exposure. I used a 70mm lens as using anything larger made it very difficult to spot due to the comet being incredibly dim to the naked eye. This is a combination of 12 ten second exposures, which were stacked and then processed in my photo program and also using a gradient extractor due to the uneven light from the horizon. It's not perfect and I have a lot to learn but I was fairly happy with what i was able to get. If you look closely you can see faint bits of the tail extending out, I wish I had been able to pull out more of that but the quality was degrading. I am not sure if the comet is still visible, it was getting lower on the horizon every day. I should have captured it in January at least. At this point in time it was too low too get very many images before it was gone.
It's Friday, TGIF! My Lilacs are just starting to bloom, it's been a weird Spring. I have 2 different types and one usually blooms later than the other but they are both starting together this year. The one that is later is much more aromatic and I captured this Common Variegated Fritillary was enjoying the blooms the other day and I was able to get a few images of it. I also chose this image for today due to the lovely bubbly bokeh because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
My new tulips did pretty well this year. This is a close up of one of them that I was able to get. Tulips are interesting in how they open fairly wide in the heat of the day and then close back up as it gets darker and cooler.
It's a double digit day! 😀 It's also Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! This year seems to be the year for this flower, Prairie Groundsel, they are blooming in large groups right now and look lovely. These flowers usually bloom from April to June. They are in the Sunflower family which must be why I enjoy seeing them.
