More Mirror and Additional Information

( Suggest a Title, More Mirror, Thanks For Your Feedback! )

About the photo first: this is from our holiday to South Island, New Zealand in September '01. Terribly cliche I know, yet we did do a lot of the 'tourist' things and got to see Milford Sound. I've previously shown you the B&W landscape of this spot, or fairly close to this exact shooting spot of which I am quite fond. This one rather more meets the requirement for the upcoming NCFPC competition theme including both the mirror surface, reflection, and object reflected. I've gone through several permutations of a title, so that's why the floor is open for suggestions.

As you may see, the day started off with a low overcast; we'd experienced some open sky sunny-ness before driving through Homer Tunnel, under the mountain which blocked a portion of these clouds from passing further inland. This portion of the Sound is fairly well sheltered from the off-shore winds which we experienced later.

From the competition manual, supplementary, image size for the submission is to be 1024 pixels on the long axis; the projector software automatically resizes vertical long axes to the projector max, I've sized this more or less square image to that limitation. Aside from the 'signature' and the fact that I suspect I didn't do my 'end processing' addition of Unsharp Mask on this copy, it's about where I plan on it for submission, including the square formatting. The other specifications for the competition are the specifics on file name for the competition (name, rank, and serial number essentially) and that it be a high-quality JPG.

Busy But Not Backbreaking

Photo files copied to Herself's PC in workable format; later to load software she needs to work with the RAW. Prepped Studio 318 for her. Cloudy today, maybe rain later and tomorrow forecast is wet. She plans on working in Studio photographing recently made jewelery for both her archive & her Etsy store. Also burned the backup DVD of her pieces from last Sunday and the field trip to Kanapaha. I've duplicated mine to external hard drives, still need to burn that DVD though.

We also re-set the second purple martin house. Put that up yesterday, over closer to the fence line marking the cattle pasture. It looked OK from the south, however looking at it from the west very obviously Purple Martin Apartment Building #2 qualified as the Leaning Tower of Ranch. Now it is significantly vertical. And Hurrah! for the purple martins are definitely establishing themselves in Purple Martin Apartment Building #1! We'd seen males checking the house out, and now we're seeing females perching on the 'stoop'.

Purple martins and their houses are some of my longest memories from Gramps home on the shores of Lake Huron. Differences, sure. Gramps built those (ours are plastic kits) and they were huge, six nesting spots long, three more on the short sides, three floors high and more nesting spots built into the gables and dormers of the roof. He mounted them on posts like telephone poles, and I can't remember if he hinged them or not to aid in cleaning between seasons. And they do need to be cleaned or the martins won't move in again next spring. That was one of my chores, sometimes, visiting on autumn or winter weekends. Cleaning out the old nests.

Watching them fly provided hours of entertainment, as the whole flock swooped and looped and circled as a unit. Forget the fact that purple martins are insectivores, eating through their weights many times in mosquitoes and flies. The colony flying and hunting as a single organism, oh my!