Sunday, February 28, 2010

Marengo Cave

The BPC arranged a fantastic tour of Marengo Cave yesterday evening.  It had been nearly 20 years since I had been there and much had changed.  It will take me forever to "process" the nearly 200 pictures I took, but this one gives you an idea of how neat it was.
This shot shows some of the creative lighting present in the cave. This is a view showing some of the formations reflected in the water pool next to the path.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Strange things from the X-files

I stole this picture from my wife (she took it while we were on vacation).  You could almost tell what it was in her photograph, so I decided that a little touching up with PhotoShop would help (ha!).  By the time I got through playing with it there was no resemblance left to anything real,  but I kind of liked it! 
Any guesses?

Friday, February 26, 2010

George Washington

There is no reason for doing this other than just showing that I can waste enormous amounts of time and electrons for no reason.  This "photo" of George Washington was obtained by combining 196 images taken with the Nikon FS2 bioscope.  It probably should have taken only about half that number, but only the central part was in focus so I took more than needed and cropped the edges.
I uploaded the image to gigapan and discovered that everyone likes to take "panorama" pictures of money (there are quite a few gigapans of dollar bills)--oh well.  You can see mine here or you can just look at it below.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

I haven't lost my memory (but it keeps getting erased)

I have had this sitting in my "fun to look at" drawer for years (obviously).  It is a EPROM (erasable programmable read only memory) from the 1970's.  The chip had a quartz window (removed from this one) that allowed an intense ultrviolet light to be used to erase the memory on the chip.
 

For those who can't uncross their eyes, here is the red/green version:

You can go to Fickr for a closeup of the actual chip (it looks a bit like a football field).

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

All-time favorites.

This is a photo I took with a Kodak 828 camera (it had film slightly larger than 35mm) in about 1956-58.  The image is from a slide that was pretty well scratched up, so I spent quite a bit of time "healing" the scratches and spots.  It has to rank up there as one of my all-time favorite photographs even though it disobeys several of the "rules" of composition.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Pull up! Pull up!

After an overnight snow I looked out at the roof of our "barn" in the back yard and saw the strange imprints in the snow on the roof.  There was no evidence of anything falling on the roof (no overhead trees or wires), so the only explanation I can come up with is a bird that was making too sharp a turn?

Monday, February 22, 2010

Mike's Farm

There's nothing like having ponies in the pasture.
I usually take awful pictures of farm animals, but after using the "healing tool" in Photo Shop to remove a few horse flies I ended up with a rather nice scene.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

I just don't understand...

I thought people "tagged" places to show it was "their territory".  This certainly seem logical(?) on buildings, in alleys, etc., but trash washed up on the ocean beach?

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Caution! Explicit sexual images.....

I noticed some of the flowers were blooming in the garage so I grabbed one.  After taking this picture I removed the petals to get a better view of the stamens and pistel. 
Click on the image to enlarge it. Don't you love those "hairs"?  The colors are actually not far off.  The orange background is from the back-lighting on the microscope.  The bottom image was a combination of 24 photos combined to increase the depth of field.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Waiting for spring

I said I was going go out and look for something worth taking a picture of.  Well, I decided this was a good candidate.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Some like it hot, some like it cold.

I'm not saying that I don't like winter, or cold, or snow, or any of those things. I'm just saying that given the choice, I really don't see where the top photo shows any desirable attributes compared to the same scene below.  The wagon may or may not still be in the same place out there--who can tell. I started my garden seeds in the basement today, and I sure as heck didn't get my peas planted on valentine's day.  I realized how bad it was when the local weatherman noted that we have only had three days where it was above freezing this year!  I think I will go out and try hard to find something pretty in the snow to take a picture of!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Really big photos of little things

One web site I like is the GigaPan site. It has some fantastic images for those who like to see the "big picture" I just finished photographing the "forever stamp" currently in use by the USPS.  This thumbnail (1000 x 1150 pixels) is reduced from the full image size  of 11,935 x 13,720 pixels!  The full image was generated using the Photo shop photo merge routines using 60 images taken with my Nikon FS-2 bioscope and my D80.  To really appreciate the resolution, look at the following!
You can learn all about the GigaPan project and see some other fantastic images at their site:  http://www.gigapan.org.   Click here to see this picture using the GigaPan system (you can see it in full screen mode).  There is also a GigaPan view of a Lincoln commemorative stamp--just search for "postage stamp"

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Whazzat?


As George explained:  "The moon kept getting in the smoke from the grill. Have you ever tried to flip a hamburger with a small planet in the way? I think it was smoke - maybe it was moon dust."

Monday, February 15, 2010

Rough Day...

The next time  you have a bad day just think about this guy.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Chicago's Millenium Park

Millennium Park in Chicago has this wonderful sculpture, the "Cloud Gate".  When we visited it was still under construction, but managed to draw crowds anyway.  The small picture shows a ladder going into the sculpture where workers were polishing the seams.  The bottom image was taken  using the mirrored surface and has been  "undistorted" using the warp transform in Photo Shop.  In addition to straightening the buildings a bit, I  "eliminated" several people in the foreground.  I definitely want to return and see it again.

