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pecuniumI've not posted any pictures in ages.
Mostly because I decided my monitors weren't giving me the colors I wanted.
So I got a calibration tool and discovered most of them are ok, and the one I'd been using to edit/post from wasn't so off as to force me to retouch all the things I've already posted.
My laptop (the one which won't talk to the internet) was the worst, with a hideous blue cast, which one doesn't really notice until it's been lifted. I wonder how many pictures I chucked because I didn't want to do the fixing I thought they needed? (not that many, color I'll mess with, cropping is no big deal, crappy composition and poor focus, those are the knells of certain death for pictures).
So I warmed up for slogging through a couple gigs worth of wedding pictures by wading into about 6 gigs worth of photos.
For your perusal I offer them up.
You can either find them in The Grab Bag, Snakes, Beach Shots and Poppies.
For those of you who want commentary,(including great wodges of technical stuff on the mechanics of taking pictures) there are a lot of pictures behind, . I reccomend opening a new window. This is 26 pictures, all of which are most of a screen.
We'll start with the poppies, because they are the easiest, and are the smallest set. All of them were shot in my front yard.
Those are a couple of onion blossoms. I have a lot of those, as well as some leeks, and chives in bloom right now. I like the way the Alium family blooms. Tight clusters of long lived flowers. Onions tend to be white, leeks have a purple/blue cast, chives are a deep purple.
Budding, Blooming, and Blown, the stages of a poppy.
So, now to more exiting things.
Still in the yard, I took some more pictures. Nice thing about having a yard, and the camera (as well as more than a few fancy bells and whistles for it) is that there are lots of opportunities to take pictures. Two of the bells and whistles I have are meant to make taking macroscopic pictures possible (there is some confusion, and mostly the fault of lensmakers, about what macro means. Techinically it is photos for which the ratio of object to image is 1:1 or greater. A normal lens won't let one get a ratio of more than 1:10. Most modern lenses have a feature which allows one to take close up photos, some with ratios as large as 1:2. They call this a macro function. To further muddy the waters when Macro lenses were first released most of them only went to 1:2, and used extention tubes to get to "true" macro ratios. If that wasn't enough to confuse all but the most dedicated, Nikon's macro lenses were, and to this day are still, called "Micro" lenses).
I have a couple of extention tubes, a 55mm Micro (which allows, mostly, for auto focus, and goes to 1:1) a 200mm Micro (which goes to 1:2 and lets me be as much as 10 inches from the subject. This os often very handy) and a PB-4 bellows, which is a glorified extention tube, of variable length. It also has shift, and swing; which allow me to correct some problems of parralax and focal plane(using the Schleimpflug Effect, don't you feel better for knowing that? It's actually much simpler than it sounds, and lets me counteract some of the other oddites of Macro work, having to do with very narrow depths of field, and a change in the rules by which depth of field works [in "normal" photograpy {greater than 1:2, which means we now have a range which isn't macro, and isn't normal... the whole thing is a nomenclatural nightmare} the focal area is divided into two areas, of different size. The plane of critical focus (where everything is actually resolved to points, is 1/3rd of the way into the area of "acceptable" focus, where it looks like things resolve to points. When the ratio gets to be 1:2 or greater the dividing line is halfway back).
All of which was my prolix way of introducing some bugs, and flowers.
These are the seeds of the calla lilly. They look, to me, like a mutant ear of corn.
A lady bug (they aren't really bugs, I'll show you a true bug in a moment. They are beetles). This one is on a leaf of red lettuce, in the barrel with the Birdshit Grape. I would rather she be unable to find food there, but since I know there are ants, who have decided to use my lettuces for their aphid ranches, I hope she settles down, has lots of babies and gets fat).
This is a true bug. It has four wings and biting mouthparts.
This was shot with the 55Micro. Let's take a moment and I can look up the shooting data (digital cameras have one glorious advantage. When one is using a dedicated lens, they take all those notes about f-stop and shutter speed that I never managed to do when not requiredby some instructor.). f-19, 1/90th of a second. Most applications of a 55mm lens would find either of those settings more than adequate. The Rule of Thumb for camera shake (lens length over shutter speed. A 300mm lens needs no slower than 250th, or a tripod) says I could go as low as 1/60th, and f-19 ought to have everything further than a few feet sharp as a tack (one of the things which makes a "normal" length Macro lens so nice, if one likes depth of field to be deep, is they are built so that everything more than about three feet from the camera, is always in focus, sort of like the lenses on point and shoots, but with more controls, and narrower field of view.... I did warn you about the technical commentary, right?).
