Daily Image - Mar 2016 Archive

01 Mar 16. Like a lot of our National Parks, Mt Rainier has a number of trails that are basically paved walks. Many of them are wheel chair accessible provided you have a powered wheel chair as they do tend to climb a fair amount in places. But they are very even, quite wide, and extremely well maintained. Not all of the trails are paved, in fact, the very best ones are just a swath in the landscape, dirt surrounded by nature, bringing you into immediate contact with the flora and fauna, but the paved ones are still very nice and for those who are not up to striking out into the wilderness, they amply serve their purpose. The shot for today gives a realistic view of how well these paved paths are maintained, so for any of you who have not visited due to concerns of access let this image reassure you that it is all available to you. This shot is taken from the Paradise side, but similar trails are available at the Sunrise side as well. If you haven't visited Mt Rainier, this is a spot that deserves to be on your bucket list!! The base image was cropped for best composition, given a small amount of sharpening, and converted to B&W. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

03 Mar 16. Tuesday's forecast was for rain and high winds, so we went shopping to make the most out of a lousy day. Got home in the early afternoon, unpacked the car with the month's groceries, and got everything put away just before the power began flickering. Irritating, but nothing really bothersome as we have an in-line generator that automatically kicks on when we lose power. After about 15 minutes of flickering power and a freaking out dog because of the associated beeps that go with electronic things going on and off, the power went out for good. Waited the requisite 20 seconds for the generator to kick in, then 30, then 40 , then a minute and no power. Went out to check on the generator to find it silent. Opened it up and saw an error code saying low oil pressure; the system has an auto shut off when the oil pressure drops to level that could be dangerous.Checked the oil and it read down maybe 1/4 quart so filled it back to full and the code disappeared only to be replaced by a number. Wasn't sure what that meant so I manually started the unit only to hear a horrible sound of things clanking and banging inside. That amounted to blown engine which equated to no power which equated to no image going out last night for Wednesday. Now you know why you didn't get a mailing for Wednesday. 24 hours after the power went out we got it back, so the Daily Image is back on line. Let's hope we get the generator repaired before the next storm!! I mentioned earlier that the trip to the Port Angeles Coast Guard Station provided for several shots that I thought might be worth sharing and this is one of them. Being Theatrical Thursday it is of course creative, but this is another of the more subtle approaches and you might have fun attempting to decipher what is and what isn't manipulated. What you are looking at appears to be some form of concrete wall used for mooring of the smaller Coast Guard vessels. As none were moored I'm only guessing, but a somewhat similar block of cement did have one of the larger vessels tied up alongside. This one without any vessels had a company of cormorants aboard and each occupied a space of some what similar size to that of the neighbor's. An interesting sight on its own, the forming storm behind added to its appeal. The base image was given a bit of contrast assist, then a slight color manipulation that was modulated by a multiply blending mode. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /11.

04 Mar 16. As I walked around the property today cleaning up from Tuesday's storm, I had an opportunity to look at everything either pushing up through the ground or budding out. Everything in the yard was showing some signs of announcing spring and some suggesting how they might appear come fall. That made me think some of how the property would look this year with all the landscaping in place. Last year we had several of the plants that are now in the ground sitting around in the containers scattered all over the front but none of them were situated such that I could get full portraits of them due to ugly and/or distracting backgrounds. All I could accomplish then was to go for some close ups of the leaves. One of our plants that put on a dazzling display of color is a new variety of hydrangea that has vibrant red leaves in the fall. We were told when we purchased it that it is a quite new and that their availability was limited so now we have a "limited edition" plant in our yard. It may soon have a roommate as the editor of the book for which I did all the photography has offered us a cutting of a plant of which she has 1 of 5 in the county as well as a small tree that is apparently quite rare. May have to register the property as a "protected" area and charge the county for the privilege of having us here. The leaf you are looking at is roughly 3x normal, so it is a true macro shot. The base image received some cropping but that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/60 sec @ f / 5.6 with fill flash.

