JDW Photos and Life

So "everybody" took photos of the Super Blue Moon on August 19. The "Super" part was due to its orbit being closer to the earth than normal. The "Blue" can have two definitions. The more common definition is the second full moon in a calendar month. Obviously this moon did not fit that description given the August 19 date (moon cycle is 29.5 days). The second definition is a fourth full moon in a seasonal quarter. I didn't know about this definition until I investigated a little. Learned something new...... A few days prior on August 17, we were taking a boat ride on Cow Bayou in Bridge City. The moon looked great so I snapped a few photos from a slow moving pontoon boat hoping for a reasonable shot. The moon phase showed 95% visible. In my opinion, I like partial moon shots better than the full moon shots. Look at the extra detail we can see on the craters when they are on the edge of illumination. The sunlight is hitting the peaks of the craters and ...

We took a quick overnight trip to Bridge City this weekend to visit our friends Al & Michelle. Al had been telling us about this white squirrel that he would sometimes see in his yard so I brought the camera just in case. With good fortune, I was able to capture a few frames from its short visit. None of these shots are as close as they appear in the photos. I used a 560 mm lens and still needed to crop the photo for detail. This guy was skittish to say the least. I guess when you wear a white coat, you know you can't easily hide. What they thought was just a white squirrel (assumed it was the slightly more common  leucistic) turned out to clearly be albino. The squirrel has the characteristic pink eyes and pink skin of an albino. They had not been able to get close enough to see the detail you see in these photos so we now know. The first photo is our favorite. It was one HOT day and this post was in the shade by a little bit and probably cooler that the squirrel's body. T...

I decided I needed to touch base after a pause. While in Kentucky, we visited a horse farm and their flower beds had a nice activity of bees. As it turned out, there was essentially no other photo opportunities that made me want to take horse photos as the tour never stopped to get scenic shots and the barn shots were blah. So, you get to see a bee on a flower shot. These three pictures are the same photo - just cropped different. Neither detail shot has been enlarged (actually both are reduced for e-mail). Yes, this is a hand-held shot. Do you prefer the composition seeing more flowers or the detail seeing bee hairs, wing detail, and flower pollen? If I had to choose, the detail shots win since the flowers are past their prime in the hot summer temperatures. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

A few more pics of Churchill Downs. I didn't take any photos inside the museum because it was relatively crowded. However, they had a GREAT exhibit featuring Secretariat. The exhibit was in honor of the 50th anniversary of his triple crown victory in 1973. Back in the day of three channels of TV, this was a big deal and I remember watching the races with family. His story made horse racing fans out of most people in the US (at least short term). His speed records still stand to this day! Those were different and much more simple times than the overload of channels and information today. An interesting fact learned was that it is common for these horses undergo necropsies after their death. The doctor that performed his procedure reported the largest heart ever seen at a whopping 22 lbs - compared to an average t horoughbred's 8.5 lbs. It was even 1/3 larger than anything he had ever seen. This large heart plus a massive chest cavity provided the blood supply and lung capacity t...