This guy is really ugly!

It does make me want to get rid of all the flowers that we have sitting around the house in stagnant water. I wonder if there are just as many evil characters in dirt--just harder to see. I think this guy is called a "water bear".

Another type of CAVE

This is another example of "cave" photography (actually this was generated from several photos blended together using Photo Shop).  In computing the CAVE stands for "CAVE Augmented Virtual Environment"  The neat thing about a CAVE is that you can actually walk around and interact with the environment in three dimensions (assuming you don't get sea sick).  The bad thing is that it really isn't good for much except showing how advanced your computing facilities are (especially good for recruiting purposes).  I will admit that there were two or three times that I found it quite useful, but a 3D workstation is more convenient (and you don't have to walk across campus).  The system shown is located at Brown University.  The weird objects in the ceiling are tracking devices, mirrors and projectors for generating the four different images that are seamlessly put together.

Photography I don't do anymore.....

I ran across today's picture while cleaning up some older stuff.  Back when I was in college I spent many weekends crawling around inside the local limestone caves.  For those who were willing to carry two or three heavy ammo boxes filled with cameras and flashbulbs (and take a chance on destroying your gear) the images were wonderful.  You could actually see more in the photographs because the lighting was actually better (most of the time in the cave you were restricted to the beam of your flashlight or headlamp).  You would typically put your camera on a tripod and then walk around setting off your flash unit.  Needless to say it was a hit-and-miss technique.  Too many of these caves have been vandalized over the years--a real shame.

3D Orchids

Last year the local photography club took a field trip to Hilltop Orchids near Cloverdale Indiana.  We were able to look at and photograph over 2500 orchids in bloom!  I actually took these stereo pairs using my Nikon D80 by just snapping a picture and moving the camera horizontally.  The two images include a left/right (non-cross eyed) and a red/green stereo pair.  The images were aligned and cropped using StereoPhoto Maker.

Graffiti near Goosberry Island (or Gumbys Head?) Massachusetts

While visiting the East coast we made a trip to a neat place called Gooseberry Island Massachusetts and walked the trail looking at the beach, birds and other creatures. On the trail are two towers that were obviously WWII observation/gun emplacement structures. The towers were interesting, but the graffiti was especially colorful.  I did enhance the colors and run the graffiti image through a Photo Shop filter.  While looking at maps we noticed that the place is also referred to as "Gumbys Head Island".  What reminded me of the visit was a note in the news that the creator of the the cartoon character "Gumby" died earlier this month.

A close look at Coleus.

Coleus is one of the garden flowers I try to keep over winter in the garage since they are easy to start in the spring and are low maintenance.  While my winter crop doesn't look too good, I decided it was worth a quick peek under the microscope.  The following images show some of the details that are present.  I find it interesting that the coleus leaves also have little "horns".  It also seems that individual cells are colored completely--either all red or all green in the leaf I was looking at.

Virgin Tiger Moth

I took this last summer and spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to figure out what kind of moth it was (I knew it is a moth because of the feather-like antenna).  I hate it when I can't identify something.  Finally my wife proved she is better at finding things on the web than I am (ouch).

Let it snow!

Since it is still cold and miserable with spring months away I decided to look at the pretty side of winter.  This image is one taken (obviously with a flash) during a particularly heavy snow.  I have seen the lovely spheres (simply out of focus snowflakes) described as "orbs" by those who prefer to believe in supernatural causes (see ghoststudy.com!), but I don't think I was being attacked by spirits when I took this photo. In some ways this is prettier than the photomicrographs of the snowflakes.

Bird's Nest fungus.

It is easy enough to see why these things are named "bird's-nest fungus".  One of my flower beds was filled with them last year and I brought this one in to see how well it would photograph.  The diameter of the fungi is about 1/4 inch and they typically like to grow on woody compost (at least in my garden).  If you are really bored, you can read about the exciting sex life of this species on Wayne's Word!

