Spring Is Interrupted for this Wintry Break!

Returned home late Saturday from an excellent Ebertfest film festival - likely in an upcoming blog post. Then awoke Sunday morning for falling snow! My immediate reaction was to go out to catch some Spring flowers in a fresh coating of snow, but it didn't stop! It literally snowed all day, nearly to sunset. A nice, slushy snow just perfect for snowballs!


I went out a number of times to catch the flowers, mostly daffodils and blue scilla as the snow blanketed them. The crocus are long finished, and there wasn't much else around in my yard. But it kept falling and falling... I wouldn't have dreamed enough would come down to bury everything, but then it did!


By late in the day it had slowed, and even stopped for periods, but then picked up. I figured there was about 6" of accumulation, but the official St Charles numbers were than 8.3" had fallen! In the scilla shot at left, you might spot my footprints as I tromped through the scilla patch. And at right a red trillium is barely recognizable in its blanket...


The next morning dawned clear and bright. The weatherman advised that "you can shovel the snow yourself, or wait a few hours for nature to do it for you"! Sure enough, temps in the 50s erased all but a few bits by mid-afternoon!  At left is the view of the Fox River from my back yard, and at right, Canadian Geese footprints preserved in snow...


I perhaps should have done a time-lapse of the snow disappearing, but was content just recording the flowers re-appearing after the 24-hour blanket of snow had dissipated. All indications are that the Winter break was brief and Spring's arrival will now continue!

Hints of Spring!

Am back to the Midwest at "Ketelsen East" to enjoy the emergence of Spring! It looks like I arrived with perfect timing - there are mostly shades of brown and gray, trees bare, temps still definitely on the cool side after Tucson temps have been flirting with the 90s! But there are definite hints that the new growth of Spring isn't far away! Just a couple meters from the house, in fact, growing up in bits of asphalt piled high by the snowplow clearing the roads in my absence, are some beautiful crocus flowers. Shown here at left is the biggest plant - barely reaching 3" (8cm) tall, so I needed the macro lens for these shots!




And as soon as I shoot the yellow crocus above I notice some slightly smaller white crocus too! I had to check with my neighbor Elaine on the ID - I've not sure I've been early enough to catch these beauties in years past. She claims she has some purple crocus in her yard, but I've not been there to catch those yet.  I like the gentle pale yellow trim on these white flowers - they were kind of hard to spot with the brown grass background, but there were quite a few plants scattered about.






As I mentioned, the temps have been cool, and the flowers close up as the temperature drops as sunset approaches. The photo at left (same yellow crocus as above) was taken shortly before sunset, and today, with temps never going much above 40, I think they stayed closed all day! Lows tonight will be 24, so hope they survive the hard freeze tonight - will check on them tomorrow...

Note that most all of these photos were taken with the macro lens, and in order to extend the range of sharp focus at these considerable magnifications, several shots taken at different focus settings were taken and combined in Photoshop. Known at focus-stacking, they can considerably extend the range of sharpness in these photos...







In my searches for other things just poking out of the ground, I thought the bud at left might be the first sprouting of my beloved Trillium, that I spend time shooting every year. But from my first discovery of these sprouts (only about 1/2" tall) to today, they are starting to reveal their blue colors - Blue Scilla, which will carpet my yard blue in a week or two! Click on the right image for the full-size that shows the appearance of blue colors... Will try to keep an eye out for new members of the Spring population!

More Outings with the "Big Six"

I'm now into the second week of ownership of the Canon 6D, and now have a few hundred frames under the belt. I like it a lot, but have still to dive into the owners manual. Sounds like a good exercise while flying back to Tucson in a few days. For now, I'm comfortable using it for macro stuff around the house, and doing some family portraits, so will bring you some of the highlights.

Here be anaglyphs!
A day or two after we arrived, the iris patch adjacent to our house started blooming. Unfortunately, a heavy rain hit a day later and knocked them all to the ground, so no iris images... Fortunately, a few days after that our neighbor Elaine's peony bushes started blooming, so have some flower pictures to post. She has a nice collection of various hybrids with an astounding range of features... I thought I've posted about them before, but darned if I can find them in any searches... In my opinion, one of the most spectacular are these that almost look like tulips, with a large white bowl with a tangle of snake-like structures in the center. I thought that the 3D anaglyphs showed it off the best, so here is a wide shot at left, and one of just the center at right.



Another variety is a 2-tone striking blossom with a pale yellow center, with outer wreath of pale lavender. Then, while understated, there is a pure white one sort of like the tulip outer structure above, but with a shredded white interior. Again, 3D anaglyphs work best in showing these shapes, if not the colors. Sometimes the colors are affected by the red/blue filters in the glasses. The effect doesn't seem too bad for these, but does affect the yellow center in the flowers above...

