Daily Image - Aug 2012 Archive

01 Aug 12. Today we have another from the series I shot with the smoke, and I employed the same approach on this file as I did the one for yesterday. This image is meant to have more of a painterly look although nothing was done to make it so. The one difference for the image today is that I altered the portion at the top that was the sun. In the original 5 frames it was either totally blown out or just really odd looking, so in the final HDR output I picked a color from the rim and used that to paint the interior the yellowish color you see. The camera was pointing in the general direction of the sun and, because of where I was positioned, I couldn't totally remove it from the captures. I could have simply cropped it out of the final composition, however I like how it appears and therefore elected to keep it in. I can't explain why it isn't more of a sphere at the bottom edge, but as the effect is that of a blast, I find it adds more than a little to the impact of the final output. An interesting aspect of this years weather, i.e., lots of rain, can be seen in the left of the picture where the first cutting had a chance to begin growing again before the remaining portion, which is the more yellow portion on the right, was cut. I don't recall having seen that prior in the 6 years I've been filming this harvest. Nikon D300s; aperture priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/1613 sec (middle of 5 frames) @ f /11. I sometimes find the shutter speeds recorded on the newer digital cameras to be a bit ridiculous, sorta like new calculator users who want to give you 10 decimal places in their calculations, 8 or 9 of which are meaningless.

02 Aug 12. While driving down the road this afternoon on my way to haying, I noticed a beautiful hawk cruising up the road and as we approached each other it made a hard 90 degree, perhaps 3 G, turn and flew off into the neighboring trees. A wonderful experience and one which just adds to the enjoyment of living in the country. Haying however was not so wonderful, did not go according to Hoyle, and while we took in roughly 160 bales of hay, we broke one baler and had another experience two mechanical failures - broken shear pins - which we were able to fix on the spot. As if offering some respite from all the troubles, the sky put on a memorable display of clouds culminating in a golden sunset. As we were nearing the end of the pick up portion of the process I began to hear the screeching of a hawk, perhaps the same one, who had elected to perch atop the tallest tree and watch our progress. This behavior lasted for perhaps 20 minutes before it departed with an aerial checkout of what might be scurrying across the clean field. With the departure of the hawk it was just a short time before the departure of the sun upon whose disappearance we were gifted with a full moon. The clouds however hadn't departed allowing the moon to play hide and seek as it rose through the sky casting a soft light upon the now empty fields. A fitting end to a busy evening. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec 2 f /10.

03 Aug 12. Those of you with the critical eyes likely noted that I failed to fully correct for distortion in the image I shared yesterday, mostly at the lower corners where the trees were leaning in towards the middle a tiny bit. It didn't really hurt the image any but it did give away two things about taking the shot, I was at a wide angle focal length, 18mm setting on the lens, and I didn't have the back of the camera perpendicular to the ground. When standing on "bumpy" farm land that can be difficult to accomplish unless the camera is on a tripod and you employ a level balance, neither of which I was using when I made the shot. Today's submission has been worked over a wee bit to try and take care of all these problems. In addition, I've employed a bit of structure enhancement and then some noise reduction of various amounts in different areas of the image. Adding noise reduction AFTER employing structure enhancements has the effect of removing the structure enhancement, because structure enhancement works similarly to sharpening although there are significant subtle differences. Both work in the realm of localized micro blurring of the image and the noise reduction simply corrects for this alteration. Many of you will think of this image as being an HDR manipulation. It isn't, but it shares some of the manipulation that is done with HDR images. It is a single shot in which I've also, in addition to what I've already described, added some local color adjustment - think of color spotting in printing - and a dodge and burn layer to enhance specific small areas that needed some attention. And yes, for many it will seem more like a painting than a photograph. Just one of the things I love about digital photography. And for the curious, this was taken from the same spot as what I shared yesterday. D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /13.

