Daily Image - Apr 2012 Archive

02 April 12. Departing from Seattle in c35ºF weather Thursday morning the 22nd, I was a bit amazed to be arriving that afternoon in OZ with temps approaching 80ºF and the area adorned in cherry blossoms. Dressed appropriately for my departure, I was more than a little over dressed for the destination. Got up early Friday morning and went into town a few hours early for the conference to shoot the cherry blossoms and was definitely not disappointed, although I found it a bit lonely to be there by myself with only perhaps another 25K photographers around to keep me company. Within an hour of shooting I was more than aware that the Seattle attire was far more than required, but, as it was all I had, it served to provide for a bit of a thermal workout. After 4 hours of shooting I found my way to the convention center where once again the clothing seemed appropriate and then back out again that evening to shoot some more. Only by that time the crowd had grown to perhaps 35K folks at which point I decided to call it a day. Probably should have fought it out as the weekend brought wind and heavy rain and by Monday the blossoms were history. They were also history in that it was the 100th anniversary of the trees, 3,000 of them having been gifted in 1912 to our nation by Japan.The festivities celebrating this centennial event will continue for another 4 weeks so there is still time to participate if not see the blossoms. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

03 Apr 12. Returning to Seattle to a crisp and windy mid 40s day, with bright sunshine, I decided to do a bit of local cherry blossom photography by taking a walk around the neighborhood. A lot like the DC cherry blossoms, Seattle's Seward Park, walking distance from Jan's and my childhood homes, was the recipient of hundreds of cherry trees from Japan in 1929 as part of an international diplomacy effort to strengthen ties and economic exchange between the PNW and Japan. These now adorn a portion of Lake Washington much as do the trees that adorn the tidal Basin in D.C. Not in a mood to do any more traveling, even the 45 + minute drive to Seward Park, we simply strolled locally to capture what might be easily available. The wind made it a real challenge as I wanted to do something of a close up nature, so it took a few blocks of "walking" with Maggie while I sought the desired combination of flowers, light, and no wind. It took a while, but eventually I came upon what I was looking for and grabbed a couple of shots. ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f/10.

04 Apr 12. If there were two colors that I most think scream Spring and Easter, it would have to be pink and yellow. The blooms of the cherry trees and forsythia say it about as vibrantly as I can imagine. I'm sure many of you will have your own favorites that likely include white and blue, but for me these two colors simply shout winter's over! While touring in D.C. last week both of these two plants were in full show, and while the cherries got the vast majority of my time, the forsythia was not to be lost in the shoots. Along with the show of color was of course the show in the Convention Center, this one about learning more about Photoshop. In one of the discussions was a demo of how one can simulate the effect of adding a missing spotlight after the fact. This can provide light in needed areas of the subject that was not available at the time of shooting. As an example, look at the image for today. The flowers at the 1, 6, 7:30, and 10 o'clock positions all have a nice glow at their base. That "back light" was not available at the time of shooting; I have added it in as a post processing step. To do so with your own image(s), add a blank transparent layer and then paint on it where you want to add the light. To so do, select a very soft brush of the appropriate size for the needed amount of light, click once over the area where you want to add the light, and then change the blending mode for that transparent layer to overlay. Bingo, you have added your needed light. For each area you want to add light you will need a new transparent layer. Look carefully at the image; without my having told you what I did, would you have suspected it had been done? ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /11.

05 Apr 12 . As we were watching the big bulls at the Piedras Blancas rookery, we became aware that there seemed to be more folks congregated at the end of the viewing area than there were along the ocean facing side where we were standing and watching the activity of the bulls. After the crowd thinned out a bit, we made our way to the end to see what was holding all their attention. To our amazement the beach was literally covered with cows and their pups, and it didn't take very long to realize that it was definitely meal time. Virtually every cow had at least one pup in attendance, and several had two. As we were watching all the action, one adult moved away from her nursing offspring to make her position clearly understood by another cow. The youngster didn't really appreciate all that was taking place, was rather offended by the interruption to the meal, and sat about letting the world know about the situation. I managed to capture a couple of shots clearly depicting how the youngster felt about all this, which, from my point of view, was one of total unhappiness. ISO 250; 1/125 sec @ f /14.

