Daily Image - Dec 2011 Archive

06 Dec 11. Back from a productive weekend of wall building only to find that the HD on which I had gotten the mail program utilizing data had put up a wall that neither I, nor the mail program, could penetrate, so spent the better part of the day tentatively solving that problem. As of right now it would seem that it is heat related, and I'll find out later when I shut the box down again. After performing without a glitch over the Friday night / Saturday morning time frame, I sent the last short Saturday message and then left for the weekend leaving the box running. When I got back Sunday night the drive was basically dead. Monday morning it didn't want to participate either, so out it came, into a plastic bag it went, and found a place to rest for a few hours in the bottom of the fridge. Probably should have used the old freezer trick, but the cold of the reefer seems to have been sufficient attitude adjustment for now, or so it would seem for the moment. Since the problem appears to be heat related, I thought I go with an image that is supposed to be representative of the same thing. This is a highly manipulated shot that is part of one series, of which there are many, in the Christmas DVD, that transitions from the real to the sublime. All of us have watched time lapse photography series in which a something, generally a flower, transitions from bud to fully open flower. I don't have the equipment to do exactly that, so these manipulations are my attempt at creating something vaguely similar in an abstract form. ISO 200, 1/200 sec @ f / 8.

07 Dec 11. Things have run without a glitch today, so I think this mail problem situation may be under control. During the past three weeks while working on the property, I have been fortunate to have two alternate weekends with really decent weather, meaning cold and clear, no precip of any kind, save for that common in cold weather, frost and ice, and lots of falling leaves. Most of the trees on the property are not of the really intense color varieties, so I will have to add some, most likely Vine Maples, to give me a bit of change from the browns and subdued yellows. That said, the hues of brown and yellow are quite varied, as opposed to the mostly dull brown I had every year back in MD, so dealing with the annual carpeting of the grounds will be more of a pleasure than a chore. The variation of color from the large maples, which, due to the size of the leaves I believe are Big Leaf Maples, led me to taking a lot of photos of them, and the image for today is one such. However, you don't get to see the color as I've converted it a bit. The first thing I did was to add an orange boost to accent the Orange Cup mushrooms in the lower right corner, but via the use of a mask had it affect only the Orange Cups, then I increased the "detail" in the image, converted it to a full spectrum B&W, added a green filter, and then a small curves adjustment. The result is a B&W image with a lot of character. While I liked the original color image with which I began, I like this B&W rendition even more. ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 5.6.

08 Dec 11. The day seems promising, so you head for the mountains to get some good fall color, only to find the weather not so promising when you arrive and in fact becoming nothing but thoroughly overcast and raining. Now what? Return home, try and wait out the weather, or just give in and shoot anyway. On my last trip up there this year it was all three in that we started shooting in the "bad" weather, then when it got really nasty tried waiting it out, unsuccessfully, only to return home to a bit of clearing. But in the process we shot a few waterfalls which, because of the atmospheric conditions, provided us with some very nice light, akin to being in a gigantic light box, and some very nicely evenly lit saturated colors. Perfect for water falls, almost to the extent of being reminded of a Simon & Garfunkel song of the mid 60s called Kodachrome. Those of you in or near my age group will immediately make the connection. ISO 640; 1/100 sec @ f / 5.

09 Dec 11. While I didn't get any opportunity this year to capture the frost on the pumpkins, I did have opportunity of a couple of days, back to back, the weekend prior to Thanksgiving, to capture it on a number of other objects. Just down the road from where we are building there are a couple of dense patches of bracken fern, one on each side of the road directly across from one another leading me to think they may have been a singe patch prior to the road being put through. For the most part they are just more of the greenery on the side of the roadway, but with autumn they turn a golden brown and are quite hard not to notice. Add a nice coating of frost over the brown, making them look like they have been prepared for a desert for a special occasion, and they are an irresistible treat for any camera lens, or at least my camera believes such. As there was a lot of "noise" with all the competing plants, or portions thereof, I've done a bit of digital gardening in order to help the fern stand on its own, otherwise, this is basically straight out of the camera. ISO 400; 1/200 sec @ f / 7.1.