07 Mar 16. I spent some time on Sunday as is usually the case working up images for the week, but on this Sunday I just couldn't get any real inspiration until I stumbled upon this shot from 2011 taken of Port Gamble bay and showing portions of the the old Gamble mill. None of this exists today as there is a save the world effort ongoing in Puget Sound to remove all vestiges of the history of the area on the pretext that they are environmentally dangerous. This effort is being repeated all over the area and many of the images I've shared with you in the past are now just pieces of history. Fortunately there are folks who have been trying to preserve as much as possible via books containing images of the past and I have tried to archive some of it in these Daily Image mailings. Soon it will all be forgotten and with the revisionist histories being written, much of what our ancestors accomplished and their sacrifices in the process will be lost. Fortunately there are still many of us with lots of photographic documentation which we are converting to digital format in hopes that it will endure for a while longer. In playing with this image I'm sharing today I decided to use it for 4 consecutive mailings, presenting the same thing from slightly different perspectives. Some of you may want to hold on to each image and look at them on Thursday side-by-side after you've received all 4. The 4 are obviously identical in format, being that I've used the same base image to prepare each of the 4 variants, but the differences in the presentations may leave you feeling different about what you are feeling when viewing the subject. The base image was given a small amount of contrast enhancement and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

08 Mar 16. Today we look at the same image I shared yesterday, but this time in B&W. As you look at it, ask yourself if it doesn't feel more like a photo from 1900 vice 2011. You could of course give it a hint of yellow to suggest aging, but as it is for me it does a very good job of making me feel I'm back in time. Nothing more to add from yesterday's narrative, so these other three versions will have little accompanying text. Same info as that for yesterday, save for the conversion to B & W. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

09 Mar 16. This is the 3rd of the 4 versions of the old Gamble Mill. Nothing new to add. This time I employed a filter to give the image a bit of a glowing appearance but it should be very subtle. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

10 Mar 16. Today we finish up the set of four versions of the same scene. If you have saved them you can now place them side by side or flip through them to see how the different approaches affect the subject. I already know some of you will prefer the B&W simply because you favor that medium, as will other like the unaltered color version, but do take a critical look at how the presentation affects your perspective of the object. I bring this out only to illustrate how presentation can affect perspective. Likely all of you close to my age remember that photo in the mid 60s of the children in Selma, AL being hit with water from fire hoses. It won a Pulitzer Prize if memory serves me correctly. A couple years ago I came across that picture in a book dealing with how we are often manipulated. You can't imagine my surprise to learn that the "photo" we all saw was a section cut from a much larger picture; in the full picture you see a long line of children being hosed down by the fire department and most of them are laughing and playing in the water stream. It turns out that they had been out in the heat all day in temps over 100F waiting for a protest to take place that never did and the water was being used to cool them off. I'm using this example simply because it is such a flagrant use of manipulation (presentation) graphically illustrating how presentation can influence impression. Which brings me back to how the different presentations of the mill affects thought about it. For those of you who like the idea of tryptics, you now have enough versions to compose 3 different ones. Have fun. Same image info as for the last 3 days except for the use of a different filter, one for painting. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1000 sec @ f / 9.

11 Mar 16. After yet another day of no power, we finally got it back on late afternoon. Getting to be a weekly event; be glad when this stormy season goes somewhere else. Be even happier when we can get our in-line generator repaired so we don't have to deal with these very annoying power outages. Time now to move on to something other than historical so for today's close-up we'll take a look at a stack of mugs which were on a bench at one of the local nurseries. I took this shot in early February on a somewhat blustery day with the sun and clouds playing a pesky game of hide and seek which made for some challenging shooting of the type that has you shooting the same thing over again and again attempting to get the lighting correct. Patience - or luck - finally pays off and eventually your get your shot. I made five different versions of this one - no, I'm not going to share more than this one - of which I thought you'd like this one the best. I've manipulated it some to make the mugs appear as though they have a much thicker glaze on them than what they actually did plus I adjusted the color to make them appear as though they might have been shot in a somewhat more desert environment as opposed to our grey PNW. These mugs were just one part of a set of dishes of which I felt the mugs were the most interesting. There were groupings of different colors of which I liked this the most but not enough to keep me from modifying it. By the time I finished with my mods, I had mugs of many colors, perhaps as many colors as in Joseph's coat. After cropping the base image, I removed a couple of distractions (stickers) and increased the fine detail some, then applied a filter to it and used a blending mode (multiply) to get the glazed look the way I wanted it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/50 sec @ f /10 hand held.