06 Aug 12. Sitting here in a house with temps in the high 80s, following a day with temps in the high 90s, I'm feeling the need for something cool, like a nice dip in some temperate water!! I could of course just walk down the road about 1.5 miles and jump in Puget Sound, but 45ºF isn't exactly what I consider temperate. Two days ago we were in the 70s and now this. Quite a jump. I believe it to be Jan's fault as she was back east with the 90- degree weather when she returned home today just as she took the rain with her when she left three weeks ago. Today's offering was taken back in January when we were in Puerto Vallarta walking along the Malecon. The water looked rather inviting then; it looks even more so today. The rocks along that section of the bay were truly magnificent in color and I thought it would have been delightful to have them adorning the new house in the form of a curvaceous walkway of several hundred feet. Probably something possible but way beyond my pay grade. So I guess I'll (we'll) just have to enjoy them in a photo and imagine them as a walkway. I obviously could have stopped down to something like f /22 but I didn't want the water competing with the rocks. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f /7.1

07 Aug 12. Our 95ºF weather yesterday broke a record and signaled the end of our two day summer. Temps are now supposedly back in the mid to low 70s for what remains of the season, whatever it ends up being called. We set out this morning for a day of errands and as we headed, what I guess would be south, Jan commented on the clouds being rather spectacular, looking a bit like curdled milk! And so they were, not only in colors foreboding, but in their shapes. Not exactly sure what type they were, cirrocumulus perhaps, but they were rather distinctive! I took a few shots and enhanced them a little to better illustrate what we were seeing. Interesting to me was that we seemed to be able to pass by them as we drove in a somewhat straight line a bit less than 30 miles. From my perspective on the ground it appeared that these clouds were quite high and covered a vast area such that we should not have been able to view a front, back, and side view in such a short distance, but we did. The image I've chosen is what I'm terming the front view. The enhancement to the image consists of increasing the structure (micro contrast) a very small amount, adding a noise removal layer, and then increasing the global contrast a small amount to help define the edges of the individual small clouds. The definition that you see is what caught Jan's eye initially, and something I don't recall having seen anytime before. I thought seriously of sharing a really exaggerated version of this image as it is quite striking, but, as it is also not very real, I decided to go with something very close to the cloud bank we actually saw. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 7.1.

08 Aug 12. Back in my youthful diving days in the late 60s, one of the more beautiful sights I can remember was returning to the surface in a bed of kelp, specifically Nereocystis luetkeana, hanging there undulating with the wave motion of the water, as the sunlight filtered down amongst the fronds. With a wee bit of imagination one could almost believe that they were being surrounded by a thousand mermaids. Because of its shape, it is also known as the Bull whip kelp and you will have no problem understanding its common naming from a few of the linked photos. It generally grows in 30 feet of water, and the long portion of the plant that makes it look like a whip, called the stripe, is a hollow tube that can reach lengths of 120 feet. Unlike its sister Macrocyctis along the CA coast, which is used in toothpaste among other things, Nereocystis has no commercial uses of which I'm aware. But it is fun to play with when it washes up on the shore and I can remember playing with it a lot as a young child when I visited my Grandparents in Eglon, WA, where we now reside. As I was coming across the Sound on Sunday to pick up Jan, I noticed what looked a lot like the kelp attached to a piling alongside the ferry. Since the holdfast, the portion of the plant that attaches to something heavy, generally a rock in 30 feet or so of water, was clearly visible at the water's surface attached to the piling, I thought it strange to see it where it was. Of course, there is always the chance that I misinterpreted what I saw, but you look at the image and see what you think. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 5.3.

09 Aug 12. Not having an opportunity to do as much shooting as I'd like, while simultaneously spending some additional time in study, I've decided to take a re-look at some of my collected material to see if I can get more out of it. Since I shoot in 12 or 14 bit RAW, the bit length dependent on available storage with me at the time, there is quite a huge amount of information stored in the original captures. With software becoming more and more capable of using all that data, equivalent in the film days of more advanced darkroom equipment, I'm finding myself pleasantly surprised with what I can tease out of these collections of images. The shot I've chosen for today is from the trip in 2009 to a portion of the Colorado Plateau, a place where we hope to spend a month sometime in the next 24, likely the fall of 2014.This was taken in Bryce National Park, and is of the the material Hoodoos being lit by the early evening sunlight. I shared a couple of images from the trip in 2009, but when looking at them now, and comparing what I could do with them then to what I can do now, I am amazed. Likely it is not all due to just the improvements in the software, which are substantial, but to some extent my understanding of how to use it. Whatever the combination of software and training, I find that I'm somewhat excited to see just how much I can do with the stored material. That is, once I find it. Somehow in this move I've misplaced the box that contains the total of my digital collection. But as the collection is also on several HDs, it is still all available, just not a easily retrieved as I'd like. D300; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 400; 1/60 sec @ f / 5.6 on a tripod.

