Blizzard of January 2016

Like millions of other people, I was affected by the blizzard last weekend. I watched the snow come down for a solid day, accumulating in my yard to a level I've only seen once before in more than 20 years of living in the same house. The snow started Friday evening, and ended Sunday morning. As soon as I could, I went out and started shoveling my driveway and sidewalk. My neighbors joined me, and soon we were able to walk around the neighborhood. We had at least 2 feet of snow, which is a lot for Northern Virginia, rare, but not unique. I noticed that the streets at either end of mine was plowed enough to be passable. Not clear, one lane only, but passable.

So I settled in to wait for plows on my street. Sunday, nothing. Monday, nothing. I called VDOT. I gave up after 50 minutes on hold and the recording never changing from occasionally telling me that I had at least 45 minutes to wait. I sent email to VDOT. No response. I saw plows clearing other streets. I saw plows widening the cleared lanes on streets that had already been visited repeatedly. But my street, unplowed. I contacted my delegate's office. Quickly I received a response that they were asking VDOT to get to my street. I watched the real-time map. Plows came and went.

Finally I saw that they were clearing a street that intersected with mine. I bundled up and went to that intersection and flagged a plow down. I pointed to the 6-foot wall of snow that blocked my street entrance and asked if they were going to get to that street soon. The driver told me that the wall was to high (never mind he and his buddies made that wall). He said his truck (a large pickup) would get stuck. He said every time they seriously got to work on a neighborhood, they would get an emergency call to help emergency vehicles get someplace.

I asked him to get to it when he could and wished him a good night. He said maybe Wednesday morning. A few hours later, we heard the trucks on the street. The same guy, with a second truck helping, finally started clearing our street.

OK, I have no problem with VDOT prioritizing major roads. My road is and should be down the priority list. However, I have a big problem with them clearing, and then improving, other streets when they kept ignoring mine. Shame on you VDOT!

For reference, here's the view from my house TWO DAYS after the last flake fell.

Unplowed after Two Days

Return Trip to Antelope Canyon

Last year I made a trip to Antelope Canyon, and I wrote about it here. This year, I was back in the area. My family was unanimous that they all enjoyed the walk through Antelope Canyon, so we visited again.

I have a better camera this time and I was looking forward to better pictures. I used the same 24mm f2.8 lens as last time. My old camera is cropped. My new one is full-frame. The net effect is that the old one could only effectively shoot at 36mm. My new one can shoot at 24mm. So the new one can shoot a wider effective focal length and its sensor is much better in low light. So in we went with my ISO set to 1600, sometimes adjusting to 2000.

This time was earlier in the day, so it was darker in the canyon. And it was cold. We weren't the first ones in, but pretty close, so I was able to get a few shots with no people in the frame. I found myself shooting less than last time, but happier with the shots that I got. Here are my favorites.

Upper Antelope Canyon Entrance

Looking Straight Up

A Rare Forward View with no People

Near the Downstream Entrance

California Condors and Golden Eagles

During a recent trip to Arizona and Utah, I was driving on Highway 89 in Mt. Carmel Junction when I noticed a large bird landing on a mound of dirt near the road. I immediately guessed that it was a Golden Eagle and, much to my family's dismay, I turned the car around to go back get a look. I was in luck. There were two eagles perched on two mounds.

Golden Eagles and a Buzzard

I enlisted my daughter's help to hustle to the trunk to get the camera and swap lenses and I grabbed a couple of shots right away to be sure that I at least got something. After the first few grab shots, I took my time, not approaching them, moving along the road to try to get more favorable light angles. I noticed that the eagles had most of their attention on two buzzards who were feeding on something I never identified.

Another passerby saw me shooting and pulled over to take photos. Several people got out. I commented that I'd never seen such large buzzards before. I got a few flight shots as one eagle departed, and then got back into the car to leave.

Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle

Golden Eagle in Flight

One of the people from the group tapped on the window before I drove away and said that the buzzards were tagged California Condors. Well how dense could I be? No wonder they were so large. I simply wasn't expecting to see any condors so far from the Grand Canyon or Navajo Bridge. I got back out, took a few shots of the condors, and hoped for one with both heads up. In the end, I got one condor keeper.

California Condors Number 37 and 9

What ugly birds! With only a few hundred of these birds left alive, I knew I was fortunate to actually get a shot of them in the wild. And it all happened because I was really interested in the eagles to begin with. I had never seen any Golden Eagles, so I was fortunate that these were checking out the condors' meal. So I wound up getting two new birds photographed, at least new to me. And I didn't even make my family wait all that long.

Conowingo Dam Visit

Some blog posts, coupled with my own experience from last year, lead me to believe that the best eagle viewing at the Conowingo Dam is in the last week of November. This is when the transient (migrating) population peaks, merging with the resident population. The Thanksgiving holiday is this week, and the weather forecast is variable, so I decided to make my last trip for the year during yesterday's clear weather. I got up early and got there in time to get one of the last few parking spots. It was packed with photographers.

There was a lot of eagle activity all morning, with dozens of them clearly sitting on rocks at the far side of the river. Many fishing and fighting events took place. Unfortunately most of it was out of range of my gear. There were some flyover events that I was able to capture though, and here they are.

The following shot shows an eagle who got a fish and then circled the photographers a few times, offering an extended opportunity to photograph it from several angles. One photographer remarked that the bird seemed to be showing off.

Bald Eagle with Fish

Here's another shot from the same sequence.

