“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” ― Eudora Welty
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
The two expression this Chipmunk made while I was taking its photo had me chuckling.
I got it!
Uh, what nut?!
Nikon D850| Nikkor 500mm| PS CC
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
What a week it’s been! It all started on October 10th, 2024.
My neighbor and I rose early to head up to Emerald Bay for sunrise.
The color was earlier than we hoped so, we made a quick stop at Pope Beach to shoot the color and daybreak.
Then we made our way up to a lookout over Emerald Bay to photograph the lake.
Then we took our time making stops along the way home to photograph some Autumn Color.
We saw a beautiful Red-tailed Hawk hunting for breakfast. She caught a Vole but, I won’t gross you out with those images.
Later that evening I saw the Northern Lights for the first time ever. That post is here. It was glorious.
Friday morning I birded with my usual birding group and we had a great morning seeing 40 species of birds. Along with the birds I noticed some spooky Zombie Pirates lurking by the pond. Here’s one.
Saturday morning I was up early and met up with two girl friends to do my first Big Day. It’s a 24 hour global birding marathon put on by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We didn’t sign up as team or register our day but we, birded from 8AM until after 4PM. I saw 45 species. It was pretty fun day. We posted our sightings on ebird.org so they’ll have our record for their counts and information. Unfortunately, the next afternoon I got sick, and shortly afterwards I was hearing from my companions from the day before that they where also sick. We think the deli we stopped at to have lunch is where we picked up food poisoning. I brought home half my sandwich which I shared with He-Man and yep, he got it too. UGH.
Monday still weak, and very tired I was determined to locate and see Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) but, I wasn’t in shape to drive anywhere so I just stepped out on my back patio and photographed it there. It’s so cool and it has a great long tail!
What a week! What a month it’s been so far! The Aurora, and the Comet really made my month. Everything else has been icing on the cake.
My tummy is still sketchy, but I’m on the mend and so are He-Man and my friends. I plan to be out photographing Halloween things, birding, and maybe the Comet with a better composition soon. I hope your week is going well. Oh, and watch out for the Zombies and Ghoulies! 👻
Nikon D850| Nikkor 500mm, &35mm| PS CC
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
With the all the intense Solar activity in the way of flares, and CME’s there have been Auroras are as low as Northern Nevada! I got an alert telling me the aurora was in my town and the KP rating was 8. Nine is the highest rating so I looked out the back door and I could see it so, I grabbed my camera, tripod, and cellphone, slipped into my shoes without tightening up my laces and dashed out the door. I didn’t grab a jacket, or my headlamp I was so excited. Here’s one of the many images I made.
I’ve wanted to see the northern lights since I first learned about them as a kid. I always thought I’d have to travel way up north in the winter to have the best chance of seeing them.
Why is it pink? What causes the colors? I had to look it up because the Northern Lights (aurora borealis), here have been bright pink with some blues and purples, and very little green.
They are created when energized particles from the sun slam into Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds up to 45 million mph (72 million kph). Our planets magnetic field protects us from the onslaught.
Earth’s magnetic field redirects those particles towards the poles transforming that energy into the dazzling display we call the Northern Lights or in the Southern Hemisphere the Southern Lights (aurora australis).
Most Northern Lights are green but when there’s been intense solar activity the color can be red, pink, blue, or purple.
Here’s a linkhttps://sciencenotes.org/aurora-colors-explained-southern-and-northern-lights/ to Science Notes that explains the Aurora colors in more detail.
I’m hearing and reading that it’s been seen all over the country. That’s so exciting!
Nikon D850| Nikkor 35mm f/1.8g| PS CC 2024
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
After several hours of birding my birding partner and I were hungry so went looking for a place fairly close by to have some lunch. We found Quaker Steak & Lube.
This is the only one in FL going by their website. We both had salads and I failed to take a photo of either of them. It was just a Caesar Salad w/grilled chicken. Instead of croutons they served it with Cheese Curds. Now, I thought that sounded gross and would probably just pick them out, but after trying one I gobbled them up! They were warm and slightly gooy and tender on the inside yummy. Mary had the Biker Chick salad. It sounded delicious too, but it was on the sweet side and I was hot and wasn’t in the mood for sweet.
The inside of the restaurant is car themed. Each wing of the interior has a small sports racing car hanging from the ceiling, and lots of car memorabilia like a dividing wall full of MAC tools for fixing cars. I went back a second time for that salad and this time He-Man was with me he said he has some of those tools. Who knew?!
