Crack in the ice

Deb and I discovered this yesterday on our walk.  I thought it would be fun to try my TS-E 24mm lens with it - with tripod.  I shot these at F11-F14, about 5 degrees of tilt with the Singh Ray UV-KN filter on to add just a bit of warmth on the cold ice.  I also custom set my white balance using the Whibal card.  It is soooo easy!

A little bit of light in a gray world

This morning, for about 10 minutes, there was a splash of fresh light on my yard.  Now the gray has settled back in for another day.

A flower that didn't get the memo

Yep, blooming right outside my back door, my hearty little violas have a love of the cold that only I could equal.  The snow must have insulated them from the days and days of below zero temperatures that we've had.  Who knows, all I know is that this little flower is about the only color I've seen besides white in my back yard for about a month!

Monday in Beatrice

All of the above pictures were taken with the TS-E 24mm lens.  The effect is very noticeable on the wall where you can see first it is all in focus and the next picture only Nebraska is in focus.

Deb and I went to see Pam today.  We went to Homestead National which is on the actual land of the first person to apply for homestead property.  It was very interesting and we hope to go back down and snowshoe on the land next big snow.  Then we went looking for birds on the backroads.  Came across some bluebirds, this beautiful kestrel and this mystery bird.  Pam what do you think it is??

Slow Meal

We had the slow meal in a new space tonight.  As a result, I had to take pictures from a different angle.  Not much light either - ISO 3200!  There was a candle on each table and I placed it directly under the glass, so I could have the color of the wine for that course show up better.  I think it worked pretty well and was the meal ever YUMMY!

Saturday morning snowshoe

On our way to the lake this morning, Deb and I saw this GIANT hawk.  We walked towards us and of course it flew away, but then we found it again at the lake.

Ice fishing sure looks lonely and cold.

We found a lot of leaves that had melted into the snow.  They were very interesting to look at. 70-200 IS

New (old) Lens TS-E 24mm V1

Large depth of field, at F5.6

Small depth of field, at F5.6

This is wild - same aperture with tilt and/or shift applied.  Read below for a giggle and don't ask me how I did it. Let the learning begin.

From LensRentals.com:  If you aren’t sure what this is, you don’t want it.

This is Canon’s wide-angle tilt-shift lens. The tilt-shift allows correction of distortion for architectural work and product shots, modifications to depth of field (in focus from near field to infinity, or artistic blurring), and a very accurate way to shoot multiple shots for a panorama.

Roger’s Take: If you have tilt-shift experience this lets you do remarkable things. If you're tilt-shift challanged (this would be me, Kris) you can still do remarkable things. Once. Then you can spend the next two hours figuring out how you did that. If you haven’t used one before, please note this lens has a learning curve, is manually focused, and takes practice to use effectively. I can’t tell you exactly how much practice, just that its more practice than I’ve had. Even a hacker like me, though, can use them to control depth of field and shoot a panorama after about 30 minutes of playing around. To accurately adjust building parallel lines, etc. takes more experience or more chimping the LCD while you do trial-and-error.

Hot - 60 degree temperature swing in one day

No vest, no headband, no gloves - it was like walking on the beach today.  The snow had the consistency of sand.  It was strange!  The morning started out at 30 degrees BELOW zero and ended up in the low 30s this afternoon.  A perfect day to be on the trails.  The sky was a deep, pure blue today.  Lovely against the aspens.

Out and about on Sunday

The day at the ranch started out with a little college race.  Check out those UW uniforms!

Next we went by the stables.  There was no racing going on there.

The willows and the aspens provided a bit of color in our landscape today.

That's about all from the ranch today.  Another lovely day. 

Saturday at the Ranch

We hiked to the highest point at the ranch today.  It took us 2 hours to get up here.  We still had about 30 minutes left at this point, but it was a nice view of the valley.  This panarama was taken with my p&s camera.  I should have zoomed in, but I forgot that. 

There is our home for the next few nights.

Here are some pictures from today.  We had a perfect day to do a whopper hike.

Day 3 at the Ranch

Woke up today to -40 degree weather.  How nice to walk into our bathroom with heated floors.  Wow, is that ever a nice feature.  We received a call that Amtrak has cancelled all trains west for 48 hours.  We've had a one day delay before, but never a two day!  Oh dang, stuck here at the Ranch for another 3 days!  As you can see - the outside is beautiful and the inside is cozy.  70-200 F4 IS / 50D body unedited straight out of the camera.  Wow is that ever a fantastic lens.