Ok, enough of the 3D for this post - STEREO MODE - OFF!



Finally one of the last striking peonies of Elaine's collection is a light purple or dark lavender, with an interior of the yellow serpent-like structures of the tulip-shaped version above. Sorry I don't know the names for these varieties, but looking at the thousands of Google images, I'm not unconvinced there may be hundreds if not thousands of varieties! We have a small patch we planted a few years ago, but not sure what variety it is. The picture at right shows the current state - still a ball, with some ants feeding on the nectar leaking out of the bud... Hopefully it will bloom before we take off to remember what kind we have! BTW, the image at right is a 5-frame focus stack with the macro to make sure all the details are in focus...




We made another trip to Iowa on Sunday - I guess it must be a tradition! We had a dinner/pool party at brother Jim's house in DeWitt. It is a great gathering place - besides the pool and what would be called a lanai or lounge area in some places, their entire basement is a "party room" with full kitchen, TV room and large meet and greet area. Sister-in-law Karen came on RAGBRAI with us one year, and gave us a great surprise by inviting our buddy Carl to drive in from Cedar Rapids! What a nice shock to see him walking up. Besides our 20-year RAGBRAI history, he and Melinda are buddies on the Facebook, so we both spent some quality time with him. As he left, we took the snapshot at left - itself a test of the 6D. The TV room is a dark place and here the camera's ISO is set to 25,600, and this shot is a 125th of a second at F/5. This is also a significant crop, so a little noise and sharpness loss is visible in the full-size image shown here, but not too bad...

I spent a little time with niece Sandy and their 16-month-old Natalie. Now when Jeff (Sandy's husband) and his siblings were small, whenever a camera appeared, they went into "performance" mode - always a quick, easy smile, and easy to pose and photograph. While with mom at right she was more interested in eating her snack, at right you can see the start of her "performance" mode teethy grin! Perhaps she hasn't finalized "the look", but she is on her way!






And I've been just hanging around taking the occasional photograph around the house too. I saw a shot across the river from us when we first arrived, but needs a dead-calm river, which we haven't had much of lately. Shown at left is a line of colored chairs that caught my eye. The morning was calm, but not quite calm enough - still some water movement. The 105mm kit lens (the longest lens I've got along) doesn't make it large enough, especially for the full-size sensor of the 6D, but I did what I could.

Another of my activities here is my daily (sometimes twice daily!) bike rides on the recumbent. It has been really nice to get out every day for some physical activity. I still look at the recumbent as a little dodgy in traffic - tough to start from a stop, and with the upright position, I can't see behind me well. So mostly I go to the local Riverbend Park and take advantage of a mile-or-so path around the periphery. No motorized traffic, and only a few dog-walkers and other bikers to watch out for. Anyway, coming up the hill around a little pond with the curve of the path leading to the horizon, I thought it might make a nice picture, and indeed, I like it! So that is the reason for the image at right. The fence at left is a dog run, the fence at left is a small skate park, and I think you can see the small pavilion for all-weather events and playground equipment at center too. A nice, all-purpose place to spend some time...

Fifty Shades of Green!

We've just arrived in Illinois for a few days in the Midwest. Hitting the ground running, we've already been to Iowa to visit Dean's family, and are relaxing at home for a few days now to catch our breath. With all of Melinda's treatments, we've had to miss a few trips here - have not been back since the start of Winter! If nothing else, we're catching up on our shades of green! Many of the Spring flowers are long gone, but it looks like we're going to get rained on a lot, and the green is a welcome respite from the hot and greys of the desert.

We woke to the sounds of rain on the roof this morning, Melinda turned over to go back to sleep - I watched a little "Sunday Morning", then roamed the yard for the first time for a few shots. As I've stated in the past, if there isn't anything that catches your attention, get out the macro and move in for something interesting! So mounted up the macro lens with a small extension tube to let me move in even closer. At left is some of the rain leftovers on the back of a fallen oak leaf, and at right the same on a broad grass leaf. I've posted similar shots before - I love the effect of the close-up of the water drops acting like little magnifying glasses!

Another tool I've added to the arsenal lately is a long 300mm telephoto lens that focuses to 4 feet!  Supposedly it can be used to good effect as a "faraway macro" to chase down those shy creatures like dragonflies and butterflies that got away from me this morning with the normal macro.  In a test a little later today, at left shows how well it worked on some of the happy (and GREEN) ferns growing near the house.

