02 Jan 13. Welcome to 2013 and the start of year 8 of the Daily Image. Here's hoping that all your teams won today, your heads are feeling fine, and that the Ball didn't hit you last night! Every Dec 3st/Jan 1st I put all the text of the year's mailings into a single document; even with one month off (3 weeks in Jan and one week in Sept) the text for 2012 totaled 93 pages. I must be getting very wordy. I have a volume for every year I've been doing this and it is fun to go back and read it as an annual diary. It gives me a good feel for the year and how it went. There were a few themes in the 2012 diary and among them were travel and weather. The weather this past year being one of extremes in duration of either dry or wet. And so far nothing of the white kind of wet to speak of other than a couple of days of flurries, but I can hope. These past few days have been cold, damp, and windy with the potential for some dramatic skies, so what better to start off the year than a pano of the big city taken from the water. This image consisted of 9 frames that I've stitched together to give a view of the entire waterfront, something that must have looked vastly different 150 ago. From this vantage point it is hard to believe that there were ever any trees on the hills at all. I would have preferred not having the Space Needle growing out of a tall building like it is, but one way or another it would be growing out of one of the buildings. Next time I'll just have to ask the Captain to reposition the vessel. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10. - sonofjohan's Photos

All the Daily Image mailings for the month of January 2013

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02 Jan 13. Welcome to 2013 and the start of year 8 of the Daily Image. Here's hoping that all your teams won today, your heads are feeling fine, and that the Ball didn't hit you last night! Every Dec 3st/Jan 1st I put all the text of the year's mailings into a single document; even with one month off (3 weeks in Jan and one week in Sept) the text for 2012 totaled 93 pages. I must be getting very wordy. I have a volume for every year I've been doing this and it is fun to go back and read it as an annual diary. It gives me a good feel for the year and how it went. There were a few themes in the 2012 diary and among them were travel and weather. The weather this past year being one of extremes in duration of either dry or wet. And so far nothing of the white kind of wet to speak of other than a couple of days of flurries, but I can hope. These past few days have been cold, damp, and windy with the potential for some dramatic skies, so what better to start off the year than a pano of the big city taken from the water. This image consisted of 9 frames that I've stitched together to give a view of the entire waterfront, something that must have looked vastly different 150 ago. From this vantage point it is hard to believe that there were ever any trees on the hills at all. I would have preferred not having the Space Needle growing out of a tall building like it is, but one way or another it would be growing out of one of the buildings. Next time I'll just have to ask the Captain to reposition the vessel. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.

03 Jan 13 . Back in the first half of the 70s I spent my time in a hyperbaric lab doing research in decompression sickness, 4 years of which it was in a lab of my design and construct. Those were some of the best years of my career, and I often think of what might have been, as opposed to what actually was, had the Director of our Institute been of a different mindset. In short, he took everything he could from his employees and then got rid of them. In the process he spawned several good careers for others although I know that wasn't his intent. That brings us to the first part of today's submission, that of looking at a sea creature, the sea cucumber, Isostichopus fuscus. Normally found crawling along the bottom of the intertidal zone, they are easy prey for those feeding on them except for their habit of eviscerating themselves letting the predator eat the eviscerate while the animal leaves the scene. When frightened for any reason, this is a typical response. At the Poulsbo Marine Science Center they have one you are allowed to pick up and literally take out of the water. They do observe you carefully so as to not get the critter so disturbed that it does the escape trick. While we were visiting last week the grand daughters were looking at it and one actually held it for a while partially out of the water. Apparently the number of folks playing with it actually did over stress it while it didn't eviscerate, it managed to form a large air bubble (think decompression sickness) at the ventral end. For the last 30 minutes of our visit it was floating around the tank head down and tush up which no one there had ever seen occur before. On our next trip I'm gong to be inquiring as to how it fared. The tank in which it lives is relatively shallow, and as there is no current moving the water around, it gets a bit clutter with debris including a lot of air bubbles on the surface. The result was that the photos were not quite as good as I would have desired. Enter a new software product, the second part of this tome. Perfect Photo Suite 7 has a filter called magic ocean, and it really helped make this image presentable. Although designed I'm sure to deal with the loss of red light as the water depth increases, it worked well even in this shallow tank environment. For those of you without Photoshop due to its price, I recommend you look into this product. That said, have a look at a sea cucumber floating around in a touch me tank. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 1000; 1/60 sec @ f / 9 with fill flash.

