Lazy Days

I like to begin another lazy day in the desert with a little walkabout and some picturin' and try to take a different route each and every day. it is great to explore all the hills and crevasses of this landscape and do what Canon calls Exploring of Light. It is incredible how things change as the sun comes up, and again as it goes down, although I am rarely out wandering about at sunset. Not sure if I could find my way home in the dark. In my picturin' career I have always had the inclination to lean towards big landscapes or wildlife, but here I am gaining an appreciation for how the light plays on small things, rocks, trees, and small plants, although I guess yesterdays shots of the Milky Way don't really qualify as small.

Well, it is, they estimate that the Milky Way only has about a billion stars in it, of which, ours is a pretty minor one. Other larger galaxies, like Andromeda, are estimated to have over a trillion, yes with a "T", stars in them and some folks estimate there could be at least two trillion galaxies in the Universe. So in retrospect we are pretty small potatoes in the whole scheme of things.

Andromeda is visible with the naked eye from earth in fact it is just above Jupiter right now and to the left, and appears as a blur on the edge of the Milky Way. I am no astronomer but I think this is it outlined here, Jupiter is just off the frame to the right.

Well wasn't that a rabbit hole I have led you down, almost on the scale of a galactic black hole, but that is a story for another time so back to my wanderings about the desert here down the road from Dogpound.

And why am I wandering about the desert every day, while primarily because I love walking out there, but somewhat because of the good eats we get here everyday at Dogpound Anywhere. Quesadilla's today.

Days and Nights

Not a lot of exciting stuff happening today. The weather cooled off a little. It is more comfortable for Brenda for sure, but it portends a trend that I fear might be hard to stop. For a kid from north of the Medicine Line coooling trends to bring up that ancestral fear of WINTER, so there is that. Let's just hope whomever is controlling our climate conspiracies these days doesn't get carried away with this cooling phase to quickly. All things in moderation. I continued my morning visit with the desert today, so got a few shots that I will share with you on that ramble.

I head out early, usually just before sunrise and it is all about the way the light plays on the landscape that makes the place so beautiful.

Well, that and seeing new places, or the same old places from a new perspective.

I have taken to just carrying my phone with me on my wanderings, getting old I guess, and the big old lens are heavy and cumbersome, and the new phones take pretty decent pictures, especially for this format, where size doesn't really matter. But curiousity drove me to crack out my Canon and tripod last evening and shoot a little bit of the Milky Way. Now the Canon still does a better job for full size images but that little iPhone does a pretty decent job even of night shooting for sharing here on the interwebs.

The image above was shot with my iPhone 15, while the one below was with my Canon R5, both with similar post processing although not identical.

Although you can't really see it here the Canon image survives enlarging it better than the iPhone, but how many of us blow up our shots and hang them anymore anyway. Oh by the way, those little specks of light you see, our sun is just another one of them, not even a significant one, and we are just standing on a little rock traveling around that tiny speck. to lend a little perspective to the whole thing.