06 Apr 12. The front entryway of our Ballard home has an enclosed porch with glass on three sides. Facing south, it provides for a very bright and warm environment which Jan converted into a hot house a few months after we purchased the house in 1971. Both sides of the porch had bench like enclosures that were originally used for storage by the previous owners, but soon became the basis for all the plant arrangements. Today you can barely find the opening to one side which receives all our mail. Were it not for that feature I doubt that you would ever find that door. Among the many plants the live in this enclosure are several orchids and Christmas cacti. Based on their name, one would expect the Christmas cacti to bloom around the time of Christmas, which these do, but they continue to re-bloom several times during the calendar year, and they are currently putting on quite a show. This shot was taken looking somewhat downward at a couple of blossoms shooting from the rear of the plant. Such a view misses all the "interesting" parts of the flower, but I'll do another later working from a full frontal position that will amplify the beauty of the many colorful stamen arching out from the center of the flower. For now we'll simply concentrate on the texture of the petals as well as the beautiful red tones of the plant. I intentionally dropped out the background of this image and did it in such a way as to put a small glow around the edges of each petal for artistic purposes. Some of you will like it and others not, but I felt it gave the image a bit of a three dimensional effect. ISO 400; 1/200 sec @ f/ 7.1.

09 Apr 12. On the drive to Bellingham Saturday to attend a NWCCC Board meeting we took a small side trip through LaConner to check on the tulips. They were not yet ready, seeing only one field, and that with just a very faint blush of pink, but the daffodil fields were an eye catching lush golden yellow. We didn't stop as there wasn't 100% agreement on shooting daffodils and continued on our way to Bellingham. After a lengthy meeting that went into the late afternoon we headed back home stopping along the Mt Baker Scenic Highway area, on the Bellingham end to shoot Mt Baker and the Three Sisters (a group of 3 nearby spectacularly craggy mountain peaks) from a perspective I hadn't previously enjoyed. But throughout there were no tulips to be found. However, the tulips in our neighborhood were begging to be shot either solo or in small groupings, so while attending to much need lawn care Sunday afternoon, I took breaks as appropriate for the desired lighting conditions, and shot what was close by, meaning in the neighbor's yard. My goal was to play with back lighting the petals and the image for today is just one example. It was shot using spot metering and putting the meter at the base of the petals, in the yellow part of the flower. Although you might expect the aperture used to give higher depth of field (more of the total image in focus), I used a cheap trick of getting very close to the flower, actually as close as the lens could focus, so that it could emulate, perhaps poorly, a macro lens. The result is that all of the flower is in focus with even nearby plantings soft. Other than a tiny amount of blending out a specular highlight, this is a straight out of the camera shot. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 9.

10 Apr 12 . As those of you know who have been following this spam over the years, just prior to our marriage we had the opportunity of getting a potential landlord to allow us to pick the colors for a new couch. We picked blue and green, which he thought was simply horrible, even though he did eventually order the couch in those colors. To this day I still don't know why he thought green and blue didn't go well together; perhaps it was because, living in Seattle, he had never seen the green grass and blue skies together on the same day at the same time. A real pity from my perspective. Now obviously, we do think they go together, and so, while playing with a new piece of software a few days back, I thought I'd try to select a subject in green from its original background and place it on a new blue background. All went reasonably well, and the image for today was what I got. If my recollection is correct, the original was shot at ISO 100; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

11 Apr 12. A correction on yesterday's submission. My image title was incorrect as the Lady resides on Liberty Island vice Staten Island. Thanks Bruce. Now, for today, we shall look at a tulip from a slightly different perspective. Back when I was running my hyperbaric lab, I had a nice young man working for me who, as I prefer to put it, liked to experiment with different forms of entertainment, some of which frequently involved generally small members of the kingdom fungi. On one such occasion the "entertainment lasted for three days, and , as it was related, was a trip from which Mike almost didn't return. Not having similarly participated in such experimentation, I can only presume to have some ideas as to what might be visualized in such situations. But such presumption can be fun, so here is my version of how a tulip might present itself after dining on a few savory "erasers", as Jan prefers to call them. ISO 200; 1/200 sec 2 f/10.

