As our past disappears...

Photo credits for these two photos go to my wife (well, she was using my camera).  We drove through Paoli on our way south last week and went by the remains of the block of buildings that were destroyed in a fire the previous week.  The photos aren't contest-winning, but they tell the story.  Actually, considering the windshield wiper was going and it was a driving rain storm, these aren't bad!

For those (most of you) who don't know Paoli, this was a two-story brick building.

As usual, clicking will enlarge the photos.

Backyard Birds -- 10

I don't know why I hadn't put this guy up yet--he is one of my favorites at the feeder.  The Carolina Wren is small and full of energy!  They like my bird feeder and I see them nearly year-round.

I see me..... (or is it eye see me?)

Your subject probably has to have dilated eyes for this to work.  This is certainly one of my stranger self-portraits, taken by accident earlier this fall.

Flashlight painting

It finally quit raining long enough over the Thanksgiving trip to take a few photographs.  This is one I really wanted to try.  It is a time lapse (about one minute) where I used a flashlight to "paint" the parts of the bridge that I wanted to show up in the photo.  I definitely want to do more of this, but I need a more homogeneous light source.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The drought is probably over!  After nearly four inches of rain the past two days the temperature plummeted and now we have snow.  

I snapped this photo Thanksgiving evening as we pulled into our motel (located half-way between the Thursday Thanksgiving dinner and the Friday Thanksgiving dinner).  It's not fun to drive in, but it sure sets the mood for the season!  By this morning the snow had all disappeared and sun was shining.

Zooming in on the moth wing

I'm still looking at the Virgin Tiger Moth wing.  Since I had pretty much torn him (her?) up I decided to take one last look at the wings.  The following four images show the wing at increasingly higher magnification.

If you pull off a few of the scales, this is what they look like:

Old friends 2--Barfi

Even though I am allergic to their dander, I do like cats--they are wonderful subjects for photography! This is Barfi, an old friend who lived in Sweden. RIP Barfi.

Crystal photography

One of the things I really wished I had mastered while I was still working was the ability to take decent photomicrographs of the various samples we examined.  Admittedly, it would have been difficult with the air sensitive compounds, but they generally were not terribly photogenic since the were almost nearly always partially decomposed.   I have been playing with some of the mineral samples I have sitting around to see what I can do.  This is a back lighted fragment of an unknown mineral ca. 1 mm maximum size.

I may have to try growing some "perfect" crystals.  The beauty of small crystals (natural or newly grown) is the near perfection of the morphology.

Things I always wanted to do...

I'm not sure what effect it had on my ability to visualize 3D easily, or my love of all things stereo, but like most kids I loved my View-master stereo viewer.  I hated it when parents would get me "educational" reels.  I wanted the action of superheros. One of the things I always dreamed of was starring in my own View-master movie!
  

Side-by-side above; anaglyph below.

At last!  My dream has come true!  (with thanks to "SHAZAM", in View-master B 5802)

More fog from yesterday

After I finished cleaning up yesterdays foggy photos (or is that phoggy fotos?) I decided that this one was worth sharing also.  It is also from the Park Ridge East neighborhood park. 

This has certainly been a strange year for the weather.  We may hit 70 again today and my spinach and kale have all germinated (no complaints).  We finally had nearly 3/4" of rain last week, but are still way short for the year.

Foggy morning

There was a dense fog this morning so I went out and tried to catch a few photographs.  This one is from the local neighborhood park.

More Thanksgiving memories from the past

It seems that we are required to take a long walk after Thanksgiving dinner each year, and I always manage to get a photo of our shadows.  Today's photo is from Huffman Mill last year (for two years ago in Chrisney, click here).  I cheated and Photoshopped out a dog.

Memories from earlier Thanksgivings.....

I was sorting out some photos from previous Thanksgivings and I keep coming up with these strange UFO's that keep being reported in Southern Indiana during Thanksgiving week....

OK, Here's my feather

I guess if you have a microscope you have to look at a feather.  I didn't have anything else for today so I went ahead and took a photo of a feather I found in the back yard.  This is not it is all that spectacular (shot at about 40x) but it is better than nothing! (as usual, click on the image to enlarge it)

Winter garage

This is one of the reasons I have never put my car in the garage.  It looks like I have moved about half of my garden indoors!  Most of the hanging plants have survived several years in this way, and as I pointed out earlier, I like to overwinter lemon grass and several other "semi-hardy" plants that would not otherwise make it.  Actually, we will be eating on quite a few of the veggies in this photo.  There are two pots of Swiss chard as well as quite a few mints.

Believe me, this is much better organized this year!

Have you looked at your teabag lately?

