Author: Melinda

We’ve had an old milk can around the house forever.  I think my father found it at the old house he bought during the forties when he first moved to Chico to start his dental practice.  I re-discovered it in the seventies and took it to our Petaluma house where I used it for a dry arrangement, which included pampas grass, as I remember. The milk can’s claim to fame was as the unexpected hiding place for my keys, which my son Matt dropped in there when he was a toddler and we didn’t discover until several years later after we moved to Sacramento. It has moved with us each time, but has always been in the garage- never having a real place, but too cool to get rid of, even during the last extreme purge of our possessions before our move to Arizona.  During the last few days while my husband has been out of town, I’ve been playing around with places to put it and have it currently placed on our front patio.  I bought a few tall “sticks” at Joann’s to put inside, and also cut off some of the tall shoots from one of my mystery plants out front.

Here are some detail shots of the milk can and pods from the mystery plant- both converted to black and white.

What does one do on a brisk October night in Arizona?  Well, having just seen Gravity last night and having discovered that the beautiful Arizona skies are full of stars, I decided to try a night shot. I googled photographing stars and discovered all sorts of conflicting information. For example, one photographer mandated a wide angle lens set at the sweet spot of 2.8 (my wide angles don’t go to 2.8. . .) with a high ISO- and then adjust shutter speed. Another said f/22 for maximum depth of field and at least 30 seconds at ISO 200. The last one made more sense to me, but then I discovered that 30 seconds wasn’t long enough at f/22- and that I needed to set it on BULB and use a shutter release (my wireless one isn’t working- and not sure that would have helped anyway).  SO… I did what I could.  I used the widest aperture I could (5.0), a shutter speed of 25 seconds, and a somewhat high ISO (640), depending on Lightroom’s noise reduction to do its magic.

There are a zillion stars over my house!

Here’s the view looking out from my driveway.  I had to crop it, because the lights from the house next door were lighting up the left half of the frame. I found it very difficult to compose a shot in the pitch black night!  You may notice some lines in the sky; I think they’re airplanes- or a satellite debris field- Aaaaaaaaa! Ignore that last part if you haven’t seen Gravity.