Laon Cathedral [Sky Watch Friday]

Truth be told, this image is really more about Laon Cathedral than the sky. In the mid 90s, my wife and I spent two successive summer vacations driving around France on our own on a pilgrimage to visit their great 12th and 13th century Gothic [and some Romanesque] cathedrals.  While it's hard to pick favorites as far as overall exterior architecture is concerned, however, Laon ranks way up there. One of its especially endearing features is the collection of animals placed around the uppermost towers/columns. If you enlarge the image, you will see steer and sheep [and, sorry to say, dirt specks that accumulated on my slides over the 20 years prior to their being scanned]. As I recall, there was a large open area in front of the church with benches where we could sit and leisurely [Laon is not a big tourist town] gaze at the facade. OK -- I'll admit to having Chartres Cathedral as my favorite.

Panoramas of the George Eastman House Rock Garden Entrance

Lately, a 'pano' craze has hit the Rochester area. Each day a panorama image is published atop the local news section [dimensions must be 10" x 2"]. To obtain this 5:1 ratio, one could take a single shot and crop it accordingly; but, this is not how it is done generally. Rather, a series of overlapping images are loaded into Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, for example, and then the software 'stitches' [or merges] them together. It is as simple as that! Of course, there are a bunch of dos and don'ts that go along with taking the shots, but no need to go into those here.  The top photo [that's the same person in three locations] came from five images and the bottom one from seven. Ideally, the camera should be mounted on a tripod to ensure maintaining the same height in all the images. However, in the examples above, I had hand-held my camera. When the various sections are stitched together, there are portions above and below that have gaps; but, with luck, cropping will hide them. Well, now that I've satisfied myself that I can do it, it's time to think about future panos.

Austrian Alps [Sky Watch Friday]

In 1997 I attended a conference in Igls, Austria [close to Innsbruck]. Isn't odd how international meetings are set up at such dreadful places?  --LOL--  Taking advantage of a free afternoon, my wife and I took a ride up the mountain in a gondola. The snow was long gone and we enjoyed mild temperatures and superb views.

Ominous Sky Over Salzburg [Sky Watch Friday]

 

Despite  the ominous dark sky over Salzburg, the sun managed to peek through the cloud cover and illuminate portions of the city, most notably the castle and cathedral. As it turned out, it did not rain, so I was quite happy. Salzburg, Austria, hometown of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is delightful gem of a little city. And, it is just several hours drive from Munich [München]. So, if you are in the region, you must visit both.

Salamanca Landscape [Sky Watch Friday]

This shot is from my archive [slides that were scanned to digital and processed further]. In the 1980s I went to several international conferences in Salamanca, Spain, a delightful small city that boasts of one of the oldest universities in Europe. A number of the conference participants and I took a bus from our hotel into town during a free afternoon -- lo and behold, I caught a glimpse of this view of the Cathedral as we walked from the bus stop. Bless that telephoto lens ---

Unity

This is a photo  that I took during a dress rehearsal of Sankofa, the magnificent African Dance and Drum Ensemble at Brockport State Univ. As usual, their annual spring performances were brilliant. As to the photo, last night it won 1st place in the Monochrome category at Camera Rochester's monthly competition. Needless to say, I am feeling quite proud of it. For the photography mavens, I shot it using my Canon 60D in manual focus and on shutter priority [1/60 sec., f/5.6 and 6400 ISO]. The camera, equipped with an 18 -135 mm lens, was on a tripod. The photo shoot experience was a blast, and certainly took me out of my comfort zone.Finally, I decided that the B & W image looked better than the color version and decided to work with that. Hope you enjoy it.

Mackerel Sky II [Sky Watch Friday]

I've had this shot for several months and decided it's time to post a photo worthy of being considered a sky image -- ahem--  We don't often get a 'mackerel' sky, but occasionally we see a good one like this. It looks like a dispersant was poured into a large cloud to generate all these neat little smaller clouds. It reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in Punch [an English humor magazine]  in the 1960s when I was a graduate student in Microbiology. I copied it and have kept it all these years, since I always found it amusing. Actually, I regard it as sort of a metaphor for doing science; i.e., you set out to answer some question and, in the process of [perhaps] achieving that, new questions arise. As such, knowledge in the the field grows. OK -- enough pedantry; here's the cartoon. Hopefully, I am not violating some copyright --