Harvest Moon Photo Tips

I thought this article by Amy Farnsworth over at the Monitor was interesting, especially the photography tips - each year I try to take a decent Harvest Moon photo, and each year I fail!

-The harvest moon gets its name because the light from the moon allows farmers to work later hours – past sunset – and harvest staple crops such as pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice, during this time period. The Farmers’ Almanac says “the moon typically rises an average of 50 minutes later each night, but for the few nights around the Harvest Moon, the Moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night: just 25 to 30 minutes later across the US, and only 10 to 20 minutes later for much of Canada and Europe.”
The colors of the harvest moon vary and it can appear in red, yellow, or orange hues due to air pollution – mainly from forest fires.
Throughout centuries, the colorful harvest moon has inspired artists, painters, and poets. Many photographers have tried to capture images of the harvest moon, but it’s not very easy.
To take stellar photos of this seasonal event, Writer Geoff Gaherty of Space.com offers the following photography tips:
If your camera has automatic exposure, the scene will look too bright and the moon will be overexposed. The trick to capturing the harvest moon in a photograph is first, to zoom in with your telephoto lens to make the moon appear larger, and secondly, to underexpose the picture by a couple of stops, to darken the landscape, saturate the colors, and expose the moon properly.

wind, leaves, cider & pumpkin cake

I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things...

I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run

against the wind.

-Leo Buscaglia

Well, I'm finally back! The kids are back in school, and we've gotten through our usual first bout of sickness that always happens this time of year. We are slowly getting back into the swing of things, and while the kids do like going to school I still have a pit in my stomach every day I walk down the steps from the courtyard (see photo) without a little hand to hold. On a typical day I stop at the grocery store and then head home with a pit stop at my husband's 94 year-old grandma's house to run in her morning paper. I then go home and clean like a maniac or do what I can for my husband's work until 11:00 when it's time to pick up our daughter from kindergarten. On Thursdays I try to treat myself to an hour in the local thrift shop or some lounge time in the library. And then all of a sudden it's Friday and time to savor the precious weekend with my precious people!

After school tomorrow we are going to celebrate the first day of Fall with some pumpkin cake and cider in our little cabin in the woods. A fine dinner, don't you agree? :)

Summer Update

Like so many people I know, I've been crazily busy this summer and can't believe how it's flying by. My computer time has been extremely limited as I've been outside and running around with the kids so much. I almost decide to give up this little blog, but I know that once the kids are back in school and I have no one to eat my lunch with that I'll NEED it, so I guess I'll just call this a hiatus and return again in September.

Before I go, I would like to mention 2 things I've been enjoying recently - the band Iron & Wine and Michael Perry's latest book "Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting." Iron & Wine is perfect summer eve music, and the Perry book has "a literary gem on nearly every page" just like the quote on the back of it says. Here's a random paragraph from a random page:

"We begin on the easy path - a mown strip leading to the ridge past the old circular steel corncrib behind the granary. The crib stands empty beneath its rust-streaked galvanized cap, the iron mesh twined around the south side with a few stray ivy runners. For years it has done little more than sift the wind. At sundown it silhouettes against the sky like some ghostly aviary."

And that's just him talking about a corncrib! Awesome.

Between the dusk of a summer night

Between the dusk of a summer night

And the dawn of a summer day,

We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,

And we bade it stoop and stay.

-William Ernest Henley

Local Wonders

"The sky is like old blue denim just before dawn, with one round hole worn through, exposing the cold bony knee of the moon. I have been hearing the trilling of tree frogs. That frog - even one with the chirp of a bird - would live in a tree (not even in but on) , clinging with little suction cups to keep from falling, is the height of craziness, but forty feet in the air, light as leaves, their tiny hearts are slow and steady under kite paper skin, and their black eyes shine with moonlight. Let us praise all who ascend to such high places ont he sheer face of the world."

- From the "summer" chapter of the book Local Wonders Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by Ted Kooser

Thrift Shop Blues - The One that Got Away

Awhile back, Nan at Letters from a Hillfarm posted a photo of the most inviting Adirondack chair. It brought to mind a pair of weathered Adirondacks I saw for sale at the local thrift shop - they were $36 for both. I decided to sleep on it and stopped back the next morning, only to find them gone, their two marks still left in the grass. That day I vowed to never let that happen again - if I see something I love and can afford it, it comes home with me immediately.

I read about a similar experience in one of my favorite books - Garage Sale America by Bruce Littlefield. I don't buy many books because I'm always visiting the library, but this one I loved enough that I needed to own it. Here's his tale of "the one that got away."

There's nothing worse than the one that got away. It haunts you for weeks like a bad dream, eats away at your psyche like a termite on softened wood. I recently found myself attracted to a delicately aged pair of Bert and Ernie puppets sitting on the lawn of an otherwise innocuous sale of miscellany. My brother and I had them growing up. Ernie slept on the bottom bunk with Brian; Bert slept up top with me. I didn't buy them, leaving them to be taken by some more thoughtful brother, and I've regretted it ever since. It would have been fun for me to send Brian an Ernie with a mysterious note - definitely worth the ten bucks. It was a real missed opportunity, and I try not to let those happen too often.

-Bruce Littlefield

Help prevent birds from crashing into windows

I'm using a computer at the library right now, as my home computer is again on the fritz. While I hat to spend the money, I think it's time we get a new one...
Anyway, I feel like I have to hurry up here but I just wanted to post this link to a silhouette pattern you can print out for your windows to prevent birds from hitting them...

www.dteenergy.com/environment/pdfs/raptor.pdf

If this link doesn't work, just google "raptor silhouette window decal pattern" and it will come up.

My husband's grandma had so many little birds accidently hitting her patio doors and hurting themselves - we printed out a few of these raptors, taped them up, and haven't had a collision since.