17 Jan 20 Our Sunday/Monday snow has vanished, departing about as fast as it arrived. It came in different forms from little kernels, to a little of the nice dry stuff, and lots of the big wet stuff. The big wet stuff I can do without, but the dry stuff and the little balls of snow are always appreciated. I shot some examples of all of it to share but decided that the only close up of this snowfall that was worth sharing is one of the little balls. There is a nice grouping of Sword Ferns right where you turn onto our driveway and they are protected by a large rock and overhanging limbs. As such, they were able to keep the little balls of snow from coalescing or rapidly melting so I had a few opportunities to try and capture how they look. Even so, you can see several small droplets of water at the tips of the bracts. I know they have a particular name but I'm not knowledgeable of it. I remember being told growing up that the Eskimos have 20+ names for snow where we have just one. For grins, I thought I'd check that out but came up short. I found one article about them having 2, 5, or 12, and another one claiming 99, but no actual distinct names. So today all I can do is say that I have some shots of a fern with snow on it. The is straight from the camera with a wee bit of cropping. Snow Balls Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 800; 1/250 sec @ f /10.
24 Jan 20 Today's close-up submission is of an Amaryllis, a flower I first encountered during our first year on active duty. Not entirely sure how we got it, but we did and placed it on our living room window sill. I had experienced a fast growing flower back in our yard in Ballard when I planted my first Allium giantium but never before had we ever seen anything that grows as fast as the Amaryllis. We got one about two weeks ago and placed it in a small container in the kitchen to watch it grow. Over the weekend it literally took off and has grown approximately two feet in the seven days. I've often thought if I were back in school and teaching mitosis this is the plant whose cells I would likely prefer to use to demonstrate the process since the cell division in this plant must be amazingly fast giving many stages in a single tissue sample. Yesterday the flower was still tight and I took a few snaps, one of which is what I'm sharing. Right now as I write the flower is starting to open like the jaws of a shark, and I expect that by morning when you are reading this the flower will be fully deployed. I'll likely grab some shots of that as well. This image is a layered two frame build, one on top of the other, with portions of each showing. As the frames were shot with the camera mounted on a tripod and in the studio so no wind-age problem, the two images are identically positioned allowing me to "paint" in or out the portions of each as desired. I used two different forms of light, natural and flash, for the two images to get the final (desired) result. The two original images were layered as described above and I chose what I wanted showing from each frame. Emerging Red Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; one exposure with natural light @ f / 9 for 4 sec and the other for 1/60 sec @ f / 9 with full flash.
31 Jan 20 This will be my last mailing until I get back from Iceland. So for the next three weeks if you want to be entertained, you might consider visiting this link location which holds 50+ videos from Iceland shot by Mads Peter Iversen. IF I can come back with just one shot of the quality he gets I'll be happy and he has only been at it (photography) for less than a decade!! We'll end with another close up of an Amaryllis but this time just a half blossom. This was shot in the studio and I've combined two captures of the same composition. I used a combination of full flash, natural light, and overhead LED lighting to get the texture and color as I did. The flower is actually a bit more on the orange side, but by that I mean a very tiny amount. So this lighting setup gives the flower a deeper red color than is natural but one I like better than the original. The flash was used to bring out the texture (sparkle) in the petals which you won't see otherwise, the LED bulbs to bring out the green in the stalk which I didn't include, and the sunlight to balance the color. I employed light painting - letting part of one image "paint" over the same spot on the other image - to achieve the final desired result. This is straight from the camera with the exception of the light painting. Future Generation Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /11 with full flash and 1/2 sec @ f /11 for the ambient light.
