Still Life in Glass and Geode

Hand-blown glass chile on geode fragment, Magdalena, NM, Dec. 2011

One benefit of staying in on a wintry day is looking closely at everyday objects and figuring out ways to see them differently. I used my somewhat neglected 35mm f1.8 lens for these shots; it's a very fast lens, which I don't really need outdoors, and the shallow depth of field that happens at such a low f-stop doesn't work well with moving critters or wind-tossed flowers. Yesterday, stuck indoors in low light, I had a chance to rediscover its versatility and unique perspective. I gave this glass chile, made by an Albuquerque artist, to my mom two years ago, and the geode fragment came from a hike I took way up into the Magdalenas last summer. Nothing compares to natural light, and the weather was so volatile today that these shots, taken maybe five minutes apart, show an entirely different sky in the background as clouds tumbled from the mountains into town.