3D with a Pinhole camera

This image is really pushing the concept of "let's do something different".  I (obviously) like to experiment with different types of techniques, and sometimes combining these can give interesting results (3D photomicrographs for example).  In today's image I have combined pinhole photography with 3D just to show that I could.  The pinhole photos were taken by gluing a small disk with a 0.005" hole (127 microns) in it over a 1/8" hole I drilled in the cap that protects the camera when you don't have the lens mounted.  The hole is a bit large for pinhole photography and I unfortunately had to crop the images to get the correct 3D field.  This led to a bit of blurring, but I kind of like the resulting image.

More shadows

This was another one of those "quick, grab the camera" moments.  I am not sure what the sun was reflecting off of, but the shadows from all the junk in our bay window looked really neat (I thought).  I did crop a bit and remove (Photo Shop) a box of matches from the mantel that I thought were a bit distracting.  The photo does make one wonder what all we keep in that window!

Winter Scene at IU

This is another rescued 35mm slide.  While an undergraduate at IU (probably 1960) I took a series of photos at night after a day of snow.  Although the original is in color, there really wasn't any color of note present.  I played with several of the filters in Photo Shop and like this version.

My Spherical Office.....

I admit it, I love 360 panoramas and spherical panoramas.  I am still trying to get my calibrations done right, but I get closer each time (I think).  The top image is a series of 36 photos (Nikon D80) taken as three rows of 12 images.  The camera is rotated 30 degrees between each shot on the first rotation, and then tilted 30 degrees up and down for the remaining two series of 12 shots.  I strongly recommend that you download FSPViewer, written by Fulvio Senore.  The program is free, doesn't change anything on your computer (Windows only--sorry), and allows you to literally "explore" panoramas like the above.

I couldn't resist converting the 360 panorama to a spherical panorama--enjoy!

Backyard Zoo

I mentioned earlier that it was a constant fight to see who ate the most "bird food" in the backyard.  The one image shows six of my four-legged friends (?) scrounging under the bird feeder.  The hemispherical baffle actually does work, but the birds are so messy they kick out about half of what they eat.  The second photo isn't really a stand-off.  Something startled the squirrel and when he took off up the tree the Pileated Woodpecker (who normally hides behind the tree while working on the suet) jumped around for a photo opportunity.

A new way to look at an old bridge.

This photo came from an old and scratched 35mm slide in my collection. I was not successful at rescuing it using the usual tools, so I used the Photo Shop poster edges filter to come up with this version. It is certainly better than the original and I rather like the texture I came up with. Click on the photo to enlarge it. 

A New Favorite Microscope!

I finished up a camera mount to hold my D80 on the Nikon Alphaphot-2 and it works surprisingly well.  It took a bit of sawing, drilling, tapping, and silver soldering and as you can see the results were well worth the effort.  The poor spider shown in today's blog made the mistake of running across the counter when I was making coffee this morning.  I took the "whole spider" photo with my Nikon FS-3V slit lamp bioscope and the closeup is with my "new" system (don't you love the eight eyes)--zoom in on the microscope picture and you can see the spider on the stage.  I am going to have fun with this one!  I still have to take time to really clean everything up (you can still see soot and grime in the cracks), but the images so far look as good as one can expect for something that was declared unrepairable junk.  I wish now that I had done this last summer when it would have been easier to collect some pond creatures--this makes me anxious for spring to come!
The closeup was generated from 28 photos in Helicon Focus after prealignment and cropping in Photo Shop.

Interesting Shadows

This is another "quick, grab the camera" photo.  While visiting family, the sun just happened to reflect off of (I assume) the window of a car parked outside and the sun coming through the window and created this interesting composition.   I was sitting next to my camera bag and couldn't resist.

A look at the ceiling in Newport

A must see in RI is Newport and the mansions of the "filthy rich".  While on vacation there last year we took a tour of several of the mansions. What is mind boggling is that some of these were simply summer cottages.  I was looking through some photos I took in "Marble House" and found a picture I took of one of the ornate ceilings.  You really could not see it clearly since the tour did not allow you to enter the room.  I found that with a bit of work in Photo Shop I can now see what the ceiling looks like (I didn't say that I necessarily liked it.)

Mystic Jellyfish

Last summer we visited Mystic Seaport in Connecticut (for the second time--highly recommended).  I happened to catch this guy (gal?) next to the pier and was surprised at how well the photo came out.  I did use Photo Shop to clean up some garbage (really) in the water and enhanced the color a bit.