10 Aug 12. Today we go with another "old" image that I've reworked. This one is of the Zion River in Zion National Park.I've increased the structure, removed some noise, increased the overall contrast, and added a bit of a very subtle glow to achieve the final result. None of these changes in themselves was very dramatic, and all of them were very slight changes, but taken together they have created a very different image, and one I like a far more than the first one I did back in 2009. This is the same image I shared then, and I elected to re-use it, as opposed to a similar image, to make certain that I was comparing apples with apples. The shot is taken from a small bridge just beyond which the road bifurcates into a left hand leg that takes you up into the higher prominences and a right hand leg that takes you through the park to the opposite side from whence you continue on to Bryce National Park. There is a sign close by that says no parking which many visitors, me included, likely all photographers, ignored and parked very near in order to get the picture. D300; Aperture Priority; ISO 640; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

13 Aug 12. Returning home Saturday from a NWCCC meeting in Everett, we made the short drive to the ferry terminal only to find that we had a 2 hour wait in the early part of the afternoon. That didn't leave me in a very good state of mind, but shortly after departing Edmonds to travel to Kingston, actually as we were approaching Kingston, the Captain announced over the 1MC that there was a pod of Killer Whales on the port side of the vessel. Not having seen them in Puget Sound since I was a child, I jumped out of the SUV and made it to a clear area on the second deck of the port side in time to see several of the animals porpoising at the water's surface. I shot a couple of bursts and a few single shots thinking I was following just one animal. When I got a chance to see the group of shots on the computer it turned out I had photographed four different individuals. None of the shots were of publishable quality due to several factors, but good enough to remind me of what I had seen. Two shots in particular got my attention, and they are of a HUGE male. I'm estimating him to be in the 3,000 pound category as you will see when you look at the image for today. The dorsal fin on this individual is somewhere between 5 and 6 feet in height, and that puts him the BIG category. You can't see 100% of it, but close to it. The other shot is just fin and not much dolphin (Killer Whales being the largest of the dolphins) at all, so I thought this the better choice. Consider this more of a documentary shot as opposed to the art I generally try to share. It isn't impressive in any way save for the shear size of the animal. Plus I just had to brag about seeing them without having been on a whale watching excursion. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /10.

14 Aug 12. Traveling southward on I-15 you first come to an entrance for Zion National Park on the west side called Kolob Canyons which is not the one most folks think of when you mention Zion National Park. Since our visit there was our first, we entered thinking we were at the destination we wanted, which didn't turn out to be the case. But since we didn't know any better we went exploring. It turned out to be a very different experience that what we had the next day, when we entered what might be best described as the southern entrance. Of the two I definitely liked the southern approach better, and even more so the eastern entrance which was our exit road to Bryce. The western side however has some very nice things to see, is easy to visit in a couple of hours, unless of course you go walking, then you could be there for quite some time, and because of it's smaller size, both in where you can travel and the size of the rocks, you get a different sense of what the landscape looks like because it is more open. The road through this part of park is paved in a rich red asphalt which adds somewhat to both the coloration of the surrounding landscape and to the feeling that it is hot in this part of the country. It is effective in both dimensions. When we were visiting at the very end of September there was a plant with bright yellow flowers alongside the road that was in full bloom and it really added to the combination of red rocks and even redder roadway. A very pretty time of the year to be there even if it was a bit on the warm side. You are seeing the park in approximate noontime light. D300; Aperture Priority; ISO 200;1/125 sec @ f /11.

15 Aug 12. Our 3 day visit to Bryce National Park had us staying about 30 minutes away in a lovely little motel with good food and an interesting staff just off Highway 12 abut a half mile. The rooms were very small, just large enough to stash our suitcases and sleep, and as camping out in the room wasn't our reason for being there, it was perfect. On the way to and from Bryce we had to pass through Red Canyon, a truly beautiful section of very red rock prominences that caught your eye no matter the time of day, but particularly so at dawn and dusk. Our last evening there provided us with a lovely cloudy blue sky and clean mountain air allowing the evening sun to light up the hills spectacularly! This shot was taken about an hour before the sun sank completely behind the mountains and was as chilly as it was beautiful. The morning started out at something like 24ºF and then warmed up to the mid 70s before starting its evening plunge back to the 20s. I've reworked this image as I have the past few from that 2009 trip to extract everything I could from the RAW file. Now having the tools available that I do I'm even more committed to shooting in this very large file size format. D300; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/125 sec @ f / 5.6 on a tripod.