I find the resulting image strangely satisfying!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

A Sticky Situation

 
I was actually going to look at some "Velcro" since I had been looking at the "thorns" on various plant leaves.  Velcro was modeled after the naturally occurring hooks on the cocklebur seed. In the same drawer I had some 3M Dual Lock fasteners and decided to take a look at them.  Talk about weird!  The Dual Lock fasteners can be repeatedly fastened and unfastened and have some amazing holding power.  In any case I decided it would be fun to see if I could get a good picture of one.  The one close up shows the toadstool shape of the little appendages, and the second image is a stereo pair of the surface.  Helicon focus was used in both cases to get a decent depth of field (each picture required 20+ stacked images).

 

Friday, February 12, 2010

Cecropia moth

If I looked it up correctly, this is a Cecropia moth.  This particular one had just hatched and the colors were beautiful!
For those who like trivia, the Cecropia moth is the largest insect found in Iowa(!).  I don't know what it's standing is in Indiana.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Stereo stuff can be confusing

I love taking stereo photographs, even when the results are not what you expect.  If you cannot uncross your eyes you can try the red/green below (assuming you have glasses).


And if you prefer to have me right side up and the room upside down you can rotate the picture 180 degrees.
Needless to say, Photo Shop had a bit to do with this image! 

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Welcome to my universe

The more I play with Photo Shop the more I like it!  I transformed my back yard into a lunar landscape and threw in the earth and a sun.  Certainly weird, but I kind of like it.  Thank you NASA for a few heavenly bodies.  The "real" part of the picture is a spherical panorama my back yard taken on a snowy day.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

My Friend PREC

Since I showed a well-known (in my family) black cat earlier, I felt it important to give equal billing to "my" favorite cat.  PREC (Park Ridge East Cat) was a feral cat that frequented the neighborhood for many years before finally going to the "great cat heaven" two years ago.  You could never get closer than about ten feet from him before he would bolt, and everyone put out food and water for him.  He spent about half his time under our deck during the winter. This picture was taken one cold winter evening with Prec peeking in our back door.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Park Ridge East Park Polar Panorama

The "polar panorama" below was generated from the 360 panorama below it using the "polar coordinates" Photo Shop distortion filter.  You can see the slide and fort that was in my blog from two days ago at the top of the image.  I did use the patch tool to remove the small part of the tripod that was sneaking in and to patch the snow at the very bottom (or center?) of the image.
Here is the 360 panorama before I converted it. Hugin did a really nice job, with only a few minor stitching problems.  I was using the panorama head I made from an old theodolite and taking a photo every 25deg. for each of the four rows.  This image is reduced for Blogspot, but the original (stitched from four rows of 15 photos) is 15500 x 8400 pixels.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Romeo

Actually, all cats can look elegant.  It is hard to get a good picture of a black cat, but Photo Shop helps (and having a handsome subject is essential)!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Blizzard of 2010

 
It may be a blizzard on the East coast, but it was just a lovely wet snow here!  I took a series of panorama pics in our local park.  If I get them stitched I'll put them in a later blog (I am still trying to "fine tune" my home built panorama head).

Friday, February 5, 2010

The beauty of Park County....

If you don't have any plans for October, you simply must plan to go to the Park County (Indiana) Covered Bridge Festival !  And for heavens sake, don't do it during the week  when there are only a few tens of thousands of people to annoy you--plan on the being there on the weekend with everyone else in Indiana!  Keep in mind that you have to start early in the morning since all roads leading to (and in) Park County are filled with yard sales and other tourist traps, so you can only go about 5 mph most of the way.  But the wait is worth it!  Look at the lovely outdoor scene I managed to capture.  I can't wait to go back and enjoy the peace and serenity of the great outdoors again this year.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Oh, my head....

This one speaks for itself..  You can make up your own caption if you like!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

A moth in 3D

The cute little guy shown here was happily sitting on a piece of white card stock I use for backgrounds, so I quickly took a series of photos to try to capture him in stereo before he took off.  The images from "above" were taken with my FS-2 bioscope and consisted of two series of stacked images combined with Helicon and generated using Stereo Photo Maker.  The second view from the "front" was taken with my D80 hand-held using an extension tube and my 70-300mm zoom with a flash.  SPM was able to properly align and size the images to come up with a pretty good stereo pair.  The anaglyph images must be viewed with red-green glasses and you have to view the side by side images by "uncrossing" your eyes.

 
Three hours later the moth is still sitting on the card stock!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Lake Monroe

This is an interesting accident.  I had three photos that I was trying to merge into an HDR image, but one of them was out of focus and somehow this is what I came up with in Photo Shop.  I doubt that I could ever duplicate the effect, but I really like the result.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Lady bug feet......

I'm getting a bit better with my depth of field stuff.  Here is a rather neat (I think) stereo image of the "foot" of a Japanese Lady Bug. The lady  bug is shown in stereo above (about 15x)  and the "foot" (at about 400x) is shown below.  You have to "uncross" you eyes to see it in 3D.
The closeup image is a blended depth of field with over 69 total images.  The foot is that little thing hanging down in the upper photo (not the pin he is glued to).  I also have it as an anaglyph 3D image in Flickr if you have red/green glasses.