Sooooo cold. But sunny.

I drove home from work early this afternoon since the weather/roads are terrible and I desperately did not want to spend New Years day 50 miles from home all by myself.   (And I worked super late Monday night and came in early Tuesday morning to make up the time - so it's not like I just skipped out.) 

The upside of leaving early was that I got home early.  And around 4 pm the snow stopped and the sun popped up.   My husband was not able to escape work early and implied in none too vague of language that I should go outside and enjoy the sun.

I would have happily done this except it was -6 degrees out and getting colder by the minute.  Ah heck, it probably would brighten my spirits to take some nature photographs.  So while I lacked my normal enthusiasm, out I went.

I drove to the river to see what I could find to photograph.  (I took out my Lensbaby fisheye, Lenbaby Edge80, and Lensbaby plastic.)

This was the first thing that caught my eye.  I loved this neat plant, and this was about the best shot I got.  (Lensbaby plastic optic.) 

This should have been a great Edge80 photo, but I think I was too rushed to concentrate on getting that plane of focus just right.  Plus, my camera, Nikon D7100, started acting all weird with the Edge80. It made these sounds like it was taking photographs even though I wasn't touching anything.  Then when I did press the shutter button nothing would happen.  (And nothing was recorded on the memory card.)  Turning the camera off and on let me seemed to fix it, but the camera still made these extra shutter like noises - very odd.  I suspect the camera was just getting cold, but when I switched to the plastic optic everything seemed normal again.  Mystery.

Here is my 'Rabbit's View' shot:

Next I tried photographing a tree.  I can do better, but it was so cold.  Plus my pants were frozen solid after kneeling on the ground for my earlier photos.  I kind of hurried.

Today's photos indeed worth an outing in the cold.  I did have fun.

The high temperature tomorrow is -3.  I've been reading about fun you can have with frozen bubbles, but so far I haven't been able to find any.  There is one more shop in town I can try, although I'm not sure searching for bubbles is really a New Year' eve kind of event.

But perhaps I'll have luck and be able to try something else new tomorrow to help keep my mind off the bitter temperatures.

See on,
Julee