American in Spain

The moon just after sunset today was really gorgeous, hanging there in the sky next to Venus. The new moon was on Christmas Eve night, so Rudolph’s nose must have been extra important this year. After seeing the pretty Moon, up high in the sky, I told myself to go and look in an hour or two to see if I could catch it approach the horizon. Normally, I would never be capable of such a thing, but I actually did remember, and I caught it just as it was touching the horizon. Unfortunately, in the time it took me to set up my tripod, the tip of the moon went behind the hill on the horizon, but I still got nine shots in the time it took to set completely.
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Strawberry season is about to draw to a close in Spain. Although I’ve consumed several kilos this year, I’m sad to see them go. The thing that most annoys me about strawberries is how long they last after I buy them. In my experience, if I don’t eat them within 48 hours, they all turn to mush and they get all fluffy with mold. This is especially a problem since I normally can’t stop myself from buying a whole 2 kilogram box of them. So I decided to turn my frustration around and use the rapid growth of mold on my strawberries as the subject of a timelapse video.
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Two nights ago, we were sitting in the living room, and Marga exclaimed, “Whoa! Check out the moon!” It was just peeking up over the tree-lined hillside to the east of our house. I ran to get my camera and snapped several pictures during the minute I had when the natural satellite was still behind the trees. Only one of them came out very good.

The following night, I decided that, if the weather was willing, I’d be ready to photographically ambush the moon as it rose over the trees.
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This week, without a daughter to care for, my mornings have been free. I’ve been taking advantage of the good weather to get some exercise, walking up to 16 km (10 miles) around the neighboring towns. The first few days, I just walked to the beach at Laredo and walked up and down the maritime walkway several times. It occurred to me yesterday that I might have been caught on the yacht club’s webcam, but alas I was not there on the hour or 15, 30, or 45 minutes past the hour on any day. The archived panoramas I was looking through for Monday, August 18, were so pretty that I decided to make a timelapse video out of them.
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As soon as I learned that my friend and grocery store manager, Andrés, cultivates mushrooms, I knew immediately that we had to do a timelapse photography project with his next batch. The particular species he cultivates is Pleurotus ostreatus, the oyster mushroom. He buys preprepared bails of hay wrapped in plastic, to which nutrients, mushroom spores, and water have been added. Holes have been cut in the plastic on the top and sides of the bail. Before you can see any mushroom growth, the whole bail gets warm to the touch, as the nutrient consumption begins inside. When the little fungal sprigs started appearing in the holes, Andrés came to me, with a big grin on his face, and said, “Today’s the day!” So I returned that afternoon and set up the tripod, flash, and intervalometer pointing at the bails of hay in his grocery store’s warehouse right down the street from where I live. And then we waited…
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For some reason, we have really nice sunsets this time of year. Plus, I become more aware of them because, around 18:00, my computer monitor gets bathed in gold light. The rest of the year the light from the sunset is blocked, by another part of the building, from entering my office window. These are some photos I took over the past couple weeks and a video I made last night.
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