12 Dec 11. We received a call late yesterday morning informing us that Jan's dad was failing fast and to come as quickly as possible, so we hurriedly made it across the sound to be with him and the extended family. None of us expected him to make it through the night, but he did, with great difficulty, and we are amazed that he still with us, but recognize it is just for a few more hours as we await the final notification. It has been a difficult weekend, so none of your mail has been answered, my apology. The image I'm sharing was taken originally in July during the Lavender Festival, is of a young teasel plant, at the pre-flowering stage, when it is a very distinct green. I'll wager most folks haven't seen the plant in this stage, as it is generally only used dried, in its final stage. The original shot had a very bright, and to some degree distracting, background, so I replaced the white with black by doing a selective color replacement, a relatively simple procedure. The black wasn't chosen because of current circumstances, although it could easily be assumed to represent such. Both background colors, white and black, left the background with a rather "interesting" look, and I've elected to leave it as is. Replacing the white with black also turned all the light surfaces of the teasel black, so I've used an adjustment mask to selectively remove the black from just those upturned areas; although I could have done some more to the stalk, I rather preferred just altering the upturned portions. So it is a bit "artistic", but other than the white / black switch, it is straight out of the camera. ISO 400; 1/640 sec @ f / 7.1.

13 Dec 11. Jan's father Milt passed late Monday morning at 85 after a three week slide that began on Thanksgiving day. He had been suffering from advanced heart failure - 20% function - for the past two years but told no one about it and did a good job of hiding it. It had dropped to c15% by Thanksgiving and just slid from there. He was his good natured self right up to the end and even gave us a couple of laughs during our Saturday vigil. He had a very good life and could count among his accomplishments, besides his family, being the head Electrical Engineer on the Boeing 737 project and Grand High Priest of the Masonic Lodge here in the Pacific Northwest. We will all miss him greatly. The image I'm sharing you have seen before, but I've reworked it; this one's for you Milt!

14 Dec 11 This image was one I took during one of our -3.5 June low tides, with a Great Blue Heron situated between me and another beach inhabitant. The bird was watching us both carefully, and as neither of us were making any threatening moves, remained where he was for several minutes intermittently stopping his fishing to assure himself that we were staying put. While I wouldn't normally put the additional mammal in an image, I thought that this time it would serve to add size perspective, for both the foreground and the background. You should be able to make out at least three of the vessels on the water. I've cropped this image significantly and that accounts for the little bit of blocking up of the sky, plus added a wee bit of sharpening, otherwise, it is a straight shot. ISO 800, 1/800 sec @ f /16.

15 Dec 11. The National Parks of Yellowstone and Grand Tetons in Wyoming are connected, or separated, depending upon your perspective, by a 27 mile stretch of highway called the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway, sitting on 24,000 acres of land. It is a very curvy road that takes you through some very spectacular scenery, especially in the fall while the colors are at their best. When we visited it in 2007, we managed to hit it a bit past peak, but the colors were still breath taking in spots. As we were driving along the parkway we came to an open field at whose terminus was a long stand of what I believe were aspens based on the white trunks and orange leaves, and in front of which was a field of grass that looked like wheat. We passed by the field twice, on our way to Yellowstone and back from Grand Tetons. Both times the view impressive but very different due to the leaves departing the trees in between visits. On our return from Leavenworth, WA driving along Highway 2 in the Tumwater Canyon area during our late October visit, we passed by a field that so reminded me of that spot in Wyoming that I felt compelled to take a few shots of it. When I put them on a computer screen side by side I was amazed at how close they resembled each other, although the shot from WA is a larger magnification than is the one from Wyoming, and the color not as intense. I shared the WY shot back in 2007; here is the WA shot. ISO 200; 1/125 @ f / 9.