We have been trying different teas and recently I keep running across these cute little "fishnet" teabags.  They are shaped like a tetrahedron (ha!-my crystallography background comes through) and work quite well.  I cut on apart (after drinking the tea) and looked at it under the microscopy.  The length of each "square" is 1/3 mm.

I guess should save up a few and make a net for catching little pond critters!

Things we miss...

Back before English Indiana was moved and bulldozed, this was a wonderful store--Sam Benz and Sons.  Floods and time took their toll.  The government had the town moved to a higher spot and the former town site is now a golf course. 

Like my hairdo?

It has been a while since I have had any photomicrographs, so I looked around to see what I could find.  I still had the Virgin Tiger Moth that I "featured" earlier so I looked at it under my Nikon Alphaphot.  I must say this guy has a gorgeous head of hair!

This is shot at about 100x (probably 2mm in width).

Spelunking in a different CAVE

I dug this photo out of my archives this last week and enhanced it a bit with Photoshop.  This was taken when there was still a CAVE ("Cave Automatic Virtual Reality") system on the IUB campus.  The goggles and a special tracking system allowed you to move around inside the image being viewed (in this case a large molecule).  I am not sure why I am down on my knees---

I can assure you that I never worked with any molecules that complex.  We just used them to impress visitors and make people think we were smart.

Order is essential in science....

This photo will only appeal to a few select people in the world.  Chemists who work with air sensitive compounds use a "glovebox" filled with nitrogen or another inert gas to keep their compounds from reacting (sometimes violently) with the oxygen we normally breath.  Needless to say order and neatness is essential when working in this environment.....

I am confident that the researcher in charge of this glovebox knew exactly where everything was located.  I do wonder about the Coke can in the middle of the top shelf.  How do you drink from it?

Backyard Birds--9

Every time I try to get a good shot of a Blue Jay at the close feeder they get spooked so I took this one on the "back" feeder. It is interesting that there were few Blue Jays around most of the summer but they have reappeared in the past few weeks.

Backyard Birds--8

I snapped this picture late last fall, but  the Cedar Waxwings visit my yard several times during the year.  They almost always attack the flowering crab apple tree in my neighbors yard, but I have also seen them in the Japanese honeysuckle in the back yard.  When they do come there are often several dozen at a time.

Dogwood leaves

The photo club was having a "photo share" with the topic "within 15 feet of your front door".  I was actually taking a photo of something else when I decided the Dogwood tree leaves looked colorful, so I snapped a shot just in case I didn't come up with anything better (I did, but I like this one anyway!).  This was taken the last week of October when the Maple tree had not fully taken on its fall colors.

I looked this morning and all the Dogwood leaves are gone, as are most of the Maple tree leaves in the background--welcome to winter!

Backyard Birds--7

I don't see the Red-bellied woodpecker that often, but when he shows up he is certainly noticeable.  He and the Downy woodpeckers occasionally will work on the suet, but often are just working on the trees in the backyard.

You can almost see the red belly on this one.

Metz Carillon

This is an interesting photo.  I occasionally go to the Student Recreational Sports Center to walk when the weather is bad.  I was there one morning shortly after sunrise and saw the Metz Carillon through the window.  I had my little MP3 player that also acts as a radio and camera (and other stuff I don't use).  I don't usually use the camera (you can see why), but I snapped the picture anyhow.  I think it actually looks pretty interesting--almost like a water color (click to enlarge).

Winter garden time

It just got down to freezing again last night, but they promised that it would be a hard (low 20's) freeze tonight.  I went ahead yesterday and erected two of my "cold frames" to see if I can get some veggies again this winter.  I planted one row of Olympia spinach and one row of kale.  I think I am about two weeks (or more) behind my planting time last year.  It took quite a bit of effort to till the two rows--there still has been almost no rain here for nearly three months now.  I probably should pick what Swiss Chard is left today.

Haircut time in the garden for the Cymbopogon

We have only had light frosts so far, but the temperature is supposed to drop to the mid-twenties this week, so this was a good day to give my Lemon Grasses (Cymbopobon) a haircut and put them in storage in the garage.    I started doing this four years ago.  It essentially remains dormant as long as I don't water it or leave it in the light too much.  In the spring I take it out of the clay pot and break it up into clumps for replanting in the garden.

What is wonderful is to mulch the trimmed grass with the lawnmower--the lemon fragrance is almost overwhelming!

Backyard Birds--6

I guess to be honest I have to include this guy even though I don't really like him!  I shouldn't complain too much since last year it seemed like we had hundreds of crows in the early fall and this year there have been only a few (knock on wood!). 

Backyard Birds--5

Today's bird is a White-throated Sparrow.  I confess I didn't notice the yellow "eyebrows" when I snapped the picture (click on photo to enlarge if you want to see the eyebrows).

My new camera lens

My new camera lens is wide angle, but has a few drawbacks.  The main one is that it is built into the front door.