We escaped to a movie this afternoon (Mad Max: Fury Road), then met niece Kathy for dinner afterwards. On the way home there looked to be a beautiful sunset with clearing to the west. The setting sun illuminated some low mammatus clouds and formed a spectacularly sight from our house - luckily lasting long enough for me to grab the camera.

And with that, I'll close for today with the simple observation that Melinda and I have been married 7 years today. The ceremony was about 30 yards from where I'm sitting, in our yard. It also marks the 7th anniversary of this blog, which she started, and I continue. It has been a great ride - I hope all of you continue to join us vicariously through reading, or living through it with us in person. It is nice having you along!

Illinois Leftovers!

I just realized there were plenty of images from our recent Midwest trip that hadn't made it into the blog and really needed to...  It is always amazing to me to see the change in vegetation from one trip to another a month or two later.  Certainly through the end of July when we were there, about the most common prairie flower was Queen Anne's Lace. It is a striking plant, and reading about it, is quite amazing.  I didn't know, for instance, that the common carrot we eat was cultivated from the plant, and is often referred to as a wild carrot.  Also now known is that it is not native to the Americas, but was introduced from Europe and is considered an invasive species!  The exposure at left is of a large flower not far from our house near the Fox River, over 15cm (6") diameter.  Shown in cross section, the diagonal struts support the umbel (think umbrella!) floret arrays.  Interestingly, the red center flower is seen below the umbel surface and is seen in the profile.  This exposure is a 3-frame focus stack, combined in Photoshop.

The name "Queen Anne's Lace" is from both its lacy appearance, and from the normally present single red bloom in the center said to represent a droplet of blood from a needle prick in making the lace.  The namesake Anne is said to be the queen of England or her great grandmother Anne of Denmark. 

With the exception of the singular central red blossom the open flowers around our place are pure white when open.  But as shown at right, the opening flower shows a rim of pink before fully open.  Both right and left images are single exposures taken on a windy day...

While walking through some of the rehabbed prairie areas, the variety of flowers was pretty stunning, and some forms that were unfamiliar to me.  Unfortunately, my book of native plants and flowers are 1900 miles away, and Google wasn't of much help, so I can't name this one.  Other than sharing their lavender color, you are on your own.  The left image was taken along the Fox River, and is a 5-frame focus stack. 

At right is what I believe is Monarda fistulosa, from the mint family.  Every trip back, it is like my eyes are opened to new species, and I do not remember seeing these firework-like flowers before.  But they are quite striking and the cause of some of the lavender-colored blobs in the background of the image in the preceding paragraph.

In closing, there were some quite nice thistle blooms along our property line with our neighbors to the south.  All flowering plants were popular with the pollinators, and this bumblebee was having a field day.  Of all the frames I took (many, since he seemed content to feed while I shot) this is my favorite with both the blossom and bee in profile.  Too active for multiple frames to focus-stack, this one caught much of the flower and bee in focus, including his grappling hooks on its legs...  Use of the on-camera flash was essential!

I think I've just about exhausted the images from our July trip.  We're already thinking of a return for September.  I suspect the Queen Anne's Lace will be long-gone, but the goldenrod should be in season, and who knows what else.  Whatever it is, I'm looking forward to it!

In Search of Prey!

I'm thinking of a new motto: "Anything worth doing is worth doing to the extreme!"  With yesterday's post about the "ceremonial first dandelion" of the season, today's clear skies seemed to multiply their appearance by a large factor.  So I was wondering about pushing the macro lens a bit to see what it would do.  Besides that closeup lens, I had packed a set of extension tubes, the "old fashioned" way of getting closer to the object by extending the lens further from the camera body (mounted between lens and camera), allowing much closer focusing.  The picture at left shows the setup - I used a ball mount on the underside of the tripod center column, to allow the correct angle for low targets.  I also used a painter's drop cloth to lay on the ground and the intervalometer to take images without jiggling the setup.  The hard part was in using the new camera (a Canon T3) upside down like this, with all the controls scattered all over the new camera, then reversed up-down and left-right!  Oh, and did I mention the wind?  There were scattered leaves blowing across the yard it was so strong!  I even tried using an umbrella to help block it, with little success.  The only thing going for me is that dandelions are pretty sturdy and low enough to the ground that they weren't affected as much, but I still needed to wait for the wind to let up, and shoot at larger lens openings to use faster shutter speeds.

The results were quite amazing!  Despite the wind, the magnification afforded was significantly higher than I've used before and shown here.  One of my favorites is the view across the flower at the forest of pollen-covered stigma.  The stigma split at the end, forming a pir of curling lobes.  As you would expect, the depth of field of the macro setup with extension tubes is quite small, and, in fact, focus-stacking was used to increase the depth of field across this view.  14 frames (!) were combined while changing focus slightly between shots to get all parts of the flower center in focus!

