JDW Photos and Life

I decided to go back to 2016 for photos to share until we get out and do something new some day. We moved to College Station in 2012 and into our house in March 2013. Our lot has a lot of yaupon shrubs that produce berries that are pretty ripe this time of year. We would get flocks of cedar waxwings and robins come through the area and wipe out the berries. For the past 2 years, we have not seen much of either species and our berries go uneaten - as they are right now. This photo was taken 1/8/16 in our back yard as a group of cedar waxwings were feasting. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

The Neowise comet was relatively dim in terms of classic photography - just another version of a night sky photo. If you leave the shutter open too long, you will get star trails as the earth rotates. One technique to overcome this problem is to take many photos of shorter exposure and then let software stack those photos on top of each other for the equivalent of a single exposure. Each frame is aligned to the others using the brightest stars and then all of the light from the exposures is added together. The big boys have a calibrated motor attached to their tripod/telescope that moves with the earth and can thus have very long exposures in a single capture. I'm not a big boy so I make do with this solution. Editing this stacked photo is a challenge as you are trying to balance keeping the good light and tossing the bad background light. The first photo is what I got after stacking 21 photos with each being a 3.2 second exposure - 67.2 seconds total. You can clearly see the doubl...

On July 23, 2020 and deep in COVID restrictions, a local photographer and I went out north of town to get outside of the city glow to take some night sky photos. If you remember, 2020 brought us the comet Neowise. You could see it with your eyes in a really dark sky. Having the camera capture it helped to highlight the comet as the exposure time can be increased to pick up more light. We went to an oil well pad in the middle of very open/flat farmland. We got there just before sunset and just as important, moonset. The comet was dim enough that you did not want the moon adding light to the sky. This first shot is a nice sunset photo. Fortunately, the clouds left with the sunset and we had clear skies. Later in the night, we captured photos of the comet. Other photographers shared more spectacular photos of the comet taken during this time. Some of those photos look to be pretty heavily edited to enhance the tail. I chose a lighter touch on the edit to closer match my vision. This was m...

One more painted bunting on a sunflower. It was a good day back in the middle of the shutdown summer of 2020. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

I have been asked several times since starting these e-mails if it is OK for you to share or copy to you phone/computer or set as a screen somewhere. The simple answer is yes - other than commercial use. YES! Please share as you like. I ask that you not edit the photo and that's about it. IF you want to print a photo, please ask me to provide you a higher resolution file. These small files will not result in a good print though they are fine on a screen. If you need a photo in a different crop, I can happily do that also. All of my photos have a copyright notice embedded in them (not just the watermark). The only exception to free use is in a commercial environment. I need to be contacted before any commercial use. I take photos to share with others for their enjoyment as well as mine. If I didn't have somewhere/someone to share them with, I'm not certain I would be taking the photos. Another painted bunting on sunflowers from 2020 and then a sourdough bread updated from my...

The good news for you is not long emails for a while. I'll recycle a few old photos until something new happens. Enjoy this photo of a painted bunting on a sunflower taken in July 2020 just west of Navasota. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

Got a little story for ya'. We drove to Ft. Knox over 2 days stopping a little East of Memphis. The first day a long drive but not too bad. The second day was shorter but wet and cold. Fortunately, we only drove a few hours through that mess. Towards the end of that first day, the change oil light came on (10 or 15% life left). Normally, I check where my oil stands before going on a long trip but I had failed to do so for this trip. No problem, I'll just get it changed in Ft. Knox. We arrive on a Thursday afternoon so I took the car to Jiffy Lube (rarely do I use such places) first thing Friday morning. As they were wrapping up the change and making final tire pressure and fluids checks, the guy asks if I knew my front left tire rim was broken. NO!!! I go look and this is what I see. This photo doesn't do full justice to just how bad it was. I have NO IDEA how the tire was holding pressure. There was no indication while driving that this had happened. Neither Donnice nor I ...