Paul M. Hadfield: 2015

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Elf AND The Shelf

Seasons Greetings, seems like forever since last post. Hoping anyone who still follows this is well. The unseasonably mild weather we've been having as result of a strong El Niño to keep much of the cold air bottled up in Canada has made for some anomalous personal observations as of late. Included were a few animal species forgoing hibernation such as the grey tree frogs you may remember from back in October! Per the title, on the 9th of this month we had an annual visitor appear that Mandi brought into our home and remains a continuing tradition. Though "Candy Cane" has been relatively behaved to the point of Ava wondering "why?", she accompanied me the other night on what became a remarkable adventure. With temperatures hovering near 60° shortly after midnight on the 14th, it was no surprise to see one of the frogs patiently awaiting their next insect meal like it were a late summer eve!

Multiple squall lines with gusty winds but no lightning would pass in the pre-dawn hours. At daybreak however, another final line would lift from the southwest with the timing as such that it caught sunrise in a way to rival systems of warmer months.

"What do we have here?"

Ladies and gentlemen, "The Elf and The Shelf!"

9:16 AM CDT in mid December!

and so ends a wildly unintended and out of season experience that was very much welcome for this time of year...

Skipping back to Candy Cane's grand entrance on the 9th.

Later that evening...

From the 13th, couldn't resist knowing they'd be around and would tie into the previous theme.

Monday, November 09, 2015

October Part III

Towards the beginning of the month, I took my daughter Ava and her cousin out to Black Bart's Pumpkin Patch where the girls suckered me into spending way more than I had intended. Over the next few weeks we applied a few of them to a number of creative photography ideas.

The small ones aptly labeled 'mini's' and no larger than a kiwi fruit were ideal for creating the illusion of scale distortion. I kept them on hand during afternoon walks or at night when the grey tree frogs came out being as it had been unseasonably mild.

Juvenile DeKay's Snakes (aka Brown Snake/Storeria dekayi)

Grey Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)

For Halloween I executed the following idea that came to me for the sake of wondering if it might work. Dubbed the 'dual purpose pumpkin' meant to function both as normal Jack O' Lantern or photo prop, I hope to do more with this concept next season. Feel free to try it yourself!

October 31st - The light source in all illuminated scenes is coming from a small LED flashlight.

November 1st - Jack vs. Fog Rainbow aka 'Fogbow'

Single frame featuring Taurid meteor vs. Jack during a time lapse session (circled inset included to show detail).

Composite comprised of 260 images spanning 73 minutes that includes multiple aircraft flight patterns with the one bisecting Jack likely coming from nearby Logan county airport to the immediate NW.