It is still cold in 3D.

I realized I have not had a 3D image on my blog for some time.  I shot a few of the snow this morning, so I decided to go ahead and post one.  You have to have red/green glasses for this to work. (Click on the image to enlarge!)

Last snow? (I hope!)

Last night it was "Saturn" (for those of you who like to know the NWS winter storm names).  It was one of those fast traveling wet snows that left about three inches of fresh snow everywhere.  I love the way a wet snow will stick to anything.  The image below was taken of my patiently waiting tomato cages in the garden.

I would go sit on the garden bench, but it too looks a bit chilly....

Why my coriander won't germinate....

My wife loves cilantro (coriander, Chinese parsley).  I gathered as many seeds as I could last year, but absolutely none would germinate.  I decided to cut one apart to see if it looked ok internally, but when I put the seed (approximately 1/8" in diameter) under the microscope I found out why they don't grow.  A large percentage (well over 60%) had holes 0.025" in diameter "drilled" into the shell.  I don't know what the bug looked like, but it was certainly small!

Scanner photography

It's rather amazing how much junk I carry around in my pocket all the time!

Does it count?

"Scanner  Photography" is kind of fun.  If you place an object on your scanner with the lid open and scan in a slightly darkened room you get an amazingly good image.  I have been playing with the technique recently scanning various items and came up with the following.  The image consists of a single layer of coins (all US, pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters) placed in a hoop on the scanner.  How many coins are there, and what is the total amount of money present?

This is MY squirrel!

I was taking a walk when I saw this Red-Tailed(?) hawk grab a squirrel out of a tree.  He (she?) obviously wanted me to know that this squirrel was taken!

I love the way he is making sure the squirrel doesn't take off (or maybe he is just trying to hide his treasure).

 About an hour later dinner was still in progress.

I love windmills...

Enough said?

Taken in the Potomac State Forest in West Virginia.

A good way to end a vacation!

This was taken this past summer from a Paddle Wheeler on the Connecticut River near East Haddom Connecticut.

You have to take an old steam locomotive to get to the Deep River Landing and then take a cruise up to the large bridge at East Haddom.  It was a wonderful day and a great way to say goodby to the kids!

Another Topaz

Perhaps I should worry that the images produced when using the Topaz filters (http://www.topazlabs.com/) are not photographs at all (even though they start out that way).  I spent some time seeing what the different filters did to different type of photos.  The photo shown below, taken at my sister-in-law's house, struck me as really neat.  The photo was terribly underexposed, taken at sunset, and was not really worth saving (but I seldom delete anything!).  I tried using the "simplify" filters and came up with:

Real? No!  Interesting? Yes! For those wondering, the following is the original photograph.

As always, click on the image for a larger view.

Are you laughing at me?

This has been a strange winter so far. 

This is a shot of the bench in the back yard a few days after the "blizzard of 2012" (December 26th).  I like the way the snow is drooping, making the bench smile at me!  I took the photo of the picnic table just before the snow stopped.  According to the National Weather Service we had 12.5" of snow during the storm.  It took two weeks for the snow to finally melt.

A little more Topaz

I am still trying to see what all I can do with the Topaz programs.  I like the fact that they can be accessed directly from Lightroom, and I can see where it will take a bit of time to really learn their true value.  Here is one that surprised me a bit.  This is a snowflake photo that shows some amazing colors--presumably because of slight color differences that are not visible in the original image.

Keep in mind that the snowflake itself has no color!  As usual, you can click on the image to get the full-scale version.

Photography (or art?)

I recently purchased a copy of Topaz filters (http://www.topazlabs.com/) and started playing with them this past week.  I am actually hoping to  use the program to increase the readability of some old civil war letters I have, but decided to test it on some of my photos (the Creative focus group of the local photo club loves this program!).  It is amazing what one can do with a photo that you think should be interesting, but turns out to be a bummer for one reason or another.  Below is a photo of a sculpture on the IU campus that was "OK", but didn't really look all that good.

I think it is much better than the original!  I will try and post a few other examples over the next few days.