This past Friday evening one of our local ladies, who has started a small photographic group in our town which meets once a month, arranged for us to listen to Kevin Ford, the Astronaut for the August 2009 mission who has been given the task of taking all the photos on their trip to and from the International Space Station. Please note these pictures are protected by copyright and although I have cleared posting them here on my blog they are not to be copied or reproduced in any way. NASA is very specific about what photos are seen and where they are seen for obvious reasons.
Unfortunately we had bright sunlight coming in the windows from the left side of the frame which made shooting quite hard with or without flash and made the pictures on the screen murky even for those of us watching the presentation. I wanted to show you two although I have a few more which as I edit I will share. These were shot available light, hence a bit of a color cast and they are a bit grainy.The first photo is of Kevin explaining to us the trials and tribulations, difficulties, etc., of shooting in these confined and extreme conditions and this is a self portrait taken by one of the astronauts on a previous mission. If you click on the picture you can see a slightly larger version and you can see the camera reflected in his visor.
The second picture is of a water droplet in negative gravity floating in the atmosphere and the photographer took a photo of it with an astronaut behind it so that the water droplet inverted him so that he was upside down. This is quite a cool thing to do with a glass of water or such, anything viewed through the water behind it will be upside down.We are hoping that after the mission he will come back and show us some of his shots, he has been training for about 5 years for this mission, lots of planning and patience and he gave us a really interesting talk both from an aerospace and photographic point of view. I will be sure to watch this launch. Wish I could convert them to Canon thought LOL as all his equipment is Nikon and I am a Canonite!
We have battled every year to find hay and afford the cost for the last 8 years (I did a count of what we spent on hay this year and was horrified), so Larry decided we needed to do our own baling. It was just a matter of finding the right equipment for the right price, the right price being the optimum because we had to borrow to pay for it so it has to pay for itself quickly. Stan found some equipment about 40 miles away and it was a really good deal, farm equipment is horrendously expensive despite the fact that it is all really old, but because it is only used a few times a year, if it has been cared for properly it will be reliable. Yesterday we spent the WHOLE afternoon towing some of it back from where we bought it, I had the hay rake behind my vehicle and couldnt do more than 10 - 15 miles an hour without it getting into a speed wobble, so you do the math, on top of it we had to take all the backroads because we just couldnt be on main roads doing these slow speeds. We got home at 7pm! Never again, Larry was with me and was a nervous wreck, which made me one too by the time we got home LOL.
Well that is enough diatribe for one day, hopefully (I keep saying that I know!!) I will get back on here soon again. ((((Hugs))))
Lori
xx
