Now it's time to get back to normal

The holidays are over, and aside from the inauguration of our new President next week, there's nothing special going on yet. So to keep yourself busy during this time (depending on your client load) you sometimes have to make something happen. Although personally, it's sixteen degrees outside locally, and although I like winter, that's just too cold for me to be outside freezing my extremities off to shoot some pictures. Bravo to those of you who're willing, or crazy enough, to do that. There's not really enough snow on the ground here to justify trying to get any special winter shots, nor to justify being that cold looking for it.

And excuse not to go shoot? Not really, but I like to find indoor venues to shoot. I went to a local museum with the family the other day and while I wasn't really trying to be "Mr. Photographer" there were several things that I couldn't resist shooting, and trying to capture from different angles. Plus, I'm always on the lookout for good images to add to my stock image folders.

We went into the planetarium attached to this museum to view a short showing about the winter night sky in our area, and one of the rules they tell everyone before it starts includes the always popular "no photography" during the show. Now I understand why they have that rule in place, and I understand that being in a dark room with nothing but a projection of fake stars as "light" you don't want some yahoo flashing his camera in the middle of "and here's Orion and his two hunting dogs". But for someone like me who walked into the domed room with a rather large and noticeable camera around his neck, that doesn't need a flash, the rule is rather moot. I did, before the show started, try to shoot some silhouette shots of the door, as the only light was coming from the doorway, but I don't think they were very successful. But trying to capture images during the show would be horrible at best, and darkened, blurry streaks of unknown (which might make for some interesting shots, sometimes) due to the slow shutter speed that might be needed to capture anything. Add to that the fact that I was hand holding my camera, and although fairly steady at around 1/40th a second, getting down to lower than that, and it looks like I was shooting during an earthquake. So I'm sure that it's necessary to remind people not to take pictures for flash reasons, and it's part of the script (and in the museum literature), it's always humorous to me, as if I needed to be reminded not to take pictures when it's annoying or impossible.

Here's a dinosaur statue from the museum.