16 Aug 12. Just about a 15 minute drive outside of Mt Shasta, CA is located the old railroad town of McCloud. There is what appears to be an abandoned RR manufacturing facility at what I believe to be the northern end of the town containing a plethora of ancient railroad cars and their associated parts all begging to be photographed, especially with an HDR approach. Unfortunately it is all marked "private property keep out" so my time shooting there was limited (I ignored the signs for a several minutes and took a few shots!) I now want to get permission to lead a field trip down there and do that yard justice, especially since Mt Shasta sits distinctly in the background and can be easily incorporated into one's work. The image for today was taken at the approach to the yard, and is a bit of an experiment for me. It began as an HDR image comprised of 5 individual shots to which I then added structure, but "painted" it (the structure) only on selected portions of the image, namely the sky, the sign, and the log. All the rest was left as it was in the starting HDR composite. The angle of your screen will have a drastic effect on how you see the final result, assuming you are viewing it on anything other then a CRT type screen. I'm not fully sold on the approach, but as this is my first attempt at this, the jury is still out for me. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/200 sec (middle of 5 shots) a f /11.

17 Aug 12. We'll finish out this week with another of the old images that I've reworked. This one is from Craters of the Moon National Monument located in the south central portion of ID. I was told by some folks that I would really find it disappointing and by others that I would love it. We visited it twice on one trip so you know where I fell in that assessment. The yellow flowers that I mentioned lined the side of the road in Kolob Canyon were also present in great abundance at Craters of the Moon and fill a goodly portion of this image. The combination of the flowers in front, the dead trees in the middle, and the hills in the background provided an opportunity for some fun photography. If you ever find yourself anywhere near that part of ID, I highly recommend you pay it a visit. This image was taken at the very end of September; 8 days later it was under 6 inches of snow. D300; Aperture Priotity; ISO 500; 1/500 sec @ f /11.

20 Aug 12. We'll look at another image from the 2007 trip to the the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone today. Once again I've returned to the old files to have another look at what was captured in the original RAW shoot, even with a digital camera of significantly lesser capabilities from what I'm now employing. This one is of Bear Tooth Maples, apparently found only in the SE part of ID and a tree with a most brilliant orange leaf in the autumn. As we were approaching Swan Valley in ID another photographer who had stopped at the same location to shoot a particular hillside, asked me if I had seen the stand of Bear Tooth Maples down the road a spell. When I professed total ignorance to what they were, he gave me directions and said "you have to see them". It turned out that the direction to where they were was the same path we were following to Jackson Hole, WY, so it was right on our way. The description given of these trees seemed a bit over the top, that is, until we actually got to where they were. It is almost impossible to convey their brilliance, but the image for today comes close. I couldn't coax this much info out of the originals before, but now that I know how I'm finding that the camera did indeed capture the moment. When you view this image you are likely to say to yourself that what you are seeing is not real, which of course it isn't, it is a photo, but the photo is accurately representing what was there. Look closely at the sagebrush, the evergreens, and the dirt, and you will observe that those colors are just as you would imagine, which means the other colors are also accurate. The brilliance of these trees, even in harsh sunlight, which we had, is simply amazing, and the color of orange is this reddish hue. We spent perhaps a total of an hour looking at them and as a result arrived a bit later at our meeting location in the Grand Tetons, but it was well worth it! D200; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 100; 1/160 sec @ f/5.

21 Aug 12. Seattle has just added a new tourist attraction to its waterfront setting in the form of a large, 42 gondola, Ferris Wheel. It came about rather suddenly from my perspective, is a private enterprise venture, - yeah!!!! - and seems to be becoming a major attraction. We haven't ridden it yet, and probably won't, but our daughter and her family have already paid it a visit. According to the cherubs, it wasn't all that great because it rotates "way too slow." Of course that might make it a good photographic venture, but I'm not all that excited about the potential. Returning from Seattle last evening via the Bainbridge Island route we were sitting beside it for quite a while and I took the opportunity to photograph it in differing lighting conditions as well as from different perspectives. The image for today is one of those and it has been highly manipulated to get the "look" I wanted. Since a Ferris Wheel is a carnival type attraction in my mind, I've attempted to render the shot with a similar "feel." To get what I have, I first did my best to control the perspective in ACR, then added a hue/saturation layer, then a tonal control layer followed by a second tonal control layer to multiply the effect, then another set of two hue/saturation layers (to control the effects of different colors), followed by a strong noise removal layer and then finally a very light edge vignette. Nothing difficult, but it does require an idea of where you are going before you begin. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f /5 on a moving ferry.