16 Dec 11. Seattle, as I assume most everyone knows, has a very long American Indian heritage, and for my perspective the very best area of the city in which to loose oneself in that culture would be Pioneer Square. This very early part of the city is teeming with history, some of it in the shops that are located there, some in the ever popular Underground Tour, and even more in the architecture and art. Many of you are familiar with the term Skid Row, but I'll wager few of you know it originated here and is a bastardization of the original words Skid Road, which was a "roadway" made of logs laid out across a dirt trail (think of RR ties) which were greased, then used to haul (skid) logs down from the forest to the sound with the work being done by horses. Eventually the area where the logs were dumped into the sound became an area where the lowest part of society "lived' and the term simply evolved to what it is today. The area is anything but that now, although it was quite sleazy when I was attending Barber School in that area in the early 60s; the building that housed the Barber School then is now a 5 star restaurant that we can't afford!! But what we can afford is to go there and walk around taking in all the history, some of which is comprised of many different totem poles. There are several that are quite attractive, and if you are so inclined you can get some nice images sans visitors, but it does take a fair amount of patience. Here is one of those located in the square proper, now bricked and kept free of pan handlers. ISO 200; 1/8 sec @ f / 25 on a tripod.

19 Dec 11. Hard to believe that we have just 10 images to go to finish off year 6; so I guess we should move to some seasonal related images which means that I need to get busy and make some. I'll start today with one of a poinsettia, a flower that I always considered to be a house plant prior to our second tour in the Navy when we were in El Toro, CA and saw huge hedges of the plant hugging the sides of many buildings. It almost took away the Christmas specialness of the plant, but was indeed a beautiful sight to see nonetheless. I still like to do tabletop or nursery shots of the plant, and this image originated in a local nursery where we took one of the grand daughters to see both Christmas decorations in addition to a camel, a donkey, and two reindeer who are annually on display. The animals didn't do much and she was less than impressed, but on other visits they have put on a bit of a show. So while the animals were a bit of a disappointment, the displays were not and I found several things to shoot. This image, which is one of them, has been edited a bit starting with some basic color adjustment in ACR for the background layer, then that duped for cropping and some simple cleanup. That layer was duped and taken into a filter for some effects and then masked to work on some brightness equalization, and finally that layer was duped, reduced to 50% of normal, and combined with the layer below employing a luminosity blend. Then it was flattened to give you what you are seeing, a somewhat more exciting poinsettia than that with which I started. ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.

20 Dec 11. Another poinsettia for today, but this time I leave it for you to determine what I did to it, and I'd love to hear what you think was done. To make it easier, but not by much, I'll tell you that I added just one small alteration to the image, but for me it made the image what it is. This is another shot taken at our nursery, and in fact, this plant was situated right next to the red one I shared yesterday. Both shots were taken with natural light around 1300 so they enjoy being bathed in the beautiful winter light we experience this time of the year. I've obviously severely cropped the original image to both get rid of some photographic noise as well as create a feeling of largess, although the plant isn't any larger than any typical potted plant in a 6 inch pot. So with all that in mind, see if you can determine what is different. ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 5.6.

21 Dec 11. A rare break from tradition today in that the image contains a recognizable figure. About three weeks back we took a short trip to a local park about 15 minutes away to watch the salmon spawn. Wasn't much of a display and in total I think we saw roughly a dozen fish, a few of which were already dead, but it was fun to walk along a path we hadn't explored prior and we met a few nice dogs along the way. Several folks asked us if Maggie was a wolf hound which was sort of surprising because she doesn't remind us of a wolf hound at all, but apparently she looks that way to others. After walking the path along the stream as far inland as the fish could possible get, we turned around and went the other way towards Puget Sound stopping when the signs rudely stated No Dogs! From that point we were perhaps the length of a football field from the Sound, so other than not being able to walk on a new trail, we really didn't miss anything. Turning around I realized that there might be a photo op just beneath the bridge upon which we were standing, so while my shooting partners, Jan and Maggie, watched from overhead, I walked down under to see if I could catch a few fish in the act, but was left empty handed, so I settled for a couple shots of them. I worked up the images using a combination of a layer with the shot untouched, then another layer with the image manipulated. With the manipulated layer masked, I removed the effect on the primary characters, then put some of it back around their edges to create a somewhat creamy edge. Normally one would very carefully cut out the figures, trying to capture every strand of hair, but I wanted the softer effect and so went with a different, and simpler, approach. I also over brightened Maggie's mouth to prevent her face from being just a dark circular area. ISO 320; 1/50 sec @ f / 7.1 hand held.

