Cloudy Sky in the Front Yard

Clouds Everywhere

Clouds fill the sky, as seen above our front yard on a winter morning.

We have been getting a lot of rain around here lately. So much so that my sunglasses are starting to think that I forgot about them. The sunglasses actually tried to call me the other day out of desperation, but I just didn’t answer. That is how lonely they are.

I do like a nice cloudy sky photo, however. Because of all of the clouds we have had, I thought it was a perfect time to try to get a new photo. So I bundled up in my coat (because it was cold out), ran out on the front porch, and grabbed this photo. Actually, this is a composite of five photos. See the About the Photo section for that.

After working on the photo, I decided that it would look really good in black and white, so that is how it is presented here. Everything has been so gray around here anyway that real life almost looks like it is in black and white. So in many ways this almost looks like what we have actually been seeing.

But as I have mentioned in other posts, it is all good. We need the sun and the rain. Might as well enjoy them both.

And don’t worry, sunglasses. You will get your time. Sometime.

A Visitor

The other morning, I looked out the window and saw a visitor in the front yard:

A deer had wandered up right by the house to eat some of the grass there. I took this photo while looking out of the bedroom window. The deer did not seem to notice me and kept on eating grass. That does not make quite as interesting of a photo, however. So I gently knocked on the wall to get its attention, and it looked up to see what the noise might be.

It actually is not that unusual to see deer in our front yard. The other night when I got home, there were around a dozen that ran off into the woods as I drove up. They must not be that scared of our cars or the people in them, because they keep coming back a little while later. We don’t mind having them around, because they are not bothering us. As I see it, they have just as much right to be there as we have.

So the deer don’t bother us, and we don’t bother them. Except for driving our car up the driveway, of course.

Bible Verse

God is my strong refuge; He makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer and sets me securely on the heights. - 2 Samuel 22:33-34

About the Photo

For the main photo above, I used five exposures to create an HDR image. You can read about the basics of HDR photography in this somewhat outdated post. Anyway, those exposures were blended together in Aurora HDR. As I mentioned above, I then converted the image to black and white, because that fit the overall look that I was going for quite well. This was the first time that I used Aurora as it was really intended, which is to blend exposures into an HDR image. I was quite pleased with the results, just as I have been when I have used Aurora on a single image.

Photo: Five Raw exposures (-0.7, -0.3, 0, +0.3, +0,7) processed in Aurora HDR. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Sony FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Lens
Date: February 29, 2019
Location: Home, Williston, Tennessee