Itsy Bitsy Things.

Now we are talking really small!  I took this image with with my Nikon Alphaphot-2 just to see if I could.  This particular microscope had been in a lab that had experienced a fire with significant smoke damage. As a result it was covered with soot when I got it (thus I got it cheap).  I have it pretty well cleaned up, but it probably needs a lot more work.  In any case this is a strange little object (creature?) that was left over after a drop of water from the flower vase evaporated.  The image is about 400x.  I tried to calibrate it with a micrometer slide and I would guess the creature (or whatever) is about 12 microns across.  I am definitely going to have to make a good camera mount so that I can take pictures of some really small creatures!  I did, by the way, use Helicon focus (six images) to get the depth of field decent.  I also am going to have to start reading to find out what I am looking at!  The next thing I have to do is construct a better mount for the microscope to hold my D80.

Artsy Pumkins

I often see photos where everything is converted to black and white except for one item (bird, flower, etc.) that remains colored.  It is an interesting effect, but not one that I have played with.  I was going through my photos and noticed this shot from the Indiana State Fair from several years ago.  There was so much color everywhere that it was difficult to appreciate the size of the pumpkins.  I played around a bit and found the following to be quite pleasing! 

More Snow!

I have tried about four different setups to get decent photographs of snowflakes and I am starting to appreciate some of the early photographers (especially Wilson Bently).  I cannot imagine having to work with glass plates, developing, and all the other steps that were involved to get a single good picture.  With the modern digital cameras it is easy (believe me!) to take several hundred photos in a matter of an hour or less, and with digital imaging techniques the images can be enhanced and printed with ease.  The collage shown represents about two hours of work (play?).  I find that using the various filters in Photoshop really makes the image stand out--especially the "glowing edge" filter.  I have included one unretouched image so you can see what they look like straight from the camera. Several of the images required multiple shots to increase the depth of field or because the snowflake was larger than the field of view.  Photoshop was used for both stitching and depth of field manipulation. Three different microscope setups were used and I can't really say one is better than the others.  A major problem is getting the best lighting although I guess one does not have to worry about the color.

More herbs from the winter garden

One of my favorite herbs in the garden is rosemary.  Not only is it easy to grow and propogate, it easily overwinters in the house with minimal care.  I learned last spring how many different plants are fun to look at
with my microscope, so I picked a sprig of rosmary for today's picture.  The first thing I noticed was the fact that the wonderful fragrance is most likely the little spheres of liquid that you can see on both sides of the leaf, especially bottom surface. Presumably these spheres contain the eucalyptol (C10H18O; 1,3,3-Trimethyl-2-oxabicyclo(2,2,2)octane) that is one of the two major "essential oils" in rosemary (camphene being the other).  As with many plants there are small "hairs" growing on both the upper and lower parts of the leaf, mainly the bottom.  This accounts for the "whittish" look one notices. After looking at the plant for some time I noticed that there are dozens of microscopic spiders living and crawling around the hairlike fibers.

 So.... the next time you rub some rosemary to enjoy the smell, remember all those little creatures you probably have on your fingers (and up your nose!)

What does an "xraycrystallographer" do?

I couldn't resist this one.  It was a cold winter's night with nothing worth while on TV so I spent some time playing with some of my old crystallography programs and learning a bit more about Photoshop.  The result is today's image which consists of a panorama in the background with me man-handling a large molecule.  And all my colleagues thought that I only worked with small molecules! For those who don't get the connection, x-ray crystallography is the field where one determines the structure of molecules by subjecting a crystal of the material to x-rays and interpreting the resulting scattering pattern (at least I think that is how I did it).  I actually did determine the structure of the molecule I am holding in the photo (shown enlarged for detail).  I did manage to get some "fair" snowflake pictures yesterday but I'm hoping for better (it is still snowing here).