22 Aug 12 Our 2007 visit to the Grand Tetons had us arriving about 5 - 7 days too late for the peak color, and in the grips of a rather nasty storm. As I've come to learn, autumnal color and nasty weather seem to be bed fellows in the Grand Tetons. Our first two days were nothing but rain, and so much so that the parking lot in front of our cabin was more of a lake than a parking area. But we made the best of it anyway and did what we could between the major downpours. On our last day there the storm abated and I had hopes of some wonderful images of Grand Teton from Ox Bow Bend, THE location from which everyone shoots. In fact, you can almost pick out the set of tripod holes you want to use. Of course that just makes it all the more challenging to get the shot that no one prior has already claimed. I waited in vain for the better part of three hours on that last day for the clouds to lift off the mountain, but that never happened, so my "special" shot never occurred. I did get some images that were not totally disappointing and this is one of them with a bit of autumn color. A week earlier arrival would have made a significant difference, but even so we did get to enjoy a fair amount of color. Enough to make certain I'll be returning to the park until I get that "special" shot. D200; Aperture priority; 18 - 200; ISO 125; 1/350 sec @ f / 8.

23 Aug 12. My intent for today was to provide something new and different, but after having laid almost 850 sq ft of sod that arrived 4 hours late, I found myself just too tired to create anything, so we'll fall back on an image from early February taken on the same trip we did for the Snowy Owls. A very short distance from where we found the owls is found the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, a large chunk of land (I can't find out just how large) that is located on the outskirts of the Village of Ladner, in Delta, British Columbia, Canada. It is a lovely area to visit with one of the fun things there being your success, or lack thereof , of avoiding the attention of a literally huge flock, about a gazillion according to Jan, of Mallards. They are quite the show and can be very consuming of your time and wallet (they sell bird food to feed them as well as anything else wearing feathers). Here also reside a group of Sand Hill Cranes, a few of which are year round residents, but many, many more are migratory and come to raise their broods annually. Since people are all around them constantly, you can get real close, shall we say right up against them, and they are apparently not bothered. That is a mixed blessing as that is just too close for good photography, but fun nonetheless. Scattered about the entire sanctuary are literally dozens of migratory birds, mostly waterfowl, whose presence there depends on the time of year. We saw several different species and among them were some very handsome Mergansers and Wood Ducks. The shot I'm sharing is of one of the Mergansers who was cruising along one of the small streams in the park. Late afternoon light provided for some nice coloration as well as for some needed increased "film" speed. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 400; 1/160 sec @ f / 5.6.

24 Aug 12. Thursday evening saw us reach a milestone in the new home project; we all but completed the front approach to the house with the front porch being completed, the ground leveled, sod laid, and the area landscaped. It has been a long time in coming, but now the place is beginning to look like a home vice a construction site. Next week we get our garage approach poured, our lower level patio poured, and an adjoining slab for a wood shed poured, as well as seeing the upper wrap around deck floor finished, weather permitting. At which point the exterior of the house will be complete. Then all that will remain will be a complete painting of the exterior in order to meet the county's requirements to have the house thoroughly sealed; an expensive problem resultant to the poor craftsmanship of a sub contractor. But it is all coming together. With luck we'll be through by Thanksgiving! I'm sharing for today's image a dual image, an image in the image sort of thing. The big picture is how the front of the house, well most of it, looked this evening when we quit; the inset in the lower left hand corner is how it looked on Tuesday evening. You should see a bit of difference.We elected to plant lavender, cone flowers, jasmine, and gardenias for both aroma and insect attraction. If nothing else it will smell goooood! It's not a fancy image by any means, just a look see of what we've been up to for the past almost 3 years. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f /5.

27 Aug 12. Not having a lot of time to get out as I'd like, I've been making short visits to one of the local nurseries to grab a few botanical shots either on the way to our second home (Home Depot) or on the return trip. While there last week on a couple of visits there were a number of willing insect subjects who paused in their daily activities to pose for me for short periods of time. Today's submission is one of those shots.Other than some slight increase in the micro contrast features and a simple vignette, there has been no other editing to the image. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18-200; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /7.1

28 Aug 12. Challenged by a question about the insect that was Monday's image, I did some sleuthing on the web and decided that it was a type of Hover Fly, and in particular, a Sun Fly, Heliophilus pendulas. Sorta out of place here, but the web page also said it was one of the rarer Hover Flies native to Great Britain, so I guess if it likes the weather there it should feel right at home here. Today we have another fly taken at the same nursery and based solely on the images on the Hover Fly page I found, I believe it to be another member of that group. This one is sitting on the edge of a squash flower, and I was caught by the similarity in color of the insect and the petals of the flower although it doesn't show as strongly here as it did in person. Couldn't get this critter to pose the way I wanted, so I had to settle for the position in which you see it. I've increased the micro structure a wee bit, but played around a lot with the framing of the shot just for effect. With so many different programs now providing a myriad of these "framing" borders, I thought I'd play with just one tiny option. Not sure I'm even the slightest bit sold on this technique, but with images with this kind of border showing up everywhere I figured I'd try one or two of my own. I'll be interested in any comments about the border. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 6.3.