14 Mar 16. It has been another of the high wind (gusts predicted to 70 knots) and rain days, with power flickering off and on since early afternoon, so here's hoping I can get this off before another tree takes out our power for HOURS! This shot is from a series I took just over 6 years ago during a visit to Fir Island. We had driven in to LaConner proper to see the daffodils and were preparing to return home when this marvelous cloud formation began to form to our left as we were traveling along one of the main roads. I decided to pull off the side of the road and just watch for a few minutes to see what would develop. The front passed over us after perhaps 15 minutes of watching and then it all just dissipated in the form of a cloudy sky and then seemingly evaporated back into in clear but darker sky. A fitting end to what had been a nice day of shooting the fields of flowers and associated buildings and machinery. Behind those trees is a field of fully blossomed daffodils. As I was working on this image I thought about filling in the spaces where the trees are missing with replacement trees, but after contemplating how I would do it, I realized my editing skills are severely lacking in this area, so you get to see what we saw without any "plastic surgery." The base image was given a small amount of micro contrast adjustment plus I darkened it just a bit. Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

15 Mar 16. More than a little taken aback by the number of responses to the Monday submission, the most I've ever received on any image. I spent a fair amount of time contemplating what I could share for B&W Tuesday that might even partially compare. I even spent a considerable amount of time trying to create one that might be competitive but to no avail. So after going through all the B&W versions I have on hand (78), I decided to go with what you have. At the time I created this I thought it was pretty good, but as time progresses I'm finding more and more ways to improve the B&W versions of each image so I'm becoming more and more critical of every one. For some reason I'm finding it easiest to create reasonably stunning B&W shots of mountain scenes, with water based scenes with major elements, like big rocks, the next easiest. I have no understanding as to why that is, but simple observation of the pictures over the last couple of years makes the point. This is a shot taken along the road to the Coast Guard Station in Port Angeles looking across to Port Angeles and the Olympics in the background. As I written about this spot earlier, not much more to add about it other than to say pay it a visit if you are in the greater Port Angeles area. I've manipulated the bottom portion of the shot to get a more balanced lighting, added some small amount of micro contrast adjustment in the rocks and clouds, and selectively enhanced the smoke from the mill as it didn't record on the sensor as it did to our eyes. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /11.

16 Mar 16. A little over a 90 minute drive south of Seattle lies the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge near Olympia, WA. This area has been under reclamation development for the past decade and is now almost, if not completely, restored. There is much to see but what I have found the most interesting is a form of plant life that looks like pink algae but isn't. It is very eye catching and at first I found it hard to believe what I was observing. I wrote about this 6 years ago and at that time I recall locating the name of this plant but I can't seem to locate it again for today's missive. While it may appear as though I created the color, please note that the yellows, greens, and blues are correct, so what I'm sharing is the real color. I've seen this bloom only twice in my lifetime, and both times it was in the refuge. I asked the local Ranger about it the first time I encountered it and was told that it was naturally occurring and was not uncommon in the refuge. It is one of those phenomena that you are always glad to have experienced first hand because otherwise it is hard to imagine such a thing. Almost better than the hot springs in Yellowstone where we shall be visiting in just a few more weeks. Can't wait! The base image was given its normal minimal adjustment, a little selective shadow relief, and that's it. D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f / 9.

Jan's Birthday. Normally when you visit Snoqualmie Falls your goal is to take photos of the falls. As the highest falls in N. America, why else would you go there. For sure, shots of the falls are something worthwhile, but I always try to get something in addition be it that the something stands alone or that it accents the falls proper. For today's Theatrical Thursday submission I've picked something that could double as a birthday card for my bride as well as a creative submission. Along the edge of the path that borders the falls I found this single rose arching over and behind a rock that was partially protecting it from the weather created by the falls which at times can be quite stormy, even on a sunny day. From the start I intended to make this shot a creative one, and in the process created 6 different creative versions as well and the natural and B&W versions. It was kinda fun, and at one point I thought about creating a dozen or more but decided that as I send only one why bother. However, all the versions of this shot will be part of the 2016 Christmas show so those of you who get it will see them at that time. The version I'm sharing is a colored pencil drawing of the scene which I think suits it well both as a stand alone image and as a birthday card. The base image was adjusted to remove a few "imperfections" and then run through a filter to get the final presentation. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; IS0 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 8.

