22 Jun 11 . Tuesday morning, while parked for less than a minute at a local (chain) grocery store an individual walked past our vehicle and slammed the open door shut with a sarcastic comment about closing it for us. A rather rude approach to a group of visitors/strangers, to say nothing of mishandling another's personal property. As I was thinking about what would prompt such behavior, I came across this image taken at my cousin's home early last fall. As we were about to sit for dinner, we observed this vessel running very close to the shoreline in front of his home. A few minuter the skipper simply beached his vessel on my cousin's property, put down a ladder, and a crewman walked across his property to go fetch some beer at the corner grocery store. No permission was requested, no apology provided, and certainly no thank you was forth coming. The absolute and total rudeness of such behavior, to say nothing of running a vessel while consuming alcohol was,/still is, simply over the pale. Likewise the slamming of a vehicle door belonging to another. One begins to wonder what has happened to common courtesy in our society, and this in a country setting where such behavior is truly not the accepted. Perhaps it is an example of the trickle down theory. ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.
23 Jun 11. About a month back the rains were so heavy that the water in Lake Washington was way too high and the spillways at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks were wide open allowing for a large volume of water being released into Puget Sound. The velocity of the water cursing over the spillways was such that it created its own waterfall looking effect, and I wanted to capture the effect. No single exposure, no matter what I tried, could do it justice, so I opted to go with an HDR approach in order to capture more of the mist making it look much more like what the eye was seeing. There was a bit of a breeze blowing at the time I took the photo, and you will note that it is blowing in the opposite direction of the water's flow, so that may help give you an idea of the amount of mist being created by the outflow of the lake water. You may also notice several wires stretching across the water. They are there to curtail fishing birds from eating all the little smolt that are exiting Lake Washington to Puget Sound. If you haven't visited the Locks and live in the area, or are visiting the area, I highly recommend a visit there during times of high rains and/or the salmon run in mid summer to early fall. ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 22 (middle of 5 exposures).
24 Jun 11. I've written often about the idea of macro vs close-up photography, with the generally agreed definitions that close-up is something along the lines of 1/10 to 1/2 life size and macro starting at half life size and going up to roughly 10x life size. After that we start getting into the ream of photomicrography at greater than 10x. Here we have a photo that I'll let you decide with respect into which category it should be assigned. Look closely, and you will notice little things sticking out of the legs of the critter. Now the bigger question is what is the critter which the image name gives away but try to ascertain what you are seeing before looking at the name. If you are familiar with books of electron microscope images, this form factor should be something you've seen prior, but, as I don't have a personal electron microscope, the question is just what is it. Of course it could be a photo of another image, but . . . . So, have a good look and see if you can come up with it's identity, or if not that specific, something close, before checking. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 14. 105mm macro.
