Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

So these two, along with Trout Haven comprised the General Category this past Monday with Camera Club #2.

( Lake Chelan, Washington )
On my Flickr-stream this is my most-viewed photograph,as well as most Favorites. Flickr allows registered users to mark a photo as a favorite of their. I like it as well; a good scenic of a high-country desert lake. There is a bit of a 'punch-up' in post-production, emphasizing the blues closer to what my eyes saw. Do remember, though, I see colour in my own unique manner.

( Sterling Falls Triptych )
Sterling Falls is one of the waterfalls (out of, some days, thousands) in Milford Sound. It is a constant waterfall, rather than the many which result from the amount of rain received; with more rainfall there may be those thousands mentioned, most of which will trickle down and disappear as the rainfall eases off.

What is fun for me is that many people who've seen this first assume I've 'zoomed in' with the lens. Not so much; the Mamiya C330 is an interchangeable lens camera, however all the lenses are fixed focal length. Could of done this changing lenses, yes. They're all with the 'normal' 80mm lens (normal is the focal length for a given image size format that most closely matches the perspective/proportions seen by the human eye... wide angle will spread up to the extremes of fish-eye lens distortions, and telephoto lenses 'compress' the perspective) as our tour boat slowly approached the edge of the fjord and the falls.

Night shift last night. Thus today is a 'compressed' day, sleeping the morning away and muddling through the afternoon and evening until bedtime later. Not unproductive, however I've long found that my post night-shift day is one to work on things not requiring a lot of thought. Or energy. So I'm doing laundry while reviewing photos that need printing (for various reasons) and preparing to locate those files for a CD burn, to take to printer.

( Back to Puget Sound... )

No, I didn't walk over to the stairs for a closer examination. The park boundary is clearly marked. I didn't feel like trespassing on the occasion.

In other news, Houdini and I (with a bit of help from Squrrl) made all the Ranch Rounds this morning. This includes replenishing the hog feed. Everything else will last comfortably through the weekend into next week. We are now taking a short break before sorting laundry and starting that chore. Aren't we productive?

Well, yes, somewhat, as I've also done some on-line searching for parts for Harrison Ford 8N Tractor. I'm chuckling a bit. Mother Mary was not so sure that Clyde did us a favour purchasing us such an 'old' tractor. And it is old; Ford stopped making the N series in '52. Thing is, Ford also made a lot of them, and they're popular still. So there's lots of parts available particularly if one isn't adamant about doing a full, proper, period refurbish job. I'm not. I am happy to get him running again.

Houdini and I took a walk along the fence line over on the Cow Pasture looking for downed branches. What with the wet weather experienced this week, it's a good possibility. After all, while out feeding the Ranch this morning we heard a branch fall over on our neighbor Miss P's side of the fence. We did not find any branches across the fence. This is probably a good thing, because we did find
( Suspicious Neighbors )

In case you are wondering, those are Asian Water Buffalo. Our other neighbor, Doc P, he raises them. We gave them a wide berth, and still kept an eye on them because they mostly consider fences as suggestions. Sometimes as not particularly important suggestions.

( So, because High Country Lakes & Blue Look Cool... )

Lake Chelan, Washington. I'm actually somewhat surprised at myself that I've not posted it already as a Pic'o'Day. Over on Flickr, this photograph has the most views, the most 'Favorites', and the most 'Interestingness' according to, well, Flickr. It does not, however, have the most 'Comments' so I guess people simply go and look.

Ran errands today with Herself, took her shopping. Mostly we bought groceries, did get a few other things, and she got a lot of prices. Then we hurried home to be with Houdini because the thunderstorm came along...

Panorama is a wide-format, not necessarily wide-angle image. It may (and often is) be done with a standard camera/lens combination. It may also be done with a dedicated panoramic camera, which is an interesting beast. In a panoramic camera, the lens pivots on the center of focus point, and thus paints an image on a longer strip of film than is exposed in a regular camera. I don't own one of those.

I've experimented with panoramas rather a bit, starting quite a good length of time before the advent of digital imagery. The key to a fairly seamless panorama is that 'center of focus' mentioned above, rather than the center of the camera or the mounting point to a tripod. Light passing through a camera lens 'inverts' as it is focused; you've seen this if you've looked through some telescopes, particularly simple two-lens telescopes, when you've seen an upside-down and backwards image in the eyepiece. Where it makes that 'flip' is the center of focus, and it is different for each focal length lens.

Digital imagery and manipulation software make it somewhat easier to create a panorama, and the best work still takes that center of focus into account.

( Lake Chelan Sunrise )

This photo is from October 2005 in Lake Chelan, Washington. I used a flash mounting bracket to off-set the camera in relation to the tripod mount, putting the center of focus directly over the pivot point of the tripod. It's two frames put together into a single image, and in my case I did not use automation to achieve the compositing.

( Blast from teh Past )

From a trip to see my sister and brother-in-law in November, 2000. We indulged in a bit of nepotism, since sister organised a seminar on 'Technology in Nursing' for the School of Nursing there, and I submitted an abstract which she accepted. Couldn't pay travel costs, could provide free room and board. Plus, got to see George and the Boys for the first time this trip. After showing me Mt. Rushmore, brother-in-law took me to see the Crazy Horse Memorial, a work in progress. Do your own search for information on this, it is well worth the learning.

This trip also turned up the first signs that the Nikon EM 35mm SLR I'd inherited from a friend would die soon as well. Most probably the cold edged the early signs, but the cause was a lot of use. This photo is not one of the early signs, however.