18 Mar 16. It was brought to my attention tonight at a camera club meeting that the tulips and daffodils are already blooming up north so I'm thinking it is time to make the annual pilgrimage to LaConner to capture some tulip images. Haven't gone yet obviously so what I'm sharing today is a shot from a earlier trip. For me the biggest challenge, after dealing with the weather, is getting everything sharp from front to back. Yes I know, the solution to doing such is to use a small aperture such as f / 22, but that has its own problems in addition to the one of it not working when you are really close to something and your shot includes the close and the way far away. There is a solution however and that is to select your best working aperture, generally in the middle of the range, such as f / 8 or 11, then shoot a series of sharply focused shots changing only the focal point and then combining them in a piece of software that selects only the sharpest section of each shot creating a single image tack sharp from front to back. The image for today was created in just that manner. Obviously you need to work using a tripod or some other device that keeps the camera from moving even the slightest. This is a really nice way of creating very sharp macro shots especially when working with flowers very close up. There are manual ways of doing this without special software but it does require a lot of work and time to do what the software can accomplish quite quickly. The software programs that can do this range from the free to quite expensive and each has it advantages, but most of the programs come with a price tag. This is a 7 shot sequence of the fields combined into one. The 7 frames were combined into a single file, then given a small amount of micro contrast adjustment. All frames Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 100; 1/640 sec @ f / 8 on a tripod and using a cable release.

21 Mar 16. All of the extended family whose birthday falls in March got together Sunday on the east side of the sound for a celebration at one of the city's big seafood houses. On another ugly weather day like they experienced they should had gotten right in from my perspective, but they had a 90 minute wait - I would have simply gone elsewhere - and didn't get home until dusk. As I was thinking about their crossing of the Sound I thought I'd concoct an image of how I would have wanted the return trip to look, even though I obviously can't control the weather one iota. But I can push pixels around and so I did, just a tiny bit, mainly by making them line up squarely so it wouldn't look like the Sound had tipped over and was draining out. On nights like the one I took this image the crossing of the Sound is a most pleasurable experience; on nights like tonight actually was, you just want to get across and back home. At least, that's my take. The base image was straightened and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/5000 sec @ f / 8.

22 Mar 16. With literally tens of thousands of images now stockpiled, of which I've shared <1%, I decided I'd start looking at the material I haven't shared - in addition to new stuff - to see what I can do with them using newly acquired skills, something that should be a standard approach, that of being a lifetime learner. I'm finding it both fun as well as a challenge but one definitely worth the effort. Part of this desire is based on the capability of new software, part on just looking for a new challenge, and another part that wants to see just how much information was available back when files sizes of 10+MB was considered pushing the limits, which of course it wasn't and isn't. I shared an image from this sequence back in 2011, and for those few of you who keep them all you will find it in color. I liked the color version at the time quite a lot, and in looking back and reviewing it I still like it, but after studying it for a bit I thought I would see what I could do with something similar as a monochrome. After completing working on this particular image, I put the B&W version side by side with the unaltered color version. Since you don't get to see the colored version, you don't get to do what I did. But when I did I found that the two images elicited two very different responses for me. With the color version, I wanted to study the nuances of color and my eyes kept bouncing between the varying hues and luminosity levels. The B&W image on the other hand found me looking for the detail in each building, as if I were going to discover something inside the buildings. In short, one image had me concentrating on color, the other on detail. Makes me wonder if there isn't a good reason why so many predators do not see in color. The base image was straightened and cropped and then converted to monochrome. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/6 sec @ f /10 on a tripod with cable release.

23 Mar 16. This is another shot of Mt Baker from the series I shared earlier but this time taken a bit lower than the previous shots. We are looking at a westerly view but not true west. The summit is to the right in the frame. Looking at just this small section of the slopes to some degree reminds me of the Himalayas which I've only seen in pictures but would love to visit and film in person someday. The evergreens have been recently dusted with a fresh coating of snow and I had been hoping for a window of nice sunlight to really show them off. This however was as good as we had it all day, so I was happy to get what I did, but I must admit there are times like these when I'm really thinking "wouldn't it just be nice if . . . . " Wouldn't have gotten what I did if I had followed my own desires but gave in to Jan's urging to wait just a while more and it turned out the wise thing to do. Sometimes I think I need to fall back more often on Dad's advice of "if you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes; it'll change." Such was that day, all day. The base image received some critical cropping and a tiny amount of micro contrast enhancement. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.

