Day of Producing Art

It's been a while since I photographed the planets.  Saturday, we had a break in the weather:  the morning sky was clear and cold, which meant that Venus, the Moon and Mars were visible in the pre-dawn sky.  Venus is approaching its greatest brilliance, in a few days it should be visible during the day.  The Moon was three days before being new, and rose something like 5 AM.   Mars was dim compared to the Moon and Venus.

All three objects were fairly low in the sky, which necessitated crossing the street with camera and tripod. After contending with some awkwardly placed power lines, I managed to frame the sky over the eaves of neighbors' houses.  It would have been nice to have a tree's silhouette in the photo, but the rooflines looked like mountains or possibly pyramids.  

After a quick jaunt to the store for tea, I set up the camera and tripod in the backyard against the arbor vita trees, focused on the fountain, and waited for the hummingbirds to appear.  Of course, the first hummingbird to appear came while I was futzing with the tripod and I only managed a blurry photo of it flying off.  I finished set-up.  I felt a little like some early twentieth century British Naturalist, as I had set up a small end table, chair and cushion, and had wrapped myself in faux leopard skin fleecy blanket.  

As I was sipping my rapidly cooling tea, a fierce humming signaled the sudden arrival of a bright red hummingbird.  It peered at me down its long and pointy beak, and, as I Tweeted later, I was pretty sure it was challenging me to a duel over ownership of the fountain ("Hello.  I am a hummingbird.  This is my fountain.  Prepare to die.")  

The light meter on the camera helped me to gauge the sun's progress, as I would have to adjust the shutter speed to compensate for the increase in light.   When the hummingbirds came to the fountain I was mostly ready.  I took many photos, fiddled with fine-tuning the camera's focus, and managed a number of good shots and one excellent one (the first one).  

By the time my tea had defrosted the glass top of the end table, it was too cold to drink.  

I spent the rest of the morning processing photos, and then it was time to go to my folks for a socially distanced celebration of my Dad's birthday.  We brought gluten-free cupcakes as a alternative to a socially closer birthday cake with candles.  Mark and I (okay, mostly Mark) had painted a sign for his garage, which he's converted into a combination wood shop, gym, and indoor dog play area.  It looked a little like a medieval manuscript, with the H in his name outlined and a medieval dog at the bottom.  I'm pretty sure he liked it, or at least appreciated it.  His ginormous German Shepherd and Aoife played together; we played "Apples to Apples."  

Then it was time to run home and feed the cats.  

The evening wound up with the finishing touches on a the latest geometric Math Art.  

If Saturday was the Day of Producing Art, Sunday was the day of Relative Sloth.