Monday macros

The shards of this broken vineyard post made me think of crystals. My mind works in mysterious ways. When it works.

Splintered wood, 100mm (macro), f/3.5, 1/250s, ISO 800.

The rain squalls and wind gusts continue and are expected to do so for another twenty-four hours or so. The wind is still not as strong as they've been predicting, and that's a good thing. But it's quite wet outside.

Monday macros

Callie and I ended up in the piney woods the other day during our morning walk. As the needles fall from the trees, a lot of them get caught on branches before hitting the ground. They look as if they're sitting there deliberately, straddling the branches, enjoying the view.

Just hanging around, 100mm (macro), f/2.8, 1/200s, ISO 6400.

We watched the finale of "Downton Abbey" last night. I understand that the final season just started in the US, so I won't tell what happened. Except to say this: the end was a bit sappy. It's hard to believe the series started six years ago. In France, it started in December 2011. We were a year behind. But the series became very popular and they got us caught up so that we saw the last couple of seasons pretty much at the same time that they aired in the UK, and before they aired in the US. And now we're done.

By the way, we have the option to watch many foreign programs (especially movies) in their original language, with French subtitles. For us, there's really no point in watching an English-language film or television program dubbed into French. Likewise, we watch French films and television in French. The original language and, by extension, the original actors' voices are always better.

Monday macros

From what I can find in our mushroom book, this is un coprin chevelu (coprinus comatus), known as a shaggy ink cap or shaggy mane mushroom in English. These are supposedly good mushrooms to eat young, but this one has gone beyond that stage. I see lots of edible youngsters out there, pushing up from under the leaf litter. I won't be trying any.

Coprin chevelu, 100mm (macro), f/2.8, 1/250s, ISO 3200.

I've noticed that many of my macro and 50mm shots have very high ISO settings. This often makes the images "noisy" or grainy. I can fix that a little in post-processing, but the end result is never as crisp as I'd like. The reason for the high ISO is that the camera is hand-held when I take the photos. The light level is often very low during our morning walks this time of year, so I need a wide aperture and a fast "film speed" to get the exposure right. Not to mention that I need a fast enough shutter to minimize the effects of camera shake. I think that if I used a tripod, I could lower the ISO, close the aperture down some, and use a slower shutter for a crisper photo with more depth of field.

This morning is the chilliest morning we've had in a while with a temperature of 4ºC (about 39ºF). Not very cold for a late December morning. Normally we'd see temperatures much closer to freezing (0ºC) early in the morning. Our unusually warm winter continues.

Monday macros

The heating technician came back last Thursday to relocate the base station for our wireless thermostat. It took him about an hour to move the box and re-regulate the system, but I have to say (knock on wood) that it worked. We've moved the remote unit around to different places and it hasn't dropped the connection once. That's more like it.

Catkins on a birch (I think) tree.

It's not like we're needing a lot of heat right now. Temperatures are curiously mild and are expected to stay so for another week. Everybody's talking about it. Nobody's doing anything about it. Rim shot.

Monday macros

While the leaves are gone, some apples still cling to the pommiers (apple trees). I wouldn't want to eat any of them, but they make for pretty photos.

A tiny wrinkled apple in the morning sunlight, 100mm (macro), f/4.5, 1/250s, ISO 1250.

The big news in France this weekend is the result of the second round of regional elections. It gets complicated, but the upshot is that the extreme right wing party, the Front National, didn't take a single region even though it did very well in the first round. The standard right wing, Sarkozy's aptly re-branded Républicains, took seven of the thirteen regions in play, even though the numbers show that the left wing Socialists took more départments than the right (which doesn't have any real impact since these were regional elections and not departmental elections). See? It already got complicated. I'll stop there.

Monday macros

I thought this chestnut (I think) leaf looked like the blade of a table saw. In screaming yellow. We had a light frost on Saturday morning when I had the macro lens out. Frost changes everything.

Frosted leaf in the grass, 100mm (macro), f/2.8, 1/160s, ISO 640.

On Sunday we visited our closest wine cooperative which was hosting what they call a marché de Noël (Christmas market). It's a special event where local (and some not so local) artisans gather to sell their products. I saw a goose farmer, a goat cheese producer, a man who sold hazelnuts and walnuts and assorted products made from them, honey makers, and a baker. We bought some snails from a snail farmer from up near Blois and a bottle of calvados (apple brandy) from a distiller in Normandy (not local). Then we spent some time tasting wine -- it was a winery after all -- and brought home a few bottles. The event wasn't very big and it wasn't too crowded, and everyone was friendly and happy. All in all, a very nice time.

Monday macros

Another spider's web, this time in black and white. The spiders must all have been out shopping or something when I took this. I didn't see any spiders in any of their webs that morning.

The web is visible thanks to what probably amounts to thousands of tiny dew droplets.

I brought in the winter squash yesterday. I counted two potimarrons (we've already eaten two others), four butternut, and fifteen acorn squash. I see many squash dishes, sweet and savory, in our immediate future.

Monday macros

The last leaf. Well, probably not, but most of the vineyard leaves are gone. Now that the temperatures are dropping to more seasonable levels, those trees still hanging on to their golden leaves will shed them quickly. I'm back to building daily fires in the wood stove. It's fun now, but I know it will become a chore as we move through winter.

I've got to get some new photos taken. 100mm (macro), f/8.0, 1/320s, ISO 4000.

