File under miscellaneous

Tonight, Chauncey and I went to the library.

I'm the dangerous kind of girl who takes pictures of the road while she's driving.

Our library is on the bayfront. As you drive up, you can see the brig Niagara in its berth (assuming it's not off touring somewhere.)

I'm also the geek who stops in front of the library and takes pictures of the weird old pipe out front. I have no idea what it is, though I'm sure I could research it. All I know is this used to be a heavily industrial area and when they built the library, they didn't tear down this pipe.

Personally, I'm glad they left it, though many call it an eyesore.

(Special editor's note to Pete the Whiney Baby: I fixed the music player so you can stop whining about it. You kiss your baby with that mouth?)

Never the bride.

Last night I took Em to her therapy appointment. Remind me to post pics of the waiting room sometime...it's bizarre. Anyway, I didn't feel much like sitting in an uncomfortable chair reading an old magazine so I took a walk around the neighborhood to see if there was anything photoworthy.

I took a ton of shots; it's a fairly gritty neighborhood. Tonight, though, I'll share these ones from the low-rent bridal salon next door.

To me, mannequins are about 3 steps above ventrilloquist dummies and those clapping-cymbal monkeys on the creepy scale. They could totally come alive and kill you in the night.

But these ladies just looked sad to me. They're waiting for grooms who will never show.

And they need their manicures refreshed.

Please let me flash you.

(snicker snicker. This topic is MADE for those double entendre titles I like to use to try to ensnare those naughty Googlers. Hee!)

OK so the POTD topic this week is flash. I have a crappy little flash on my camera, no fancy speedlight or anything like that. So tonight I just practiced a bit with some fill flash off and on in the same situation.

Here are a couple of shots. They are sooc because I don't have time for editing right now. Gotta run to an appointment!

The old man at rest, no flash:

The old man at rest, being flashed:

The kid in the pool, out of focus (oops) and no flash:

The kid in the pool, slightly better focus, and flash on:

And this one is completely off topic, but I just like it.

Tonight, I am going to try and make one of them fancy new-fangled DIY flash diffusers I seen on the internets. I bet I can find directions using The Google.

Birds, snakes, and the dog and pony show

While Emily and her friend spent the afternoon at the mall, I decided to head over to Asbury Woods to see what was up. As usual, I wasn't disappointed. As soon as I parked the car, I saw this tree swallow. When he saw me, he immediately exited the nest and flew above it in circles.
Eventually, he landed back on top of the nest box.
See all that fuzzy junk? Those are cattails. Later in the summer, they'll be sleek and velvety-brown, but right now they look like they're molting.

Also right near the parking lot, I was lucky enough to see this Piping Plover

And the new baby Canada Geese. These don't stay small for long. They'll be as big as their parents in no time.

As soon as they saw me approaching, they hightailed it into the water.

I walked through the woods to the boardwalk and found these wildflowers. Not sure what they are, but they sure are pretty.

My destination today was the swamp. I was hoping to see a frog or some turtles.

Instead, I saw some snakes! Naturally, with these guys prowling around, the frogs made themselves scarce. I could hear them in the distance but didn't see any.

I headed back to the nature center, with it's eco-friendly roof.

In the garden there, I saw these:

But the most unusual part of the day came when I was leaving the nature center. Across the street at the community park, I saw a bunch of people with Newfoundland dogs.
And they all had the dogs hitched up to carts.

And some of the people had numbers on their backs, as if it were a race or some type of competition.



It was definitely an unusual sight.