24 Mar 16. About an hour west of West Yellowstone you can visit the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Roughly another 60 minute drive (literally and figuratively) will get you to the visitor's center. This refuge supposedly is home to 10s of thousands of birds, but our two visits combined have allowed us to observe perhaps a couple dozen. Not sure if that is a comment on the visitation rights of the birds or our ability to spot them. Perhaps some of each. The road is at best described as unimproved and I would strongly suggest not visiting without either a SUV or more capable vehicle, preferably a BIG truck with good clearance. And be prepared for mud, lots of it. Both of our visits have been in the fall, perhaps too late for seeing birds who are smart enough to know when to take flight. But what we have missed in fauna we have made up for in flora.Today's Theatrical Thursday creative submission is of a stand of aspen that I've converted into a painting. These were a distance off parallel to the road and stood all by themselves so they weren't hard to notice, in fact, they were virtually jumping out at us. If you happen to visit the location you will have no problem locating them as they are the only large vegetation in an otherwise bare prairie-like area. The colors are very close to what we saw although the trees looked like trees. The base image was cropped to emphasis just the trees, then converted to the painting look. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

25 Mar 16. My original thought was that I would share a shot of tulips for this close up Friday, but then Jan brought home a couple 4 bunches of daffodil stems that were nicely closed. Overnight they mostly opened but a few remained more closed than open and a few were in-be-tween. I took them up in the studio and as there was a bit of sunshine attempting to poke through the rain, I placed them on the table and waited to see if the sun would cooperate. It did and I had a 30 minute session with the sunlight hitting the blossoms perfectly. So I shot away not paying careful attention and only near the end of the shoot did I bother to look at them on the back of the camera. OOPS! Since I was using both a close up lens as well as tele fully zoomed, I was concentrating on just the main aspect of the flower in which I was primarily interested and failed to look at everything carefully. As a result, I had blown out all the highlights and I mean totally blown them out. So I changed to a different metering method - spot vs average - and started over, except that I forgot to do the real tight closeups of the partially opened stems the second time around. So after church service we stopped in at the local food store where we get them only to find they were sold out, the price had almost doubled from 2 days ago, and they weren't sure if they'd be getting any more. So the daffodil shot that seemed so appropriate to share for today got cancelled and we are back to the original plan of going with a tulip, or in this shot, several tulips. They had just been watered courtesy of a rain shower when I took the shot, so you get to see them dripping wet. These were growing in a nursery in LaConner as opposed to being in the fields, but I'm going with the idea that it is the flower and not its location that is of importance. I cropped the base image some and added a small amount of contrast enhancement to bring out the water droplets. Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 800; 1/250 sec @ f /11.

28 Mar 16. On the ride home from church this afternoon my charming bride informed me that she thought my work was becoming boring and that I need to get new material. Something easy to say but not necessarily easy to do save for taking a trip or series of trips to new locations. With our PITA Maggie that becomes a bit more of a challenge than it would without her, but, as she isn't going anywhere soon, we'll just have to figure out a way to solve the problem. In the meantime I guess I can scour the archives to try and find some stuff unlike what I've been sharing to break up the monotony. I'll try today with a shot from a visit a while back to the annual Sequim Lavender Festival. Each year there seems to be an unwritten theme that makes for a bit of a difference from the previous years festival. One year it was literally feuding farms with sides having been chosen between two groups each of which was handing out a tour map of ONLY their members and not the other farms. Another year it was as though they had all gone all out to get the best entertainment, and another it was seemingly a show of their animals. This shot is from the animal showoff year and is of a llama who was quite the show girl. I got several shots of her posing absolutely still and looking at me. While it isn't apparent on this mail monitor, on my graphics monitor I could make out the image of the photographer standing on his head in her eye. Hopefully your monitor will be able to show that as well. I had elected to just do a series of head shots as there was so much "garbage" in the background that including a full body shot would not have made for a good composition. The base shot was adjusted to give the detail in the eye and that was it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 400; 1/250 sec @ f / 22.

