Posts Tagged ‘photography’
Drone Views
Despite some gusty winds on Sunday, there was an opportunity to view our property from overhead via a drone. I find this a spectacular variation of our perspective of the immediate surroundings we traverse every day. Much better than simply viewing a dramatically more distant 2-dimensional image from a satellite photo.
Let’s take a little tour, starting at the house…
That’s a lot different view from all the shots of the house we’ve tried taking from down below in the backyard.
Down the hill and through the short corridor of trees we come to the labyrinth.
If you are careful to spot the 180° turns, you can walk the path with your eyes. Imagine the sounds of the breeze in the trees, the calls of songbirds, and maybe the sound of horses grazing in the back pasture.
I was pleased to see the drone didn’t startle the horses but Mix certainly took notice and circled the herd around once for good measure. Then they all went back to grazing.
Back up the hill of the backyard and past the house, we come to the shop and garage.
The amount of equipment squeezed inside is a mystery with the doors closed.
Finally, the drone was steered out for a brief glimpse of the barn before the dwindling battery brought the exercise to a safe conclusion.
The trees are so full of leaves that it made it difficult to capture a low-angle view that revealed the proximity of each feature in relation to the others.
We spent some time trying to fly down one of the paths in the woods but the drone was reluctant to follow commands smoothly due to the detection of nearby trees and low-hanging branches.
It was a thrill for me to watch the process and I treasure the views that we captured. Makes me want to have a jet pack that would let me quickly pop up for a similar view whenever the higher perspective seems warranted.
Maybe Greenworks will come up with a battery-powered one soon.
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Tree Scenes
After Friday’s overnight blast of rain and thunder that swiftly transitioned into a heavy blizzard dropping 1-to-2-inch per hour of snow, Saturday delivered a blue sky with enough sunshine to reduce the snow cover by half.
I was getting pelted by snow and ice chunks falling from the branches as I wandered around taking pictures of the after-effects of the spring storm. The icy tree branches caught most of my attention.
The gaping wound on this ornamental maple tree at the top of our driveway exposes the harsh reality of the toll these kinds of weather events dish out on the greatest assets we have on our land.
Similar to the way some trees hold the leaves at the very top in the fall after the lower branches have become bare, several of our trees had crowns of ice reflecting the sunlight.
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I’ll conclude with a tree that showed no sign of life last year, failing to sprout a single green needle yet still has enough structure to support the snow like a healthy tree.
There will be a lot of branch-collecting to be done across our acres after the snow finally melts away this year. I’m looking ahead to the days when our tree scenes return to their green best.
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Not Fooled
April. Really?
Fool me once…
I thought I was going to shovel snow. APRIL FOOLS!
It was more like cement. Maybe stucco. Plaster?
Just to add to the ruse, nature makes it look gorgeous.
I fear this mess will be un-plowable. How fast will it melt? I’m going to clean up around the edges and see how conditions change after the sun shines on it for an hour or two.
I don’t think the horses see much humor in this kind of practical joke. Our trees don’t think it’s very funny, either.
My new zero-turn mower is due to arrive on Tuesday.
Happy April everyone!
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Icy Art
With the oscillations of our temperatures rising above freezing during the day and then dropping below each night, a morning walk offers a variety of artistic spectacles. Icy designs form over the water that was flowing in the drainage ditches. The artwork is only temporary because as the earth spins to move our view of the sun higher in the sky, the ice turns to water and flows downstream.
This art show is a bonus to the overall benefit of the overnight freezes slowing the thaw of our snowpack, mitigating the threats of heavy erosion, or overflowing the banks of our small streams and rivers.
There remains a chance of heavy rain falling in April to a degree that flooding could still happen. Having the snowpack safely melted by that time will save us from worst-case scenarios that might have resulted due to the high water content that was in this year’s snow.
More and more ground is being revealed every day and April shows up on Saturday. Green plants will be sprouting soon. Spring hasn’t quite sprung yet, but it feels like it’ll be bouncing along very soon.
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Snow Expected
They tell us to expect fresh snow this week after a prolonged span of February days without frozen precipitation piling up. I have been enjoying the freedom from needing to plow and shovel, but I get a sense that I haven’t enjoyed it as much as I should. Now that this freedom is coming to an end, it feels like I have taken the pause for granted.
I’ve always felt a fondness for the look of one thing fading into another. Especially, gradual gradients. Yesterday, I took pictures of the old snow where it was melting back to reveal the ground below.
It has a bit of a yin and yang feeling to it.
I’m also fascinated by the way leaves melt into the snow.
Looks like there was a fish beside it. Notice the hint of a yin and yang curve in those two, as well.
If the forecast is correct, it will all be covered in white again before the week is over. The cosmic duality of opposing forces of winter precipitation covering the dark earth.
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Possibility – Revisited
First posted in April of 2013. I was doing a review of old images and this one resonated anew for me this morning…
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Words on Images
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Ventured Out
Apparently, the horses were just waiting for nightfall to venture out into the deep snow covering the hay field. Their meandering trails made for an interesting pattern beneath the colorful dawn sky yesterday morning.
It was around -5°(F) but the horses appeared unperturbed by the cold, even though there was frost on some of their whiskers and eyelashes. By noon, it had warmed to the mid-teens and their attitude had noticeably changed.
They showed a much greater interest in stuffing themselves with hay at noon. That preoccupation was a helpful distraction, allowing me to put blankets on all of them in advance of extreme weather coming in the days ahead. I think they were wise to the threat and were stoking their furnaces in advance.
Probably why they were so accepting of my fumbling around to get the blankets on them. They seem to sense what lies ahead in the weather department.
I got the barn and hay shed loop plowed yesterday and it was just as tricky as I suspected because of the depth of the snow. By taking it slow and moving half-plow-blade amounts of snow at a time, I accomplished my goal. After parking the ATV back in the shop garage, I headed down to clean up the edges with a shovel and was surprised to find the feed delivery van parked at the barn, unloading bags.
They showed up a day early to avoid making deliveries in wild weather.
It’s a good thing I ventured out to plow when I did. This incident encourages me to not let things wait until the last minute. If I had waited any longer to get that part of the drive plowed, those 50 lb. bags of feed would be piled in the snow at the edge of the driveway and I would have been carrying them down to the barn by myself.
Sounds like winter is going to come in like a lion this year. There’ll be no worrying about whether or not it will be a white Christmas around these parts.
Ho, ho, ho.
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Relative Something 