22 Dec 11. Now when one thinks of Christmas type images, if you are anything like me, you think of images with snow. Ideally images with lots of trees, snow, and something to go along with the trees and snow. But what if you live in an area which doesn't conveniently provide such a setting, even though it might be available with a reasonable amount of driving time. Well, one thing you could do is find an image that basically meets all the criteria, and then manipulate it in the form of a negative image. Now in this case the term negative isn't exactly like that old orange masked piece of acetate called a kodacolor negative, but rather the opposite of the color which was originally there. So for today we start with an image of a valley with lakes taken from Sunrise Point, a hairpin 180 degree turn, and parking lot, just about a mile from the end of the road leading to Sunrise on Mt Rainier. We then invert it to the opposite colors of what was there originally, and now we have lots of "snow covered" (white) trees along with some nice dark ones that look reasonably like deep green, and some interesting colored water and shoreline. Not exactly the longed for snow scene, but an image that is interesting in its own right, or at least so to my eye.

23 Dec 11. Since this is the last mailing prior to Christmas day, I wanted to do something in the traditional Christmas colors of red and green, but found I really didn't having anything appropriate to the season, and as we didn't get a tree this year I was in a bit of a quandary as to what I might share. Then the thought came to mind that a nice fountain display with red and green lights shining on it might just be the ticket. Only problem was that I was lacking that also. Then I remembered having taken a couple of shots of a small fountain display in front of the Space Needle earlier in the year, soooooo, we take the fountain image, dupe the layer, grab a bi-color digital filter (akin to what used to be placed in front of the lens at capture time) select red and green as the two (bi-) colors, and put the effect on the duped layer; adjust the angle to have it split vertically 50-50. Now it is a red half and green half, split down the middle image, and not exactly what one might find appealing. We now have to do a bit of reduction on the opacity to get the colors affecting the geyser part of the water looking correct, and then mask the layer to remove the colors from the pond portion of the water. With a little bit of work, and a fair amount of imagination, we have our red and green symbolic Christmas shot. Unfortunately, when I was taking the original I didn't have this final outcome in mind, so it wasn't shot for either a stop action or a totally silky smooth look, but somewhere in between, so the top of the water is something mid way and has a little bit of a strange appearance. Hope you enjoy, and to each of you, regardless of how you view the Christmas season, I'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

26 Dec 11. Just 5 to go and the year will be over. And for this submission of something Christmas-like you will have to stretch your imagination a wee bit, but that shouldn't be too hard considering one of the festivities we enjoy during this time of the year. Coming home from shopping on Christmas Eve Jan mentioned that "the" mountain was out with some rather beautiful lighting bathing it, so I hopped in the car and went to Kerry Park, the location of many of my Seattle photos, and played around with the mountain and the light falling on it, but also with some nice clouds, and my first capture of a Lenticular cloud on Mt Rainier. (The link will show you some images of Lenticular clouds including a famous one from from McMurdo Station, Antarctica). As I was working with the light, the sun decided to finally break through the clouds and that ended my opportunity. But I got several shots I felt good about and did a little touch up on the one I'm sharing with you today. In particular I added a small amount of under exposure and cropped of the bottom portion of the city landscape. Otherwise it is pretty much what I was seeing on Saturday. ISO 200; 1/ 640 sec @ f / 6.3.