12 Apr 12. With reference to yesterday's submission, those of you with a medical background, be it ever so remote, might have seen something remotely anatomical in the image. To my eye there was a great resemblance to the interior of a heart, or, even most remotely, the lungs. That may seem like a bit of a stretch, but if so, and you have access to the image, look again. The image was obviously manipulated a bit, and I did it using my favorite plugin, Fractalius. The author of this program claims that the software pulls out the fractals found in all images, and while that may seem like an odd comment, here is a page of some more commonly observed fractal material, of which some may be very familiar. It doesn't take long to begin to see fractal components if you spend some time observing. And of course observation is what makes the world of photography both enjoyable to the viewer and fun for the photographer. I've taken a very common subject for today's submission, in this case a grouping of three crocus, made it the best that I could, - jump out now and look at it and then return to this babble - and then made a potentially subtle alteration but one which is in reality quite drastic - did you catch it? - to significantly improve on the original, which was all right on its own. If you didn't figure out what I did it was very successful, and even if you did, it still should not have distracted from the photo. The alteration was to convert the image to an oil painting and then remove the paint from the blossoms, leaving the painterly effect on everything else. It gives some depth to the image as well as a little additional character. Now look again, and, if you do so critically enough, you may begin to identify the beginning of a fractal or two. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 7.1.

13 Apr 12. As promised, here is Friday's image a couple days late, but literally a Friday morning image. As I was getting ready to leave for the house Friday morning just before seven I looked up and saw what I am sharing today. I won't try to put the experience in words as each of you will have your own expression of what you see. This is the third time I've had the pleasure of watching this beauty played out as the sun rises above a cloud layer with holes over Puget Sound, and it will never cease to make me take a few moments and pause to contemplate the beauty of our little planet. As a kid growing up in this area we called these streaks of light sun dogs, and it generally signaled rain within 24 hours (a reasonably safe call anytime in this part of the country), but when we moved back here I was told that the "correct" name is God rays. Right or wrong, I think the "correct" name much more accurately describes them. The original shot had the freighter heading out of the frame, so I tightly selected it with a 5 pixel feather, flipped it horizontally, and placed the selection directly over the original so the vessel was heading into the frame which, supposedly, makes for a more interesting picture. I've also cropped the shot some for improved presentation (moving the horizon off the middle of the frame) and did a little noise reduction; otherwise it is right from the camera. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 8.

16 Apr 12 . At what might be best described as the NE corner of Hansville Road and Eglon Road, where you make a right hand turn to travel along the road to our new house, sits a nice piece of property with a charming little pond that abuts the two roads. As a youngster I recognized this pond primarily as being the southern end of the property where my paternal Grandparents were laid to rest. While it is still true that the pond sits at the southern end of a small cemetery, what is of greater interest to me now is how that pond looks throughout the year. Right now it is rather devoid of life, and while that will soon change, the sparsity of growth both in and along the edge of the pond makes for some very nice reflections when the water is quiet. But even when the water isn't mirror-like, it still provides some nice material to shoot. Last Friday evening was one such moment, and as I was passing by from two sides decided I should attempt to capture some of those reflections. After working with the shot to give me the best color I could achieve, I thought it would look rather nice as a B&W, so I sent it into nik Silver eFex selecting the high structure option, made my own adjustments to that, and added a blue filter. The result is what I'm sharing for today. ISO 320; 1/200 sec @ f / 8.

17 Apr 12. Around here, as I am sure it is true of many other locations, we grew up with folks addressing the weather with the phrase "if you don't like the weather wait another . . . . and it will change", with the . . . . part generally being 5 minutes or maybe 10 minutes, but always something along that line. Now, in par,t that was often not so far off, as the weather can change rather rapidly, especially in the Spring time of the year, whenever it happens to arrive, which itself can be quite variable. If the momentary change isn't always obvious, generally the daily changes are. In the image sent late for Friday we saw some very dramatic dark clouds with sunlight filtering down through the small breaks in that cloud layer; for today we look out at the exact same spot to view a very pastel and some might say romantic setting. The difference; a mere 24 hours. I wasn't able to see it on Sunday, but I'm betting it was not like either of the two previous mornings. A start of the day with weather like this makes it hard to think about going to work. Other than some cropping to move the horizon off dead center, this is straight from the camera. ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f / 8.