Anyway, I did get photos of the exterior and the doors.
Look at the door pulls. I thought they were neat.
Most of their restaurants seem to be in OH. Do you have one in your city/state? Have you been there?
This post is part of the weekly challenge Thursday Doors hosted by Dan Antion over at https://nofacilities.com/2024/09/26/back-at-osv/
Head on over there to see more doors from around the world or join the craze and add a door or two of your own. 😊
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
11 frames stacked. Nikon D850| Nikkor 20mm f/1.8g@f2
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
These aren’t Guest in the sense your mind probably went to when thinking about Guest doors, no. These doors were sent to me from a friend who lives in CT but, wishes to be anonymous for the time being.
She moved to CT oh, 4-5 years ago…time flies! Anyway a couple of weeks back she sent me an email saying,
“I visited Gillette Castle in Connecticut over the weekend and they had the most beautiful interior doors, all hand carved and I thought of you 🙂 Here are just a few but there were many! There were three stories’ worth and each one was unique. The castle was fascinating!”
She didn’t include the stories or details but, we have her images of three of the doors.
The door knobs are interesting. They’re wood!
She included a close up the door knob as the third image. Those door knobs are different! The doors remind me of quilts with their square patterned designs.
I looked up the castle and it does look beautiful and interesting.
Here’s something about those door knobs.
“Gillette designed 47 one of kind doors made from Southern White Oak found on the property. They were all hand carved. Each door has a unique, elaborate latch intricately carved of wood.”
Here’s a little intro about the castle from the website:
” Atop the most southerly hill of a chain of hills known as the Seven Sisters sits the retirement estate of noted actor, director, and playwright William Hooker Gillette. Named the Seventh Sister by Gillette, the property’s focal point is a 24-room stone mansion reminiscent of a medieval castle”. There’s a photo of the castle at the link and lots more information about the man and more photos.
https://www.gillettecastlefriends.org/history-of-the-castle
The doors are lovely. Don’t you love our door enabling friends!
Here’s a BIG SHOUT OUT to my friend in CT for sending me these beautiful and interesting doors.🥰 May she continue to send me doors to share with you!
This post is part of the weekly challenge Thursday Doors hosted by Dan Antion over at https://nofacilities.com/2024/08/22/still-more-from-iowa/
Head on over there to see more doors from around the world or join the craze and add a door or two of your own. 😊
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately starting at the beginning of the month with a birding walk up in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. The wildflowers were in bloom. Here are a couple of favorites I saw.
A beautiful view from the trail with Lupine, and Cornflower leaves in the foreground.
There were all sorts of juvenile birds being taught how to forage that morning. I saw Young Cassin’s Finches begging their parents for food, and the parents trying to encourage them to forage on their own, and young White-crown Sparrows foraging with their parents, but the highlight for me was the juvenile Rufous Hummingbird perched on a branch. That was a first for me.
On Monday I got up at 2:45AM to go on my back patio to see if I could spot and photograph any Perseid Meteors. I very nearly went back to bed as there were still clouds from the day before in the sky.
I saw 3 great fireballs streaking across the morning sky, but one was completely out of my frame. One just looks like a streak with no fire ball that was disappointing, but it has a green tail, and one was just partially in my frame. The others I photographed are pink and green. Which I think are from the Aurora Borealis that was visible here. I missed the peak of that. I slept through it.
Here are two images of Perseid Meteors I photographed.
Look how close that fireball came to being in my frame! See it left side bottom edge? There’s another meteor below center as well.
And, I’m still painting. I just finished a big painting for me at 9×12 inches of the Le Moulin de L’Abbye in France. I used a photo from a book called Hotels de Reve en France that I picked up years ago from a Little Free Library. I’ve been sketching from this book for years, but have been afraid to actually add paint out of fear of messing it up. I drew it freehand which took me hours, because drawing is so hard for me, but I am improving! Practice really helps. Anyway, I transferred the drawing to drawing paper so if I did mess it up I could half the drawing time by tracing it. This time I was determined to add paint!
Here’s that painting.
watercolor painting
The reference photo from the book Hotels de Reve en France.
I also made the boys some little handmade sketchbooks. I hope they fill those pages up!
The weather is cooler and the smoke from the Calif. fires has cleared so I’ll be out birding later this week and getting my morning walks in outside.
This is getting long so I’ll close with I hope your week is going well.
Nikon D850\ iPhone 14Plus
more to come…
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