But I was after smaller prey!  As spotted in one of the frames yesterday, there were little pink aphids even on the just-opened flowers, so I was sort of searching for those tiny insects.  I had some luck right away.  This dandelion at left had a couple feeding on it, this aphid seeming to pose for me patiently while taking this 7-frame focus stack.  At left is a nearly full-frame view, and the crop at right from the same image is shown at the full-camera resolution.  I'm quite amazed at the resolution - pollen can be easily resolved, as well as details on the aphids, though to the naked eye they could barely be detected at all even when knowing where to look! 

There was nothing magical about the focus-stacking, it was only used to widen the depth of field in the above image.  I also shot a number of single-frame shots of our little friend, this one at left about the best one, again, showed here at the full-camera resolution.  This shot was taken at just about the close-focus limit of the macro setup, so is just about as good as this setup allows...

While this stuff seems amazing, given the lowly dandelion as subject, the plant itself is pretty amazing!  I found an interesting site about microscopic dandelion structure if anyone wants to learn more.

Parts of the yard are carpeted in what Melinda calls "snowdrops", and I tried imaging them though they are much harder to work with in the wind than the dandelions.  They sit atop a slender stalk, and even though small, they are buffeted a lot by any breeze.  This is a 7-frame focus stack, but unlike the dandelion close-ups, pollen grains can't be resolved though the color variations are striking...

Finally, later in the afternoon, another target presented itself!  Canada Geese are a common sight around here all winter long as some stay even in the Midwest's cold temperatures.  But yesterday the adults were seen with their goslings feeding in the yard.  I grabbed a telephoto lens (a Nikon 500 F/8), and even though nearly 40 yards away, only got a couple shots before they headed into the Fox River.  They err on the side of safety with potential predators, so take off when anything strange (like me!) make an appearance.  We've also got a duck nest nestled against the house, but have about given up on our chance of seeing ducklings this trip...

First Ceremonial Dandelion and a "New" Camera!

I inherited a "new" camera today - a Canon T3 that my sister-in-law Susan received as a Christmas gift 18 months ago...  She passed suddenly last November, and while most of her estate has been settled, the camera needed a good home, so it came to me.  She had only taken 265 frames with it, I took #266 this morning... 

It's debut was with the macro lens, trying it out on the first ceremonial dandelions that I saw peeking out from our yard.  They are still far from fully open, in fact, they are hard to spot looking out the sunroom window, but easier to see in a brief walk.  This first frame, being an oblique view, benefited from focus stacking - I took 7 frames as the focus shifted from the near side to the far side of the flower (all hand held with the macro!), then the sharp portions of each were assembled in Photoshop.  It worked well, and if you load the full-size view (click on the image), you can even spot a few cream-colored aphids that I didn't spot until seeing the full-size image on the computer screen!

The second frame here at right is a single shot, looking straight down, so no need for any focus stacking - the depth of field was deep enough to keep the blossom in focus.  All pictures were taken at F/8 and 160th second at ISO 400.  Will have to wait and see if it warms enough to get any in full bloom before we return to Tucson - these are still a little shy around the cool temperatures!

More 3-D!

With all the flower pictures we've taken here in Illinois this trip, I've been working on more 3-D images.  If they give you headaches, tough!  I like them, so will continue working on them.  The idea of having your brain reconstruct a stereo image from 2 slightly different images is fascinating to me...  These are for cross-eyed viewing, crossing your eyes slightly to view the right picture with your left eye and the left picture with your right results in a center image with depth!  Do try it - it is amazing when it happens!  It may be easier to do it with the thumbnails, then click on the image to load the full-scale shot and try it again...  All these images were taken with my 100mm macro lens, including the moon/tree picture at the end...

First up is the recurved red trillium.  As I mentioned in the last blog - the flowers are unspectacular, but unusual, so it responds well to 3D, especially shooting with low angles and close up.  Both of these views are from the same pair of images.  They don't always come out this sharp, but the closeup shots, near the full resolution of the camera sometimes shows amazing details.  These are also all taken hand held, usually with a brief gap between them after waiting for the wind to subside...  And by the way, these are assembled in an early version of Photoshop Elements that came with one of my cameras - images are brought into "photomerge" and adjusted in alignment before the software assembles them side-by-side into the images you see here...

Next up is the white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) and here the larger-scale image is better, showing the depth in the more-interesting center part of the flower.

And in a blatant attempt to improve the 3-D moon shot from the 5 Feb, 2012 post, presented here is tonight's version.  I still like last year's image better - funny how sometimes you can't improve on a single lucky shot, but I'll keep trying...