18 Apr 12. I'm betting that the majority of you on this mailing can remember telephone booths, those upright rectangular boxes that contained a land line telephone, hopefully a telephone book listing all the personal and business numbers and addresses for the local area, and a door that closed to give you privacy. Those of you under 20 years of age likely have no idea about which I'm talking. but stay with me. When Jan and I were kids there were two radio stations in Seattle to which teenagers listened and those were KOL, the hard rock station, and KJR, the soft rock / folk music station. Of the two, KJR was by far the preferred station, and it boasted the best of the DJs of the time. In the early 60s KJR featured two DJs that were very well known, Lan Roberts and Pat O'Day. Pat went on to become a VERY big name in the music business and still is today. Lan was definitely on drugs when we were listening to him, and I suspect that Pat was also but to a lesser degree. But they were a great team, with Lan hosting the 0600 - 0900 morning show and Pat the 1500 - 1800 spot. The two were VERY political, and took on the Seattle "establishment" with their created heroine Wonder Woman who was constantly exposing the corruption in Seattle government. Way ahead of their time, they took on the biggest players in the city exposing them to daylight even when the local press - imagine that - wouldn't touch the material. A local home maker as I recall, their heroine would slip into a phone booth, switch clothes, and exit as Wonder Woman to correct all the wrongs in the city. She was active on both time slots, and often her escapades required both shows to fully expose the city's crime. Now that we no longer have phone booths it appears the governmental crime on all levels is exponentially increasing, which, it seems to me to be, if nothing else, a cry for a return to good old land lines and phone booths on every corner. ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 9.

19 Apr 12. Traveling along Canada's Yellowhead Highway in 1973, on my way to Edmonton, I passed by one of the most beautiful mountains I had seen anywhere, but was unaware of what I was seeing. When I arrived in Edmonton I was asked if I had seen Mt Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. I mumbled something about I didn't know if I had or not, but that I had passed by this beautiful peak along the way. Pressed for a more definitive response, it was determined that I had indeed passed by Mt Robson and, more importantly, gotten a very rare opportunity to actually see it. Further discussion revealed that the mountain is seldom visible and that to see it is comparable to a gift. The folks with whom I was staying had never seen it their entire lives and thought it a good omen that I had. Perhaps so, because my interviews there went very well. Jan flew up a few days later to join me, and we then drove back to Seattle together, passing by the park to see if the mountain might once again be visible, something my friends thought would be akin to winning the lottery, only there weren't any lotteries back then. To bad too, because, lo and behold, the mountain was once again out in all her splendor. We spent a couple hours there seeing the sights to include a sign about not feeding, teasing, encouraging, or anything else with the bears to include leaving exposed food in your vehicle. Apparently the owner(s) of a rather nice convertible didn't fully comprehend what that sign really meant and left some exposed food in their vehicle. Well now, would you believe, a hungry bear (read that as all bears) just happened by and, finding a container with an easy opening lid, took advantage of the situation and, with one swipe of its paw "removed" the soft top, climbed in, and had a self serve lunch. Perhaps I should rewrite that sentence describing the vehicle to say a previously nice convertible as it wasn't by the time we saw it. Should have taken a photo of that but didn't, instead concentrating on the block of granite that few people supposedly ever see. It was a good visit and an even better drive as the Yellowhead Highway has to be one of the most beautiful drives anywhere in the world. No stats on the shot for today as it was taken almost 40 years ago with my F2AS and 55mm macro lens on Fujichrome 100 slide film and which I have just recently scanned.

