Houston – Page 26 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Video called the radio star

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Speaking of Y2K7, I will be in ABC Channel 13 this Sunday morning at around 9:00am. If you remember to spring forward and are awake at that hour be sure and tune in. They’re using me (again) as a “technology expert” talking head. This time for a piece they’re doing on the Y2K7 issue.

You know when I said being on camera terrifies me? Being on live television is about a million time more disconcerting. Hopefully they’ll have the AC turned up and I won’t be covered in flop sweat.

I did get a trim on the old chinfro (beard) so as to look my best.

Meet me on the dark side of the moon

I found myself uncharacteristically informed in advance of a significant celestial event for a change, rather than hearing of it after it was over. That event was the total lunar eclipse on Saturday, March 3rd.

Even though the full eclipse would not be visible from the central U.S., the moon would be over 75% obscured at moonrise and would pass from eclipse over the course of about an hour.

I thought this would be a truly unique photographic experience and set out to make the most of it.

First I would need a good place to view the event. I considered Galveston and even Matagorda. Not really wanting to drive any great distance, I decided to ask my friend and co-host, Barrett, if he thought the roof of his downtown loft might be a suitable viewing location.

He informed me that there was a mostly unobstructed view of the eastern horizon from the roof and that he had seen the moonrise on several occasions.

This suited me just fine and we made the arrangements.

Cynthia and I arrived at Barrett’s loft around 6:00 pm and before long we were on the roof. Barrett had told a few friends who also joined us. It’s a precarious climb involving a straight ladder to the roof from the 10th floor.
Cynthia and I schlepped our cameras and I carried a tripod. The temperature was dropping into the 50’s with a nice stiff wind but we were determined.

According to what I had read, the moon should be rising in the east at the exact time the sun is setting in the west during this eclipse. Well, the sun went down but no moon came up. It must have been obscured by one of the buildings. I asked Barrett if he had seen the rising of the moon during winter and he said he didn’t know.

Apparently Barrett failed druid school and did not realize that the location of the moonrise changes over the year.

Ah well, it was a good time anyway. I got some great shots of downtown.

These three pics are of the east (where the moon should have been rising) and demonstrate the 75-300mm lens going from shortest to longest focal length.

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I just love the Maxwell House building.

This is Main St. You can see Dean’s Credit Clothing on the left in the distance.

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As the sun set I pointed the camera west to grab this shot:

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After conceding defeat regarding the eclipse we made our way back down and Cynthia and I said our goodbyes and started to drive back home. Just as we were entering the freeway we looked up in the eastern sky and there it was:

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I found the exit and pulled over to shoot it handheld. Not too bad, but not what I was aiming for, especially after all that planning.

Ah well, maybe next time

The Continental Club – Houston

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Photography weekend – Part 2

Sunday was shaping up to be an even better day than Saturday so we decided to slack on the chores and go out shooting pictures again.

I had been hearing a bit about the West 11th Street Park and figured we could go there and at least have a look around. In one of the reports I had heard on NPR they indicated the park had some interesting wildlife.

When we got there, it really didn’t look all that interesting. In fact, we were about to just drive on past it and look for something else when we noticed three ladies coming out of the park toting binoculars. I decided to swing around and ask them if there was any interesting birds in the park. All three exclaimed that yes indeed, there was all manner of Woodpeckers, Hawks and even a Great Horned Owl in that park. They offered to show us the Horned Owl as they had just come from where he was nesting.

The ladies took us down the path and into the woods and we came to the base of a stand of trees. They pointed to the sky and described where in the top of a very tall tree the owl could be seen. Cynthia and I craned our heads skyward and peered into the trees but could see nothing.

After about 5 minutes of explaining which branch off of which tree and so on and so forth Cynthia finally exclaimed that she could see the owl. A minute later I spotted him as well.

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Time to see what the new 300mm zoom lens can do.

This was shot a the full 300mm handheld. That is to say, no tripod.

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You gotta love image stabilization.

We admired the owl for awhile and then set off to explore the park.

The next creature we encountered was a hawk.
You could see him flying in circles high above the tops of the trees.

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SUPER TELEPHOTO XPEALADOSSHAS!

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Again, totally handheld. Amazing.

That allowed me to crop this out:

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Even more amazing was the shot Cynthia got with her Pentax with the 320mm telephoto:

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And from that we were able to extract this:

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What a wonderful couple of sightings!

As we were leaving we heard the familiar tak-tak-tak sound, indicating that a woodpecker was nearby.
Looked up and sure enough, there he was!

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We left the park and headed home. But before calling it quits we had one more stop.

Terry Hershey Park

If you get off the main bike trail and onto some of the footpaths you can really have some cool creature moments. I found this Egret hunting fish in a small pond:

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It was a great weekend for taking pictures!

Camera duo self portrait

Photography weekend – Part 1

The weather was fantastic this weekend and Cynthia was itching to shoot some pics with her new camera.
On top of that, I had just treated myself to the Sony 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Compact Super Telephoto Zoom Lens and was excited about taking it for a test run.

Cynthia and I headed downtown to poke around. We stopped first at “the boots” near Uptown Park because Cynthia had commented on my earlier post and thought it would be a good opportunity to play with her wide angle lens.

That worked out pretty good because I had been dying to get a shot of this one particular building at Post Oak and 610. I drive this way most every day and have always appreciated the reflection of the high-rise condos in this one silver building.

I had to walk a ways away to line it up and ended up standing in the middle of Post Oak to get the shot.
It’s OK, but seeing it in person is better.

From there we made our way downtown. We wandered around a bit and shot some pics of this and that.

It was an altogether new experience for me having a shooting partner. Cynthia was able to help me when I needed to change lenses and vice-versa. This is great practice for our upcoming trip to Spain.

Nick Gaitan – The Octanes

Camera: Sony Alpha 100
Lens: Sony 50mm 1.4
F/2.0
ISO: 400

These boots were made for viewing

Looking down and across the 610 loop from my building I noticed several oversized boots in Post Oak Park and even though it’s freezing cold, I decided to walk over and take the camera.

I’m sure it’s Rodeo related…