But, if one looks closely at the fly, one sees that the eyes (which is what I was trying to catch) aren't really in focus, the plane is on the far edge of the wings. I'd love to have the faceting of the eyes, but since I didn't kill the fly (which would have made this much easier) or have a tripod handy, this picture is adequate. Depth of field, even at 1:1 (I turned off the auto focus, set the lens to 1:1 ratio (there is a scale on the barrel of the lens) and moved until it looked right. Either I wobbled, or the wind blew the leaf it was standing on), is really small.
Pepper blossom.
This was taken with the PB-4, 200mm Micro, and an extention tube. Magnification is probably about 2:1. Shutter speed was 1/30, and the apparent f-stop was probably about 64. Sadly the f-stop for sharpness was still f-22, because that's as high I could take the lens without losing sharpness to the breeze(adding space between the lens and the film plane {which is what all bellows, extention tubes, and in lens macro-functions do} decreases the intensity of the light, but sharpness is determined by how narrow the pathway of light is. For those who want I can try to talk about that... comprehending it, at a gut level, was my first, zen moment a flash of enlightenment, in comments).
The problem with this pictures is the focal plane I wanted is just a tad behind the plane I got. In the viewfinder the image is small, and that makes it look a tad sharper than it is. If I blow this up to full size the green bits are out of focus. I think this sort of thing (macro work, at high magnifications, may actually be a good reason to use the computer to run the camera. I can do that, though I don't get to use the computer as a giant viewfinder, it does load directly to the hard drive, and I can see it, bigger than life, and twice as loud, without having to dismount the camera, and move equipment. Which would let me see things more clearly. I hadn't thought of that before. Being able to take pictures from the keyboard seemed cool, but more whimsical than useful before this. Learn something every day.
Next we have three shots of a bee. The Bee is what started this batch of bug shots. I was out watering the plants, talking to Maia and Alexa when I saw this green insect. It looked like a bee, but green. I mean bright, metallic; fig-beetle, green. I thought it had to be a mimic.
But I ran in, changed lenses (the default lens on the camera is a 28-200. Which, after the conversion to digital is about a 50-300. A bit more flexible than the 75-300 I use as the standard lens on the 35mm film cameras), and dashed back out. What I saw made it clear this was a bee.
I think she looks a bit like Fred, the Sheepdog, from Warner Bros. Cartoons. In this one she is combing her wing with her leg.
Here you can see her wings, the typically rounded shoulders of bees, as well as the antennae.
This was the first picture I took, and the moment I knew it was a bee. The waist, the head, the eyes, and most of all, the pollen combs, were a dead giveaway.
If you care she is on the seedhead of a jonquil. Sadly the snails ate all the seeds this year. Next year I will have to figure out how to prevent that.
For something a tad larger
I like pigeons. I was shooting from the pier at Pismo Beach (and there will be some more from that in a moment) and got the rare chance to shoot down at one from far enough away it wasn't shying away, and far enough from the background to blur it out. Not having asphalt behind him was icing on the cake.
We have baby snakes on the way.
Eggs. This was taken while she was in the tank. I was twisted six ways from Sunday, because this is the bottom tank, and the clearance was just enough to let me contort myself into it. I was more afraid of losing my balance than anything else, since I was arched over a sheet of plate glass, some 30" long and 18" high. Thankfully she had her head buried so my being there didn't disturb her.
A wider shot, for context.
These were both taken with the same lens I used to shoot the insects.
This is one of the Sand Boas. They don't lay their eggs, but hatch them internally. She is decidely gravid, and due in about four weeks. It's not the best picture, what with a busy background, and no establishing shot to show how large she is, but it does show how handsome the species is. Normally she would be able to coil up around the hook, but that is as far as she can get right now, because she is so heavy.
They carry 10-30 eggs. We have three females, all of whom are pregnant. Good prices to good homes.
On Memorial Day we went to the beach. The party wasn't much, but I did shoot some surfing. On my way home from Cp. Pendleton, a week later, the traffic clogged up, near La Conchita, so I stopped and lo! there were people in the surf, so I spent a couple of hours shooting them.
Pismo
La Conchita
And that seems a fitting point to stop
Mostly because I decided my monitors weren't giving me the colors I wanted.
So I got a calibration tool and discovered most of them are ok, and the one I'd been using to edit/post from wasn't so off as to force me to retouch all the things I've already posted.
My laptop (the one which won't talk to the internet) was the worst, with a hideous blue cast, which one doesn't really notice until it's been lifted. I wonder how many pictures I chucked because I didn't want to do the fixing I thought they needed? (not that many, color I'll mess with, cropping is no big deal, crappy composition and poor focus, those are the knells of certain death for pictures).
So I warmed up for slogging through a couple gigs worth of wedding pictures by wading into about 6 gigs worth of photos.
For your perusal I offer them up.
