From the description I found online, it would also make a decent workout for adults in my area, certainly for me. Whether or not there’s any extra weight gain involved (no comment 
) living in a very flat area at ~35m above sea level one has little inherent opportunity for hill climbing in daily activities.
Yeah, Alabama has some hills, especially up around Huntsville.
*sigh* I so miss rock here in Louisiana. All we have is dirt road gravel. The entire state is nothing but an alluvial plain of clay, silt and sand deposited by the Mississippi, Red and other rivers. There’s almost no exposed naturally occurring rock, just a couple of small locations. That’s why home foundation issues are so prevalent here (us included) - There’s no practically-reachable bedrock on which to build, only elastic clay which shrinks and expands depending on moisture levels.
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Oops, I forgot to downsize before uploading.
Here are some quickies I just took in my yard. I’ll try to get some more sweeping photos of the mountain, later.
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Because of the children, there is a small activity every few hundred metres, so many of them don’t even notice the distance (those who do can be rather loud, though).
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That’s not a yard, that’s land.
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Ah… yes. Where I live here in Aus there’s widely varying definitions of a ‘backyard’ as we call it. (or yard!)
I live at my dad’s place at present which means it’s definitely on the " not a yard, that’s land" side! And it’s a 45min drive to the shops…
On the other hand, in the newer parts of Canberra (my nearest city - 2 hours away) most houses surrounding property is definitely yard sized at best… but the old suburbs are much more roomy.
In Edinburgh, most people live in flats so our 10 metre long garden is considered luxurious.
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Heh. You see the back fence in the second photo? That is not the end line of my lot. The lot goes back another 100 to 150 feet into the forest. My lot is two acres in all.
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I once lived in a flat, and my “back yard” consisted of a single 50cm x 20cm flower box (and I could never even get anything to grow in it because numerous forms of urban wildlife used it as a communal buffet).
P.S. I love Edinburgh. Been there several times.
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I’m not great with spiders, but this one’s face looks quite cute in the first photo. Never thought I’d say that about a spider — just goes to show that we all have a good side.
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This is a few years ago - in October. Beautiful Autumn colors.
And this is now (about a week ago). Not the same place but the colors are very different.
We did have some rain lately but western Canada is a place where we expect a lot of rain. Slow and steady.
It is not like this anymore. The seasons are much more abrupt.
Reality is - I can’t complain in light of what @lphilpot is seeing but I just notice it - everybody notices it. The world around us is changing.
Here is when the fire hits the mountain. The flames are actually several story building high. And we had a lot of it in Canada.
And the beautiful places are shrouded in smoke.
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Of late, I’ve been taking pictures like this:
to show folk in another thread in a hobby galaxy far, far, away. My main struggle has been white balance, with the mishmash of lights I have in my little basement cubby, LED bench light with a fluorescent workshop light. Yech…
As far as gear goes, I’m jonesing in this realm:
What ‘cher lookin’ at here is a little nubbin of aluminum that I faced, turned, and parted from less-pretty aluminum rod, my first cutting with the lathe in the background. In the spirit of rawproc, starting from the ground-up to learn machining well enough to cut scale model parts. Related to photography, I’m also noodling around the idea of making a swing-tilt fixture for my F-mount camera, for which I can use my old '70s lenses with their aperture rings.
The lathe itself is a bit of a study, made by Sherline Products. It’s a hobby machine, but the structure and tolerances are far beyond the Dremel-class stuff I’ve previously acquired. Completely constructed in the US (well, I’d bet some of the things like the hex nut to the right of the crank wheel are from Asia), but they seem to make money selling these high-quality machines in the decidedly business-unfriendly world we’ve constructed here in the US. And, they make a full line of accessories specifically to work with their machines. Kinda reminds me of Nikon in that regard.
Because of all this, I’ve not gotten out to take any fall colors photos, except in the yard. Shame, we had a spectacular fall colors season in Colorado. Anyway, here’s a couple, first one from the living room window:
The light was quite nice, so I actually got off my duff and went outside to get a few of those leaves down by the sidewalk:
Cycling through my three batteries quite nicely…
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Another dry day, before tomorrow’s rain. All but the last one were taken from bridges over the River Tay, the first couple at the Tay crossing and the next pair in Dunkeld. The last was taken near Dalshien on the A9.
It isn’t quite the blue hour at 3:30 PM, but it is getting close 
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Playing with this lovely shot inspired me to try some macro myself.
I stacked all the extension tubes I had behind my old Pentax 50mm f1.7, adapted the lot to the A7s - and started shooting. No flash, with the result that some were at rather high ISO. Never mind…
This setup gives something a bit better than 1:1 magnification and precious little depth of field.
I quite like some of these, although most don’t stand up to pixel peeping!
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Gorgeous. I don’t normally care for macro but these are great. I like the out of focus areas and subdued palette and exposure. Look ethereal rather than clinical like lots of macro.
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Last of the autumn leaves. I processed these earlier and again I’ve overdone them to try to compensate for poor exposure. Need to learn to be more subtle, I think.
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Forget that, I find the most interesting ones to have variations in the illumination within the scene. Nice captures!
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