27 Dec 11. We (royal) began the planning today for the trip and realized that it was coming up faster than I would like and that there was still much to get done, including preparing some images for this daily show. In the process I came to two realizations, one of which was that I'd finish this year out with selections from the remaining 195 images I've had already prepared, and the other that this weeks submissions would be the end of the Daily Image mailings until we return from the trip which should be somewhere around the beginning of the 4th week of January. So roughly a three week hiatus at the start of the new year, 2012, but hopefully kicking things off with a lot of material from the trip upon our return! Meanwhile, while perusing the files available, I came upon today's selection of the Admiral practicing for the cruise although there was no cruise even being considered at the time. Nonetheless, the pose I do believe is indicative of what lies ahead, at least for a portion of the time. And even though it has a nautical foundation, the shot was taken last summer at the Lavender Festival in Sequim, WA. ISO 400; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

28 Dec 11. A big break today from tradition in sending people pictures back to back, and three images no less. Lately there has been much ado about having Orcas (Killer Whales, actually not whales but the largest of the dolphins) in captivity and ill conceived efforts to free them, as well as groups out here taking credit for their single handed saving of the Orca populations. The ignorance of these folks borders on the appalling. Up until the very early 70s, the killing of the Orcas by fishermen was common place, based on the argument that the dolphins were eating their (fisherman's) salmon and needed to be killed off. After the initial capture of a Killer Whale, named Shamu, off Vancouver IS, B.C, people became interested in this magnificent creature and Sea World hired a group of folks here in Seattle to capture some for their aquaria. I got to be a part of that operation working on the rehabilitation end and had an opportunity to work with many Orcas over a 4 year period. At that time I was building a hyperbaric lab in Providence Hospital, and was a member of a small research facility, The Institute of Environmental Medicine and Physiology, which was involved in the development of ultrasonic devices of our own design for use in measuring blood flow (velocity) in human and animal patients. One offshoot of that work is the ultrasonic devices of today used in many medical procedures, most common of which is sonograms. Nothing was known about Killer Whales at the time we captured them, and all of our work was the first of its kind. We learned a lot about their physiology from our initial blood work and Doppler ultrasonic recordings, and shared all this with Sea World as well as the placing it into the general science. As we progressed with our efforts, showing the world what these magnificent animals were really like, interest in their safety grew and hunting them became outlawed. Significantly more was learned from the work of the vets at Sea world, and as a result of these combined efforts, the Orcas are now enjoying a protected life style. Today's 3 images come from the early 70s and show me getting some early Doppler blood flow velocity data over the cervical-spinal reti, with two others in the image I can't remember; plus another with me and Dr T A Gornell, D.V.M., a marine mammal specialist and close friend, recording some respiratory data, and the third of me with Dr. Gornell (TAG) drawing blood for some early studies on the O2 saturation of diving mammals. It was an exciting and fascinating time, and a period of my life that I truly loved.