This week we are scheduled to get the old boiler replaced. The plan was to have it done before the cold weather set in. That's why we placed the order in July. But production delays, obeying Mr. Murphy's law (or Sod's law, if you're British), had us wait until now.

Monday macros

I have all these autumn leaf photos, but most of the leaves have dropped at this point. So, they're not really representative of what things look like now that it's mid-November. I'll "leaf" you with this one for now.

Spider silk on a grape leaf. 100mm (macro), f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 1600.

The outdoor temperatures have been just on the edge of chilly. The far edge. The edge that separates chilly from cold. So the past two days (and probably today as well) I've had a fire in the wood stove during the afternoons and evenings. They're the first fires I've had since our little cold spell in mid-October. And now, well, Thanksgiving is next week!

We will have plenty to be thankful for, once Ken gets home safe and sound. He leaves the US later today and arrives back in France early Tuesday morning. All flights (and trains) are running on schedule, but we fear that the lines at the immigration checkpoints have slowed down as security has been beefed up. That means that there's a possibility that Ken will miss his train out of the airport and will have to make other arrangements. We're in touch with one another, of course, and have worked out what to do, le cas échéant (just in case).  Let's hope by Tuesday morning that they've increased the number of immigration agents at the airport and that things go relatively smoothly for Ken.

Monday macros

I guess we're having Indian summer, or as they say in France, l'été de la Saint-Martin. Nearly every day of the year is the feast day of one saint or another in Catholicism, and Saint Martin's day is this coming Wednesday (which is also Armistice Day, a national holiday here). When the weather is good on the days surrounding the 11th, it's called Saint Martin's summer, or what we in the US would call Indian summer.

Hangers-on, turning into raisins on the vine during this dry, warm Indian summer. 100mm (macro), f/8.0, 1/320s, ISO 5000.

The term l'été indien (Indian summer) is not unknown in France. It's the title of a famous 1975 hit song by the late Joe Dassin, an American-born singer who had a successful career in Europe, most notably in France. He died in 1980 from a heart attack at the age of 41.

Monday macros

We're having very nice weather for November. It's not quite "indian summer," but it's also not cold and rainy. I was able to sit out on the deck a little on Sunday afternoon; Bertie liked that because he likes to snooze on my lap when I'm out there. Our mornings are a little foggy and damp but who cares with afternoon highs in the upper teens (high 60s F).

Grape vine tendril and spider's web, 100mm (macro) f/8.0, 1/320s, ISO 2500.

The spider webs are covered in pearls of dew each morning, making them quite visible. I saw this semi-circular web stretched between two grape vine branches along a support wire. There was no sign of the spider who made it.

Monday macros

An indoor shot for a change. This is a little model plane that I got at the airport in San Francisco one year. It's a Boeing 777, the plane that I was flying on that day to France. Those planes were new then and they were very nice and comfortable to fly in. Of course, I was not sitting this far forward in the cabin, but farther back in the economy seats.

Model plane, 100mm (macro) f/2.8, 1/100s, ISO 1000.

I have yet to fly on an Airbus 380, the big double-decker planes. I'm sure I will one of these days. Probably between Paris and New York. One of these days. We'll see.

Monday macros

These little daisies are a different kind from yesterday's version. I don't know what, exactly, they're called, but they grow on tall stems with multiple flower heads. The others are single flowers that grow very close to the ground.

Little daisies, 100mm (macro) f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 800.

Two weeks remain in October. It's almost November already. The weather is neither cold nor warm. Just chilly and less chilly. In the morning, the grass is wet with dew, so it can't be cut until the afternoon.

Monday macros

The heavy morning dew and mists of October (and November) make all the spiders' webs out around the vineyards very visible. Much of the time I don't see the spiders themselves, but in this web, the occupant was front and center. I wasn't very close when I took this photo. The web was strung up on the other side of a ditch with water standing in it and the tall grasses all around were soaking wet.

An even closer shot would have been cool. 1/320s, f / 6.3, ISO 1000, 100mm macro lens.

Our mornings have been relatively chilly so I've been building fires in the wood stove to bring up the temperature inside the house. We drained the central heating system last summer when we had two radiators removed and painted. I was hoping that the new boiler we ordered would be delivered and installed before we had to use the system this fall, but it's not here yet. Today we're expecting the heating people to come and re-fill the system and get the old boiler running again, temporarily. We could do it ourselves, but we have a service contract and they offered to come out, so why not let the experts do it?

Monday macros

I realized the other day that I've been favoring my wide-angle zoom lens lately (18-55mm, f3.5-f5.6). I have three other lenses: a telephoto zoom, a fixed 50mm, and a 100mm macro lens. The macro lens is for taking close-up photos and I've posted a lot of them on blog over the past two years. But I don't take the lens out all that often and I want to do more with it. So I'm going to try to use it more. To that end, I'd like to post a macro shot at least once a week on Mondays, hence the title of today's post.

Abandoned grapes, 1/250s, f / 4.5, ISO 320, 100mm.

That said, today's image is not really much of a close-up, but I liked the way it turned out. These are grapes in a vineyard parcel that's been abandoned for over ten years. The vines have been left to grow wild with no pruning, and the fruit is eaten by wildlife or it rots. The grapes are small and sparse compared to those grown on well-tended vines. I wonder who owns the land and if it will ever be turned back into a productive parcel?