Showing Off

Sometimes it's hard to identify a bird until I get a photo and get home and view it on a big screen. This guy flew by and got hardly any attention. I knew it wasn't an eagle at the time, and (correctly) guessed that it was a hawk.

Lonely Hawk Gets No Respect from Eagle Photographers

There were quite a few eagle-stealing-fish fights, but unfortunately not many close by. I was able to capture one such event.

Left Eagle Has Fish. Right Eagle Wants It.

One of the most frustrating things about photographing eagle fishing events is that they rarely seem to approach the fish while flying toward me. Too often, it's just a lot of eagle ass in the picture. Then it's a matter of timing. Well, here's an event that was still kind of far away, but close enough to get something usable. It's my favorite shot of the day.

Snatch!

Then it flew right past me with its catch.

On the Way to a Tree for Lunch!

I've been photographing eagles for a couple of years now, so I've seen them in lots of settings: flying, perched, fishing, fighting, nesting. But this is a first for me... This eagle is carrying a fish in its beak.

Bald Eagle with a Fish in its Beak

And I'll finish with two more shots at the edge of my lens' range. Here's a shot of an eagle about to strike something floating in the water.

About to Strike

And here's a shot from a different sequence of the elusive glance at the catch.

OK, Now What Did I Get?

So I had a nice pair of visits to the dam this Fall. Now that the cold weather is setting in, the local (resident) eagles should start reclaiming and rebuilding their nests for the next broods. I'm looking forward to the next few months of visits to the local wildlife refuge, which should be mostly deserted of people in the frigid weather.

Conowingo Dam Season

It's that time of year again. The eagles and photographers congregate at Conowingo Dam in November. I jumped the gun and went on October 31 because I've seen reports on Facebook that the eagles are already showing up and the weather was just gorgeous that day.

I left early to get there before the crowd. No luck. There were at least 50 photographers there when I arrived, but at least the parking lot wasn't full. Mornings by the water there are frequently foggy and this one was no exception.

Fishermen and Birds in the Morning Mist

As I waited for the mist to clear, I took a few shots of the rocks on the far shore. I could just make out the eagles beyond all the gulls.

Bald Eagles on the Rocks

There were only a few eagles sitting in the trees by the parking lot. In fact, there wasn't much action this day.

Lazy Bald Eagle

There were a few flyover events, but nothing especially remarkable worth posting here. Shortly before I left, I was lucky enough to capture a sequence with this bird.

Bald Eagle with a Big Fish

And no trip to the dam is complete without a shot of the photographers.

Photographers at Conowingo Dam

And I'm looking forward to a return trip later this month if the weather cooperates on days that I have off from work.

I Assembled a PC from Parts

I've been working as a computer professional for more than 20 years, and until recently I had never assembled a PC. I've installed disk drives, RAM, and expansion cards. I even replaced a motherboard once, complete with a CPU swap. But I always bought my PCs fully-assembled. When it became clear that the PC that I'm using to write this no longer met my needs, I perused the Dell site, and quickly concluded that I was unhappy with my options. So I researched PC assembly. I discovered lots of proud builders' Youtube videos showing their creations. Blogs abound with pictures and descriptions. I decided I could do this.

I went to http://www.pcpartpicker.com and started playing with potential builds. The site makes it dirt simple to make sure that the parts are compatible. I settled on the motherboard and CPU, and then the rest just sort of fell into place:

• Asus Z97-A motherboard, capable of supporting up to 32GB of RAM, LGA1150 socket.
• Intel Core i7-4790K processor, 4 cores, 8 threads.
• 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, which I intend to expand to the full 32GB later.
• CoolerMaster 650 Watt power supply.
• Corsair full tower case. I wanted a lot of room in the case. This one has room for 10 full-size drives plus more room for SSDs. With 3 built-in fans, screens and easy-to-clean filters, it had everything I needed except for a speaker.

I had several hard disks lying around that I had been using for backup storage, so I installed all five of them. I'm not bothering with an on-board DVD drive. I'm using a portable USB DVD drive for the rare situations when I need it. And because I'm not overclocking I think I can get by with the stock fans; no water cooling needed.

It took a while to order all the parts (I promised my wife to spread the costs over several months). Then I took my time assembling everything. It took a few tries to get everything assembled and seated properly, but it was sweet when it started up for the first time.

I have access to free Windows 10, so I tried it and I think I'll stick with it. I was prepared to go with Hyper-V as the OS, or Linux, but this will do nicely. Now I have 20,000+ photos in my Lightroom catalog to move over...

Joint Base Andrews Open House

After years of cancellations and cutbacks, the Joint Base Andrews air show took place again today. As a military ID card holder, I was eligible to skip the park/bus ride and I drove onto the base and parked on the east side, away from the exhibits. There were buses to shuttle around to the west side, but I saw so many people hanging out by their cars on the east ramp that I just decided to stay and watch the show from there, sitting in my car between acts. I was able to watch the F-22 demonstration and the Thunderbird routine, among other acts.

F-22 Raptor

F-22 Raptor

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds

I shot the F-22 without a polarizer; the Thunderbirds with a polarizer. It was such a bright day that I was getting F16 and narrower shooting at 1/1000. The polarizer helped to darken things a bit, but in some shots the sky was just too dark blue and I had to try to brighten it. The down side of staying on the east side was that the sun favored the opposite side of the field and the best shots were when the airplanes were banked and showing me the sunny side. The other down side of staying with the car was the lack of concessions, and there were no bathrooms. But there was one other big plus: I was off base within 5 minutes of the end of the show.