29 Aug 12. A bit late for today but I was incapable of any fine motor control last night after having spent 8 hour on a rotary sander removing mildew and mold off 300 sq ft of the deck in preparation for sealing it. It was covered with tarps that was supposed to protect it from weather but it turned out they held water underneath creating a massive problem. Another 450 feet remain to be done before Friday, so the images for the next couple of days may also be morning editions. On my 6th birthday one of my Grandfather's cows gave birth, and my Grandfather "gave" it to me as a birthday present. At 6, and basically being a city kid even though we had infrequent visits to Grandma & Grandpa's farm, I didn't quite comprehend what the gift really was. A year later when the "gift" was on our dinner plate, I recall not being all that happy about what had happened. Fortunately there weren't all that may trips to the farm in between those two events, so I never really had an opportunity to make a pet out of the calf. It leads me to ponder however just how many folks now days truly don't know from where their food originates, and I'd be willing to venture that there are millions who actually think the food comes from the stores and not from farms. This year's calf will eventually be on someones plate, but for now provides lots of entertainment any time I find to go and visit my cousin's farm. Jan took the cherubs there last week to feed them some left over watermelon and they had to trek to the "back forty" to get to the herd. The older cherub found the walk through the somewhat "messy" fields a delight, while the younger one wanted nothing to do with the "messy" stuff on the ground. But they both delighted in attempting to feed the cows even though only one had a hankering for watermelon. I guess northern cows aren't accustomed to such delights. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f /8.

30 Aug 12. In my youth Carroll's was the big jeweler in the greater Seattle area. Like all enterprises, it reached its peak, died off, and is no longer. All that remains of it is their signature piece of statuary in the form of a large time piece. I hadn't seen it in decades until we paid a visit to the Museum of History and Industry last fall with one of the local camera clubs. There it was, adorning the entrance to the museum. It was however a typical Seattle day with dreary gray clouds and scattered rainfall. I took a few shots of it with the idea that I might later be able to do something with them. Today's highly altered submission (I did a lot of manipulation to see if I could do it successfully) is one in which I swapped out the gray sky for a more pleasant one, brought out the lovely texture in the weathering metal body, accented the gold, and turned on the lights in the "lanterns" and globes. This is how I think I remember seeing it as a child in the evenings although the lighting in the sky would have been darker at that time (evening). Nikon D300s; aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f/8.

31 Aug 12. Back in undergrad school days the electron microscope (EM) was just coming into its own. I can remember my fascination with the images it could create, and found myself purchasing far more supplementary texts, many of then books of pictures taken with the EM, than those required for many of my science classes. At one time I even thought I'd like to own one, but the closest I got to it was a 1967 Unitron bright phase, dark phase, phase contrast job that was the cat's meow at the time and served me very well through undergrad school. It was even the envy of a couple of my Professor's as the school didn't have anything as nice. It gave me a real appreciation for the micro side of things even if I couldn't have my one EM. Quite possibly this was where I first began to have an appreciation for the smaller things in life, and it may have been the start of my enjoyment of macro photography. From very early on my first camera lens was a macro lens, a 55mm Micro Nikkor, and it served as both my "normal" lens and a macro all rolled into one. As such, I was seldom ever without a macro lens available anytime I had a need for one. Now, things are even better in the digital world, as there is software in various different forms that allow for improved exploration of your subject. A simple example of such was used to look more closely at a plant whose image I shared earlier, but this time we've moved in closer and done a bit more manipulation, to better illustrate the reproductive apparatus, of the plant. In the process the image has suffered a bit in that it is a lot softer than it was as a original, but if you zoom into 100% you get a really good feel for the millions of sperm cells coating the anthers awaiting transportation to another flower's stamen courtesy of some pollinating insect. Almost makes you wonder if those insects ever sneeze after crawling around on this plants. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /11.