You can either find them in The Grab Bag, Snakes, Beach Shots and Poppies.
For those of you who want commentary,(including great wodges of technical stuff on the mechanics of taking pictures) there are a lot of pictures behind, . I reccomend opening a new window. This is 26 pictures, all of which are most of a screen.
We'll start with the poppies, because they are the easiest, and are the smallest set. All of them were shot in my front yard.
Those are a couple of onion blossoms. I have a lot of those, as well as some leeks, and chives in bloom right now. I like the way the Alium family blooms. Tight clusters of long lived flowers. Onions tend to be white, leeks have a purple/blue cast, chives are a deep purple.
Budding, Blooming, and Blown, the stages of a poppy.
So, now to more exiting things.
Still in the yard, I took some more pictures. Nice thing about having a yard, and the camera (as well as more than a few fancy bells and whistles for it) is that there are lots of opportunities to take pictures. Two of the bells and whistles I have are meant to make taking macroscopic pictures possible (there is some confusion, and mostly the fault of lensmakers, about what macro means. Techinically it is photos for which the ratio of object to image is 1:1 or greater. A normal lens won't let one get a ratio of more than 1:10. Most modern lenses have a feature which allows one to take close up photos, some with ratios as large as 1:2. They call this a macro function. To further muddy the waters when Macro lenses were first released most of them only went to 1:2, and used extention tubes to get to "true" macro ratios. If that wasn't enough to confuse all but the most dedicated, Nikon's macro lenses were, and to this day are still, called "Micro" lenses).
I have a couple of extention tubes, a 55mm Micro (which allows, mostly, for auto focus, and goes to 1:1) a 200mm Micro (which goes to 1:2 and lets me be as much as 10 inches from the subject. This os often very handy) and a PB-4 bellows, which is a glorified extention tube, of variable length. It also has shift, and swing; which allow me to correct some problems of parralax and focal plane(using the Schleimpflug Effect, don't you feel better for knowing that? It's actually much simpler than it sounds, and lets me counteract some of the other oddites of Macro work, having to do with very narrow depths of field, and a change in the rules by which depth of field works [in "normal" photograpy {greater than 1:2, which means we now have a range which isn't macro, and isn't normal... the whole thing is a nomenclatural nightmare} the focal area is divided into two areas, of different size. The plane of critical focus (where everything is actually resolved to points, is 1/3rd of the way into the area of "acceptable" focus, where it looks like things resolve to points. When the ratio gets to be 1:2 or greater the dividing line is halfway back).
All of which was my prolix way of introducing some bugs, and flowers.
These are the seeds of the calla lilly. They look, to me, like a mutant ear of corn.
A lady bug (they aren't really bugs, I'll show you a true bug in a moment. They are beetles). This one is on a leaf of red lettuce, in the barrel with the Birdshit Grape. I would rather she be unable to find food there, but since I know there are ants, who have decided to use my lettuces for their aphid ranches, I hope she settles down, has lots of babies and gets fat).
This is a true bug. It has four wings and biting mouthparts.
This was shot with the 55Micro. Let's take a moment and I can look up the shooting data (digital cameras have one glorious advantage. When one is using a dedicated lens, they take all those notes about f-stop and shutter speed that I never managed to do when not requiredby some instructor.). f-19, 1/90th of a second. Most applications of a 55mm lens would find either of those settings more than adequate. The Rule of Thumb for camera shake (lens length over shutter speed. A 300mm lens needs no slower than 250th, or a tripod) says I could go as low as 1/60th, and f-19 ought to have everything further than a few feet sharp as a tack (one of the things which makes a "normal" length Macro lens so nice, if one likes depth of field to be deep, is they are built so that everything more than about three feet from the camera, is always in focus, sort of like the lenses on point and shoots, but with more controls, and narrower field of view.... I did warn you about the technical commentary, right?).
But, if one looks closely at the fly, one sees that the eyes (which is what I was trying to catch) aren't really in focus, the plane is on the far edge of the wings. I'd love to have the faceting of the eyes, but since I didn't kill the fly (which would have made this much easier) or have a tripod handy, this picture is adequate. Depth of field, even at 1:1 (I turned off the auto focus, set the lens to 1:1 ratio (there is a scale on the barrel of the lens) and moved until it looked right. Either I wobbled, or the wind blew the leaf it was standing on), is really small.
Pepper blossom.
This was taken with the PB-4, 200mm Micro, and an extention tube. Magnification is probably about 2:1. Shutter speed was 1/30, and the apparent f-stop was probably about 64. Sadly the f-stop for sharpness was still f-22, because that's as high I could take the lens without losing sharpness to the breeze(adding space between the lens and the film plane {which is what all bellows, extention tubes, and in lens macro-functions do} decreases the intensity of the light, but sharpness is determined by how narrow the pathway of light is. For those who want I can try to talk about that... comprehending it, at a gut level, was my first, zen moment a flash of enlightenment, in comments).