07 Jan 13. A couple of years prior to our departure from MD we were introduced to the Christmas light display at Brookside Gardens. It was such a delight that we visited every Christmas until we left. We we moved to Seattle we found something similar although not fully comparable in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. In both gardens the grounds were fully decorated with incandescent light that photographed well, at least for me. Each year was a delight and every visit provided for a different experience. Last year we didn't go due to a change in the philosophy of the garden in Bellevue and as such there were no Christmas light images for the end of 2011 or start of 2012. We didn't attend this year either but we did find a new location to shoot right in our own back yard so to speak in Kingston at the Port Facility. It appears the the idea for decorating the Port was inspired by the Bellevue Botanical Gardens show. As in the past, the night I chose to shoot the light was really cold! but this year's exercise was the coldest I can recall. I wasn't very pleased with my results, and I'm not sure if it was the weather, the location (a decorated parking area rather than a garden) or the use of LEDs as opposed to the bigger and not as bright incandescent bulbs. While I'm rather certain that all 3 played a role, I'm thinking it was more the kind of lighting than the other two. Since I wasn't satisfied with how the "straight" images turned out, I've creatively altered this image to give the kind of experience I was hoping to experience but didn't. It is very festive it not factual, but I thought I'd share it as the 12 Days of Christmas have just past and if I waited any longer it might seem very unseasonal. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 100; 6 sec @ f /18 on a tripod.

08 Jan 13. Back in early fall we paid a visit to a very small community called Nordland, WA. We weren't headed there, but "found" it on our way to our actual destination. It reminded me of an Alaskan fishing village but of course isn't, but as it was enshrouded in fog, it really had that kind of feeling. There were a few fishing boats, a few sailboats, and a couple of small boats in the bay. One of them was situated just perfectly for a close up so I played with it for a few minutes. The fog was waxing and waning so each shot was a bit different from the other. In this one I had to add just a wee bit of color in the green to keep it from looking totally flat, not necessarily unnatural in fog, but totally flat is generally not all that interesting. Now all we have to do is find the vessel to which this little skiff belongs. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.6.

09 Jan 13. After spending the short time we did in Nordland enjoying the fog, we traveled on into Pt Townsend where we had even more fog with which to play. You may recall the two images I shared last fall of the ferry and the Lady Washington. They were taken as we had lunch in a nice bistro up a couple levels over looking the water. After we finished we began a walk around town looking for "stuff" to purchase, and we didn't have a lot of trouble in so doing. Along the way the fog departed and the area became more active, both with people and critters. This critter was having lunch at what it might have considered a local bistro. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f /10.

10 Jan 13. Here is another of the foggy morning images taken at Mystery Bay that Sept morn. In reality the colors were more muted than they are in the image, but it was so bland that I felt it could stand just a wee bit of help. So I've selectively increased the saturation in the sails just to keep it from looking like a sheet of gray. Just a tad bit of a breeze gave some definition to the water but not enough to completely interfere with the reflection. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 7.1.

11 Jan 13. From the simple of yesterday to the complex of today. The day following the trip to Pt Townsend we made our way up to Mt Rainier. I wasn't thinking very clearly about what I was doing and chose to go to the Sunrise side of the mountain vice the Paradise side. That was a big mistake as the fires that had been raging during the month on the eastern side of the Cascades were still having a significant influence on the atmosphere on the Sunrise side which, if I had planned for, would have had us re-visit the Paradise side. The problem really wasn't noticeable until we reached almost the end of the road, a wide 270° hairpin turn with a parking lot in the middle. From there one can shoot a variety of lovely images of both the cascades including a right-in-your-face Mt Rainier and much of the surrounding valleys. But it was not to be with all the particulate matter floating in the air. So we shot what we could and moved on. Thinking about some of the creative techniques I've been playing with over the past several months, I thought I'd try to salvage one or two of those images from the visit as an exercise. Today's submission is one such attempt. All of the effort was concentrated on different contrast manipulations and while it wasn't 100% successful, meaning it doesn't look like what it would have had the skies been clear, it's still pretty close and for anyone who has never seen the mountain it just might be totally passable. I share this as an example for those of you who may have an "almost there" image or two and would like to try to recover them, something along the lines of restoring an old photograph. One could further refine it by applying some softening, hue adjustment, and white & black point settings as adjustment layers, but for this exercise I wanted to limit the adjustments to contrast only. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority;ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 9.

02 Jan 13. Welcome to 2013 and the start of year 8 of the Daily Image. Here's hoping that all your teams won today, your heads are feeling fine, and that the Ball didn't hit you last night! Every Dec 3st/Jan 1st I put all the text of the year's mailings into a single document; even with one month off (3 weeks in Jan and one week in Sept) the text for 2012 totaled 93 pages. I must be getting very wordy. I have a volume for every year I've been doing this and it is fun to go back and read it as an annual diary. It gives me a good feel for the year and how it went. There were a few themes in the 2012 diary and among them were travel and weather. The weather this past year being one of extremes in duration of either dry or wet. And so far nothing of the white kind of wet to speak of other than a couple of days of flurries, but I can hope. These past few days have been cold, damp, and windy with the potential for some dramatic skies, so what better to start off the year than a pano of the big city taken from the water. This image consisted of 9 frames that I've stitched together to give a view of the entire waterfront, something that must have looked vastly different 150 ago. From this vantage point it is hard to believe that there were ever any trees on the hills at all. I would have preferred not having the Space Needle growing out of a tall building like it is, but one way or another it would be growing out of one of the buildings. Next time I'll just have to ask the Captain to reposition the vessel. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.