Election Stormfront

As I write, Midterm election results roll in around the country. Republicans look for a so-called Red Wave, while Democrats hope to avoid a tsunami. Even a storm surge could flip the House and Senate. Tomorrow will tell, if not later tonight.

For San Diegans, today, the storm is quite literal—rains and gusty winds that continue now. Early risers were denied view of the lunar eclipse. Well, another comes in three years; maybe you can count on clear skies.

My wife and I had planned to walk the 1.2 kilometers (0.8 miles) to the polling place at a North Park community center. But bad weather compelled us to drive instead during a brief break in rainfall. Seeing long lines, we presented our filled-out mail-in ballots, rather than fill them out on site as intended. I suppose that more or less counts as voting in person, since we didn’t deposit our ballots at a dropbox or mail via USPS.

To make good use of the unexpected extra time indoors, I pulled out Leica Q2 and shot through my office window to the street outside. Each of the three captures demonstrates the benefits of manual controls to produce very different views from similar perspective.

The Featured Image is most basic of the trio. House across the street is point of focus. Vitals, aperture manually set for all: f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/640 sec, 28mm: 12:36 p.m. PST.

The second shot is manually focused on window glass, using a ring around the barrel of the f/1.7 Summilux lens. Vitals are same but 1/500 sec, one-minute later.

The last one also is manually focused—on the falling rain, which can clearly be seen streaking by if you look carefully. Vitals, shutter speed manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/500 sec, 28mm; 2:24 p.m. PST.