20 Apr 12. With each of the previous day's weather turning quite nice in the afternoon, we tempted fate on Thursday and left home around 1300 to travel north to LaConner to try our hand at capturing the 2012 season offerings. We arrived to some lovely flowing light grey clouds that within 30 minutes turned into sprinkles followed by a heavy rain. All told, an afternoon that was most disappointing in that we got in less than a half hour of shooting in what could have been some excellent shooting conditions. The weather being what it was, while it lasted, the colors were very saturated and several of the shots turned out O.K. in spite of low light levels and a constantly teasing breeze, not to mentions a few hundred too many other visitors. Roozengaarde is the prime grower in the valley and their display garden where we were shooting features literally hundreds of varieties of tulips. I had planned on working on close up, macro, and creative shots for this year's effort, but barely got started with a general overview when the moisture drove us out. Hoping that what were experiencing was only going to be a brief interruption and that it would blow over, we tried waiting the weather out but after waiting for roughly 2 hours gave up ad returned home having captured only 90 images for the day. But a few are good enough to share and here is the first of perhaps five total. ISO 400; 1/160 sec @ f /10 on a tripod.

23 Apr 12. When we moved to So. CA for our second tour and our first in that state, we were quite impressed with some of the absolutely beautiful flowers that seemed to be growing everywhere in all the neighborhood landscaped yards. That became a personal challenge for me to try and make our yard even more beautiful than any of those in the surrounding area. I do believe I was successful in that endeavor if only because we once had a fellow knock on our door and ask if he could practice putting on our front lawn. Of course that may actually say more about the individual than my landscaping, but I like to pat myself on the back for that particular yard. Directly in front of a portion of the house was a stucco wall that blocked the view into one of the bedrooms. It was perfect for vine like plants, so on one side I planted bougainvillaea and on the other passion plant. A great combination which almost totally hid the wall against which they were growing. The passion flowers provided for some challenging photography and I spent some considerable film trying to capture just the right image. But they were nothing compared to the bougainvillea's delicate light violet petals (also comes in red, white, pink, and purple) that were absolutely breath taking when lit from behind with the evening light. Many an hour was spent trying to show them off at their best. What I didn't realize immediately, but remembered quite well once I was made aware of it, was that these delicate flowers are supported by a stem that is laced with extremely sharp thorns, and if one is not careful, a run in with them can leave you a bit worse for the experience. It wasn't until I had my first encounter with them that I realized that they were used for more than just their beauty, they made a virtually impenetrable barrier wherever they grew and were an excellent choice of plant for creating a protected area. So along with their beauty came a free fence of color and slight fragrance. All-in-all the perfect choice for a security fence. Seeing them all over Puerto Vallarta brought back some pleasant memories. ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f/ 5.6.

24 Apr 12 . Another 13+ hour day at the house site so this will be a short note from a very tired guy. The trip up north last week to shoot tulips was cut short as I mentioned before, but not before we had a brief opportunity to work in one of the several gardens, and in this case the garden directly opposite the windmill for those of you familiar with the property. There are planted there perhaps 100 different types of tulips, some in groups of 16 - 20 feet square, and others in designs. This individual was in a solid block of similar flowers, and was the first of the group to be ready to burst open, and, had the day been sunny for another hour or so, I'm betting that such would have been the case. But, for the period of time when I was present, it still was standing tall awaiting direction to burst forth. The lighting for a very brief moment was perfect from my perspective, and I quickly grabbed the shot as waiting for the image to be perfect wasn't going to happen with half a hundred others trying to capture their "perfect" shot. When the very small hole of opportunity presented itself I did a quick series of shots and this is my favorite of that series. ISO 400; 1.125 sec @ f / 8.

25 Apr 12. In trying to track down an unidentified charge on our Direct T.V. bill this morning, I was connected with a representative who was raised sans television, and who said she really didn't miss it growing up and can take it or leave it now. When I mentioned that I could leave it period she said she could fully appreciate such. Our chat lead to her telling me about her growing up 45 minutes east of San Diego on a 30 A parcel of land with a stream running through it directly behind her house which had zero TV reception. I asked her why she wasn't still living there and she said her folks sold it while she was in college. She now resides in the Salt Lake City area and said she really missed where she grew up. I can fully understand that statement considering where she lived. When I mentioned that we were in Seattle she commented that she would really love to live in the Emerald City and that her brother lives in Kent, WA, about 45 minutes to an hour from us, depending on traffic. Another comment she made was that she loved the seasons? that we have and especially so the autumn colors. I'm not sure what part of King county, where the two cities are located, have four seasons, but the thought made me look for something of color that wasn't glistening with rain drops. We do of course have four seasons, and if you are a careful observer you will recognize such, but they are not like those found anywhere east of the Cascade Mountain range. But getting back to the topic of color, I thought I'd concentrate on the color red as I think most folks think of red as being symbolic of the season(s) of color, and came up with this shot taken a couple weeks ago while walking Maggie. This subject is located in a neighbor's yard at the edge of the sidewalk, so I thought it fair game. ISO 400; 1/400 sec @ f /13.