The problem with this pictures is the focal plane I wanted is just a tad behind the plane I got. In the viewfinder the image is small, and that makes it look a tad sharper than it is. If I blow this up to full size the green bits are out of focus. I think this sort of thing (macro work, at high magnifications, may actually be a good reason to use the computer to run the camera. I can do that, though I don't get to use the computer as a giant viewfinder, it does load directly to the hard drive, and I can see it, bigger than life, and twice as loud, without having to dismount the camera, and move equipment. Which would let me see things more clearly. I hadn't thought of that before. Being able to take pictures from the keyboard seemed cool, but more whimsical than useful before this. Learn something every day.
Next we have three shots of a bee. The Bee is what started this batch of bug shots. I was out watering the plants, talking to Maia and Alexa when I saw this green insect. It looked like a bee, but green. I mean bright, metallic; fig-beetle, green. I thought it had to be a mimic.
But I ran in, changed lenses (the default lens on the camera is a 28-200. Which, after the conversion to digital is about a 50-300. A bit more flexible than the 75-300 I use as the standard lens on the 35mm film cameras), and dashed back out. What I saw made it clear this was a bee.
I think she looks a bit like Fred, the Sheepdog, from Warner Bros. Cartoons. In this one she is combing her wing with her leg.
Here you can see her wings, the typically rounded shoulders of bees, as well as the antennae.
This was the first picture I took, and the moment I knew it was a bee. The waist, the head, the eyes, and most of all, the pollen combs, were a dead giveaway.
If you care she is on the seedhead of a jonquil. Sadly the snails ate all the seeds this year. Next year I will have to figure out how to prevent that.
For something a tad larger
I like pigeons. I was shooting from the pier at Pismo Beach (and there will be some more from that in a moment) and got the rare chance to shoot down at one from far enough away it wasn't shying away, and far enough from the background to blur it out. Not having asphalt behind him was icing on the cake.
We have baby snakes on the way.
Eggs. This was taken while she was in the tank. I was twisted six ways from Sunday, because this is the bottom tank, and the clearance was just enough to let me contort myself into it. I was more afraid of losing my balance than anything else, since I was arched over a sheet of plate glass, some 30" long and 18" high. Thankfully she had her head buried so my being there didn't disturb her.
A wider shot, for context.
These were both taken with the same lens I used to shoot the insects.
This is one of the Sand Boas. They don't lay their eggs, but hatch them internally. She is decidely gravid, and due in about four weeks. It's not the best picture, what with a busy background, and no establishing shot to show how large she is, but it does show how handsome the species is. Normally she would be able to coil up around the hook, but that is as far as she can get right now, because she is so heavy.
They carry 10-30 eggs. We have three females, all of whom are pregnant. Good prices to good homes.
On Memorial Day we went to the beach. The party wasn't much, but I did shoot some surfing. On my way home from Cp. Pendleton, a week later, the traffic clogged up, near La Conchita, so I stopped and lo! there were people in the surf, so I spent a couple of hours shooting them.
Pismo
La Conchita
And that seems a fitting point to stop
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 12:48 am (UTC)The snake photos are fascinating - I was able to go through them, even though my hindbrain was vigorously saying, "NO! NO! EEEEEeeeee!" (I have tried to fight this phobia - in doing so, I have just ended up at the opposite end of the room without any memory as to how I got there. Progress: I can now watch most of a documentary on snakes without curling my feet underneath me. I know - feeble).
no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 08:03 am (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 11:32 am (UTC)How do I proceed?
no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 04:59 pm (UTC)It probably costs a bit more than you expected, but you get good stuff.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 07:22 pm (UTC)I'll vouch for that.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 10:44 am (UTC)jill - at - writingortyping.com
no subject
Date: 2005-06-15 04:59 am (UTC)I can quote you two prices, one is costs, which I can't afford to forgo, and then (though it risks pointing out what markup is, though I can explain why it is what it is) and we can then discuss what I actually want to charge you, and you can send me the costs, and owe me the difference.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-06-15 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 04:08 am (UTC)I confess to wanting to be sure the sale closes, but I also understand not wanting to spend money one doesn't have, even for hyacinths (which I am not certain my pictures rise to quite that level).
When you can afford it, talk to me, and we'll figure it out.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-06-17 01:27 pm (UTC)Thank you for that. Let's put it this way: I have a short list of things I want to purchase when I have a paycheck again. "Terry's picture of a poppy" (intended for the hypothetical-at-this-point new office wall) is now on it!