Kip’s Comments - November 24, 2022 — LadagePhotography.com

Thanksgiving Morning Study

Happy Thanksgiving! (Really, everyday can be a day of “thanks giving.”)

Holiday or not, conditions this morning were ideal for me to test some new equipment for work use. Too many times during my emergency management career I have been a part of search teams looking for missing persons. One facet of the search process often includes water searches. Technological developments in recent years have dramatically improved the quality of sonar equipment, as well as contributing to bringing the price of sonars down to practical ranges.

Recently I acquired sonar equipment for use in searches. The timing of receiving the equipment coincided with local water bodies freezing over. I was faced with hoping the equipment worked since my window for returning the equipment, if defective, would close before spring. As luck would have it, temperatures warmed enough in the past few days and at least some water no longer has ice on it. Knowing that meant this morning I was on the water at sunrise to put the sonar equipment to the challenge - would it work or not?

As the following two images show, the equipment appears to be working fine - both in down mode and in forward mode. Let’s hope I never have to use this for a missing person search.

Since I was on the water, and since I had swans around me - some losing a few small feathers - I decided to pick one attractive feather and photograph it in various compositions. I will begin with the standard “Feather on Water” view and then will share a few pictures with interesting shadows adding to the image.