26 Apr 12. As I left the work site today the weather was turning nasty, and starting to pour, so I left the camera there as I didn't need more pictures of rain. Midway between departing for, and then reaching, the ferry it became dropless with the clouds lifting several hundred feet to display as undulating shades of gray, blocks of blacks with filigreed fingers dropping down towards the water, and the most gorgeous light I think I've ever witnessed striking just the tops of almost all the mountain peaks except for Mt Rainier which was covered in the gray undulations save for the bottom one third. And me without the camera. In all the years of crossing Puget Sound I've never before been privileged to see such a sight! And as quickly as it began it ended. But at least I can remember it. For the past several weeks the mountains have been putting on one display after another, with the Olympics taking front stage one day, the Cascades the next; today's show courtesy of the Cascades. The selection for today was put on by the Olympics three weeks ago, and was the best part of what was a very cold day to be working. Its moments like these, however, that make being outside, even in the cold, and sometimes especially in the cold, worth it all. ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 7.1.

27 Apr 12. Since I was blabbering yesterday relative to mountain splendor, I've elected to go with another shot of the Olympic Mountains, this time taken from a moving ferry deck as we traveled from Edmonds to Kingston. It was one of our very cold March mornings and a rather beautiful one, although nothing close to what I missed last evening. This image however is a pano made up of 7 different frames, and I've attempted to provide a complete view, from sea level, of the entire range. More than that, you get a good view of Puget Sound, a Washington State ferry, the sister ship running the same route but obviously in the opposite direction, a couple freighters awaiting offloading, approximately 50 sailboats with their brightly colored sails, the terminal to which we are headed (Kingston), several nice waterfront homes, a flock of seagulls, and even a Bald Eagle. Overall I think there might be something in it for everyone. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.

28 Apr 12. Those of you growing up in the 40s & 50s will remember well that you frequently didn't buy a particular product for itself, but rather, for what was added inside the box containing that product. For example, you could buy a box of laundry detergent and get a free dish towel, or a box of soap and get a new piece of glassware, or a pack of flat bubble gum and get some baseball or airplane cards, and so on. But the best thing thing of all was breakfast cereal. Boy, what you could get in a box of cereal: secret decoder rings; toy submarines, frogmen; soldiers; little cars and small trucks, miniature games, or even puzzles. Right about NOW I'm betting that many of you are going, oh yeah, and . . . . . . . My favorites were the small aquatic things that would hold baking soda and dive (sink) and then resurface from the gas bubbles being released by the baking soda. It has of course been decades since I got to enjoy those childhood pleasures, so I thought it was time to indulge myself and get me a new toy machine, so I collected as many box tops as I could and got me a new tractor-like toy thing last week. Now, when the grand kids show me their new play things, I can share my new play thing with them. In my excitement of getting my new toy I forgot to check the settings on the camera, so the original was not so good, and to be honest I must admit that I had to do some serious reworking of the original shot to produce an acceptable image, but now it is O.K. ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 6.3.

30 Apr 12. When something is around us on a more or less daily or even permanent basis, I think we all too often begin to either take it for granted, or worse, stop seeing it all together. One of those things I believe may be our evening sunsets. While some are no doubt spectacular, all to often we miss the regular version that has a beauty of its own, and the image for today is just one such occasion. While returning home from another long day working on the property, I decided it would be nice to get out of the vehicle and get some fresh air. As soon as I exited I knew I wanted to share something along this line with you all. So here I have. A bit of cropping to remove the blown out portion where hung the sun, and some slight noise reduction have been employed. ISO 200; 1/1600 (shooting almost into the sun) @ f / 8.