29 Mar 16. Today's B&W is a bit different, actually quite a bit different, from any B&W I've ever shared. You've seen the image before as a colored shot, but this version is not like that one. Over the Easter weekend we had the cherubs visit and on Sunday one of them was looking at several images in both monochrome and color and commented on how much "cleaner" the B&W looked compared to the color. The discussion involved the question as to why most predators see in B&W vs color. At first she thought it wasn't fair, but after looking at a few examples she understood not only why but also realized that fair wasn't relevant. Each week on Theatrical Thursday I share something creative, generally of a painting approach but not exclusively so. Often it is more of a simplistic approach as opposed to just a pure painting effect. On occasion the Thursday fare is nothing more than an outline suggesting something which relies on your brain to fill-in and interpret. Maybe that concept hadn't crossed your mind. And maybe it has. For today I've reduced my subject to its simplest terms, and in so doing hopefully given some insight into its construction. Topaz Labs has a plug-in called Simplify; I employ it often, actually, on every image, because it helps me to see the image in its most fundamental state. In doing so - it is the second version I make of every image, immediately after the "pure" version - I garner some insights on how to approach the other 3 - 5 variants. In addition to that, I also get to see some interesting approaches to "adjusting" my original shots. So here is a spider web reduced to nothing more than a series of ropes looking not unlike a simple rope bridge. The base image was cleaned up of all extraneous material, then converted to this simple form. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 6.3 with fill flash.

30 Mar 16. Reaching back 11 years for this shot of a path alongside a road in MD. I have to admit I don't know exactly where we were when I took it, but I was with a couple of folks from the local photography club and it was on the way to a planned photo outing. That's all I can remember about it and unfortunately back then I didn't label the images as carefully as I now do. But I do recall that it was part of a large property and that this pathway simply demanded that I take a shot of it. Actually I took many shots of it and this one just happens to be my favorite of the set. After Jan's comment that I needed to modify what I send, I went back yesterday and reviewed the material from 2005 & 2006 selecting 140+ images to share. So that set, plus hopefully an equal number of new images of things I haven't shared in the last couple of years, should get us through the year. At the time I took this shot I wasn't yet shooting in RAW, just jpeg, so I had to be rather careful in working this up as the file size I had to start with was roughly 10% of what I normally have available. I think it turned out O.K.; now you just have to figure out what lies at the end of the path. Starting with the "original" jpg, I took it into ACR and made some exposure adjustments. Then I adjusted it for max tonality and gave it a small amount of contrast enhancement. Nikon D70; 70 - 300; Aperture Priority; ISO 200, 1/200 sec @ f / 7.1. Recall that the D70 was only a 6 megapixel camera.

31 Mar 16. Those of you who were youth in the 50s +/- a few years likely remember having as a toy a 12" or so long tube with another slightly larger tube of perhaps 3" in length that covered one end. In that larger end which rotated around the longer tube was a series of layered glass or plastic wedges and on the other end was a lens through which you looked down the tube pointed at some light source. Contained in that smaller section was a number of colored objects. As you turned the shorter end you got to see some amazing patterns. If you were like me, you could spend an inordinate amount of time looking through your kaleidoscope. About the time we were getting ready to leave MD I started to get interested in using a piece of software to make similar kinds of designs out of my photos. This approach didn't work for every shot, but there were some where the technique works wonderfully. As I was going through the 2005-6 archives to find some new material, I came upon some of those creations and thought you might appreciate one or two of them. Today's Theatrical Thursday submission is a shot of a pair of mating Damsel Flies resting on a petal of a Lotus blossom. I made 6 variations and Jan selected this one. Having come across these images I thought it would be fun to create some new ones only to discover I didn't remember which piece of software I used to create them. After having spent the better part of a couple of hours racking what remains of my brain trying to remember what it was, as well as asking others if they remembered, it suddenly dawned on me that the piece of software for which I was searching was actually part of a larger suite and that it didn't run on the newer 64 bit programs, so I wasn't going to find it as an application for use on the currently employed software. I finally figured out what it was, where I had stored it, and on which programs I could use it. For those of you who may find this type of manipulation interesting, you can find lots of programs on the web with varying capabilities and costs. The one I currently prefer is free but it only runs on 32 bit software. You can find it here, it is called Kaleidoscope 2.1, and is part of a collection of 29 different plug-ins. The "original" jpeg was taken into ACR and adjusted for max color and tonality, then I ran several different filters, all form Topaz, to get the final set of variants. Nikon D-200; 80 - 400; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/100 sec @ f /11.