Please contact me at williamjohnsonauthor(at)gmail.com
While playing around with storms I also decided to mint some NFT's of the wildlife I collected over the years.
This lioness was sunning herself on top of Pride Rock at Sedgwick County Zoo.
My NFT's can be found here on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/the-lioness-of-pride-rock
This was a large squall line. Originally the photo took seven different photos to make the panoramic. If you notice the car on the right looks slightly blurry. The last photo was taken when the gust front of about 70 mph hit, driving all the chaff, rocks, and dirt at me making it blurry. Luckily I was nearby shelter and was able to wait out the worst of it. Derecho has been used by NASA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service.
Derecho -
Recently I've done a deep dive into NFT's as another possibility to show and sell my work. I am going to take photos from post chases and put them into Google's Deep Dream. This is an odd neural network that looks at a photo trying to find things that it recognizes and inserts them.
When completed the photos can appear otherworldly and at the extreme, nightmarish.
Fire in the sky -
The Nightmares Above -
It was the longest partial eclipse in nearly 600 years. It started roughly around midnight our time and ended nearly at sunup. Teaching has been kicking my backside this year as every year, so I didn't stay up too late. I did get up at 3am to catch the darkness.
It's also taken me several days to get these up, sorry major computer issues. Hopefully a new computer soon.
I tried photo stacking on these shots. It makes for a high megabyte but crisp photo but truthfully I need longer lenses for the moon shots.
If you search eclipse it will take you to articles on how to do the best photography. As with my other moon shots here is one of my favorite poems by the Moody Blues at the end of Knights in White Satin:
Breathe deep the gathering gloom Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament Another day's useless energy spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son Senior citizens wish they were young
Cold hearted orb that rules the night Remove all color from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right And which is an illusion
Until storm season . . . unless something else interesting happens.
A couple Saturdays ago the Flint Hills Writing Project met at the Keeper of the Plains statue in Wichita. I received drone authorization from the FAA to fly a quick mission over the Keeper for a quick picture. This is due to airspace restrictions in the area. While I took this photo, another group was shooting a video. They can be seen in the upper right corner of the picture.
The four areas of the pedestal represent the four elements, earth (upper left) air (upper right), water (lower left), and fire (lower right). The stones surrounding it represent the 28 days between the full moons. The seven fire pots near the fire region light up each night for fifteen minutes depending on the weather.
For information on the statue:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/keeper-of-the-plains
https://www.wichita.gov/Arts/Pages/Keeper.aspx
