Holiday Photo Challenge

The Viewfinder Challenge for December was holiday photos.  I will not be able to attend the meeting due to Elaine's medical situation, but thought I'd try to squeeze in some entries for the challenge anyway.  The first thought was to go to  North Star Mall to see what was happening during the "Pet" day for Santa.  Every year, they allow three hours on Mondays for people to bring their pets to sit on Santa's lap and get their photo made.  I had never been and thought it would be a hoot, especially if someone brought an exotic pet like a snake or fish.  No such luck.  Nothing but dogs.  And plenty of them.  There was a long line waiting and even when I left around 8 PM, they  were still bringing them in from the parking lot.  Here's the most interesting shot I got from my vantage point up on the second floor balcony.  This was with an 85mm f1.4 lens shooting at about 1/30 sec.  I have a caption for this one.  It is, "Please, Santa, tell him he's too young for a BB gun this year."

When leaving the mall, I stopped at the big boots to take a shot of them since they are so easy and meet the holiday criterion.  Shot was with 15mm f1.7 lens at 1/50 sec. and f8.0.

For the third shot I had an idea to  try something in the neighborhood, just around the corner from the house.  The Holy Trinity Catholic Church has a nativity scene they erect each year and I'd been waiting for them to light it.  They finally did, so I set up in front of it at night with camera on a tripod.  Exposure was about the same as for the boots except 1/4 sec instead of 1/50.  I took several shots with myself in front of the camera in different locations, each time holding my 7" Android tablet.  I had photographed the scene with the tablet and just put it on replay when I held it up.  On processing, I pasted two of the positions onto the shot that already had one on it.  So there are three silhouetted figures in all.  The caption for this one is "Three modern wise men go to check out the Baby Jesus"

Comments Welcome as always.

Botanical Gardens

Yesterday my Viewfinders Camera Club held its first annual awards banquet at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens.  And whether you are resident or visitor, if you haven't discovered this place you owe it to yourself to check it out.  It is a photographers' paradise.  Lots of flowers and stuff of course, but some really cool  other structures including a number of large glass enclosures for plants.  I was fascinated by the glass buildings and since HDR is my fun thing of the month, I had to try some triplet shots for HDR merge.  Here is one that I think came out pretty well. Comments welcome.

Power to the People

So I wanted to try some HDR  effect on an industrial subject.  I stopped at the power distribution yard on Sonterra Blvd. at Hwy 281 and took a few scenes using a three-shot burst at -1,0,+1 stop exposure.  Did the HDR thing in Paint Shop Pro and here is one result.  Not very realistic, but I think appropriate for the subject matter.

Palindromic clockery

Think about a digital clock using seven-segment displays.  Clearly, the zero, the one, the two, the five and the eight read the same forward and back.  The six and the nine interchange with each other when upside down and reversed.  Three, four and seven do not reverse.  

Given these properties, it can be seen that there are some times of day that read the same forward and upside down and backwards.  For example, 1:01, 9:26, 5:25, etc.  There are 720 separate times displayed on a 12-hour digital clock.  Of those, 27 are palindromic.  (Coincidentally, 72 and 27 are palindromes!).

I have been getting up in the mornings only on palindromic times.  On golf days when I have to get up early, I will arise at 5:15 or 5:25.  On more leisurely days, I might sleep till 8:28 or even 9:26.  So hopefully the house will not catch fire at 3:00 AM.  I will have to tough it out till 5:05 before I can get out of bed.  

Life is a challenge when you are retired.