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29 Dec 11. With the TFX contract being stolen from Boeing in 1969, courtesy of a certain former senator from TX, things in Seattle got very grim, and remained so for a few years, even more so than what has been experienced in the past 3 years. Some of you may even recall the Time Magazine cover showing the billboard with the words "Will the last person out of Seattle please turn out the lights." Employment was grim, and if you had a job you did everything possible to maintain it. I wound up working three different jobs (day job, on-call evenings in the hospital, and weekend barber) plus donating a fair amount of time with a couple of efforts that were dear to my heart, both involving marine mammals. As a result I wasn't home nearly as much as I would have liked to have been, and the family stresses because of such were not small. I didn't have a lot of time at home when daughter Jennifer was awake, and we didn't spend a lot of quality time together. BUT when we did do some things together, they were often unlike those any of her playmates ever experienced, and they centered around some of my activities. At 3.5 years of age, Jennifer was old enough to appreciate that dad was working with some rather, shall we say, interesting animals, much more so than just having a 6' boa constrictor as a pet. She really wanted to get involved with one of the critters dad was working with, so one day we took a trip down to the waterfront to go for a ride on a Killer whale. She was all excited, at least up until the point when we started wading along the side of the animal, whereupon she suddenly realized that this "pet" was just a wee big bigger than she had bargained for, and suddenly going for a ride didn't seem like such a great idea. But dad had gone to some effort to get her permission, so he wasn't going to let her "miss out" on this opportunity. As she approached the dorsal fin of a female Orca, she started bawling and claiming she didn't really want to go for a ride, but I put her on the back of the whale and made her hang on for a few moments to get a feel for what it might be like to actually go for a ride on one in the water, such as one could read about in our local Indian lore. Now Jennifer was a bit of a ham in those days, so in mid bawl I pointed to mom up at street level with camera in hand. As soon as she saw the camera she immediately stopped crying and grinned for the shot, then, once she heard the camera take the photo, returned to crying until I took her off the back of the Orca. I have looked unsuccessfully high and low for that particular shot and can't find it, so here is one taken just prior to her starting to bawl. Note the tightly clasped hands around my neck!

30 Dec 11. So here we are at the end of year 6 of the Daily Image, and the final image for 2011. I've chosen a rather somber image for the final offering, and a shot that has been one of my favorites in 40+ years of shooting. The original was in color, but primarily in gray and yellowish gray. I played with it a bit today and decided it had even more impact in B&W then it did in the original colors. Back during the time I was working at the Institute (IEMP) trying to develop a set of diving tables for the U.S. Navy that would be decompression sickness free (i.e. bubble free), I had the opportunity to go to sea and work with groups of divers who were trying to erect a steel tower in the mid Pacific Ocean that was to be used as one leg of a weather triangulation system. There is an undersea mount called Cobb Seamount that had been selected for the tower due to its rather close proximity to the surface. We were diving in 105 - 130 feet of salt water (tide dependent) and in the years before we got involved in monitoring the divers for decompression bubbles they were experiencing multiple cases of decompression sickness and one or more cases of CNS hits. Once we got involved we were able to reduce the incidence of decompression sickness to zero events, something the divers truly appreciated. At first they were very skeptical about letting me monitor them, but once they realized that the work was keeping them healthy and thus working (no dive - no pay), they wouldn't dive without my performing both pre and post dive examinations. It was a wonderful, opportunity, and eventually we were able to devise a way to monitor them while still in the water which allowed them to perform even longer dives than normal which translated into more $$$ for them. A lot was learned but due to internal operations I never got to see it to a conclusion.

04 Sep 14. Thought I'd do something a little different for this week's theatrical Thursday, and play with a shot of some local produce, in this case the fruit of a naturally growing vine, the blackberry. Starting about mid way down our driveway and continuing along the property edge adjacent to the street and for several more blocks you will find a great abundance of these plants simply begging for their berries to be harvested, and that was done with some regularity this summer, with lots of help from the cherubs who also got a few lessons in baking at the feet of Grandma! Once picked, Jan would wash them off, then spread them over a cookie sheet to freeze them. Once frozen they are easily stored in any manner of ways, she uses zip lock type baggies, which keeps them from freezing to each other since they are already individually frozen prior to being placed in the bags. This way, when it comes time to use them, say for a pie, tart, or muffins, etc., they are easily removed in the quantity desired with no need to have to break them up for measuring; they just pour right out of the bags. Upon removing one such tray from the freezer, Jan suggested that they might make for a nice photo and I agreed. The creative version of one of those shots is what I'm sharing; what is lost in sharpness is countered by the exaggeration of the frost on the surface of the individual berries. The manipulation not only amplifies that aspect, but it also serves to emphasize that not all the berries were equally "mature." D300s; 105mm Macro; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/60 sec with fill flash @ f /10.