Thyme for photomicrography

It's snowing again today so maybe I can get some more snowflake pictures.  Perhaps my favorite microscope for looking at things is he heavily modified Nikon "biomicroscope" or "slit lamp" that I bought at surplus years ago. I actually bought the pallet with several biomicroscopes on it because one of them had a Nikon camera body that attached to it.  The camera body itself didn't work, but my Nikon D80 fits on the standard twist fitting on the microscope. Not only is it easy to focus by simply moving the "joystick" in front, it is also possible to rotate the camera about the sample axis (this was so the opthamologist could move the camera easly to get images of your eye). One of my posts last year was of a "unknown bug" where I took two photos about 12 degrees apart.  It was easy to correct the images go get a matched stereo pair using Masuji Suto's program StereoPhoto Maker.

I like taking pictures of plants and flowers so I pinched off a small twig of thyme from my indoor garden for todays photo.  It is interesting that most leaves either have "hair" or "thorns".  As you can the thyme leaves certainly fall into the latter category. 

The Elusive Snowflake.....

I never did get any better photographs of snowflakes last year so I decided to try again this year. I have an old inspection scope body that I was able to fit with a long working distance objective and the my D80 with a T mount adapter for the eyepiece. By using a front surface mirror I can collect snowflakes on glass microscope slides which go on the small platform shown. An inexpensive LED goose-neck light can be easily (ha!) adjusted to illuminate the snowflake at night. The quality of snowflakes last night was not too good (don't blame me) but at least I have something set up that should be good when the good snowflakes arrive!

Going to the Birds

I would guess that I have spent over $200 for bird seed already this winter (let's be honest: $50 for birds; $150 for the squirrels).  The creatures do keep me entertained so I guess for a cost per time basis it's cheaper than going to movies (and you don't have to drive across town).  We get a visit from our friendly neighborhood Pileated Woodpecker almost every day although he (she?) usually prefers the suet in the backyard.  This photo (taken through the glass) caught him (her) checking out the bird feeder in the front. I think the best buy is to get the large chunks of suet from the butcher (it's cheap and all the woodpecker love it).  The main activity besides watching the critters and filling the feeders is coming up with new ways to discourage the squirrels.  They are devilishly clever.

Speaking of Spherical Panoramas....

This is one of the techniques I learned this past summer.  It is actually rather easy to do if you have a 360 degree panorama and PhotoShop (this is generated by a spherical coordinate distortion filter).  The photos were taken from the middle of the softball diamond in the Park Ridge East neighborhood park.  The park image was done just using a tripod and an earlier version of my panorama mount. 



Below is the same distortion filter applied to the living room photo in my last entry.

I did have to use PhotoShop to put the center of the table in since that is where the panorama head was sitting.

Spherical Panoramas

Another fall/winter project has been the construction of a panorama head that is accurate enough to allow Hugin (and other) panorama stitching programs to work.  After several “jury-rigged” creations I have finally come up with a system that has promise.  It is based on the base of an old theodolite that I picked up cheap because it had a destroyed telescope.  The small image showes the current model with my Nikon D80. 

It has been too cold to try it outside so I have as my first attempt a photo of our living room at Christmas.  This is a spherical panorama made up of 48 photos (three rows of 16 photos).  While there are some obvious seams, it actually turned out kind of neat!

If you want to see the real power of spherical panoramas, check out the program FSPViewer.  It works with both spherical and 360 degree panoramas.

Still a crystallographer!

Let's face it--crystals can be beautiful. Over the winter I have been working on the various "junk" microscopes I have and fixed up an old AO system with polarizing filters so that I could look at crystals under crossed polarizers. This is an image of urea (left over from the garden). I heated a glass slide and melted a small fragment of the urea and then placed a cover slip on the molten liquid. Rapid cooling seems to give the best crystals (IMHO).
I am not sure what all I have around the house that will give results as good as this, but I figure I can start looking! For those interested, the total width of the image shown is about .7 mm.

This year I will do better.....

Since the last entry I published last year was a bug I figure another creature from the garden is appropriate to start 2010. I am really going to try to keep this a bit more active this year! (honest!!). The first image is that of a "gold beetle"(Aspidomorpha tecta) that was enjoying the beans last fall. Although its shell is transparent in the photo it was a brilliant gold color on the leaf.

I have been spending quite a bit of time recently building and modifying some of my microscopes and photography equipment. I should be able to put some strange (?) and neat images on my blog in the near future. I will probably never be able to match some of my friends in the Bloomington Photo Club that post a picture a day (almost), but I certainly should be able to outperform last year!