Explore

 As you can no doubt tell, I've been really into photography lately.  I've been keeping my photos online in a photo sharing site called Flickr.  I had to check just now and learned that I've been on that site since '05.

Right now I want to talk about the "Explore" feature in Flickr.  I'll let them explain what it is:

An "explored" photo on Flickr is an image file selected by Flickr's automated algorithm to be featured on the daily Flickr Explore page. 

It is not a special type of file or format; rather, it is a regular photo from a user's photostream that the platform highlights for its high engagement and "interestingness" 

How Flickr Explore Works 

1. Daily Selection:  The algorithm highlights roughly 500 photos each day out of millions uploaded.
2. Interestingness Score:  selection is based on a math formula that weighs user engagement—such as views, favorites (faves), and comments—usually gathered within a short 24-hour window.
3. Community Activity:  Meaningful interactions, tagging, and active participation in groups also influence whether a photo gets chosen.

I guess that the aesthetic values don't play a major role in selection.  It must have been my meaningful interaction.  That said, I just to announce that I've had my twentieth photo "Explored."  The Explored photos have most been for the last five years or so.  My picture originally appeared in the "Crazy Tuesday" group.  The theme was bottle stoppers (e.g., corks, caps, etc.).  Here's what I did:

Believe it or not, I shot this with my older Canon 77D with the cropped sensor with which

I've actually had a good number of my explored photos.    The lens was my EFS-17-55mm.  

The shot was in my light box that I had gotten for eBaying.  The aperture was set on f/16, the speed was 1/10 of a second, lens was set at 35mm, and the ISO was at 1600.  This was taken hand-held while I sat in a chair. I used a couple of my eBaying lights that came with the light box.  Little halogen lights were both on the left side.

As of this moment, this picture has had 2, 478 views and 90 faves.

Unpowered Flowers

 Not too long ago, I purchased a Konica Hexanon 35mm f/2 lens to use with my mirrorless Canon R6 Mark II.  I bought this lens on eBay, paying a premium price for the cosmetic condition and desirability. Here's a short review from the Lens Legend web site:

Konica Hexanon AR 35mm f2 is a premium lens from the Konica AR lineup. A whole stop faster than the other 35mm, it was more expensive, and therefore now much rarer to find.

I took some backyard flower shot with this lens today.  I think the results are quite nice.

It's a Candy Cane Zinnia, also known as a Peppermint Stick Zinnia.  The little photobomber is in pretty good focus, too.

Here's a volunteer sunflower that grew up under one of the bird feeders.

Both of these images were shot at a 1/60 per second shutter speed and at an ISO of 100.  Unfortunately the Fotodiox AR - RF lens adapter doesn't record the aperture setting, but I recall setting the diaphragm at 5.6 for this shot.

The following shot is an inset of an orange Zinnia angustifolia taken at 400th of a second and 100 ISO.  All of these shots were handheld.  I cropped down on the orange zinnia to show off the sharpness of this lens:

If I shot using a tripod, I'm certain that this would be in better focus.  Of course, the breeze didn't help either.

Because vintage Konica SLR glass has one of the shortest flange focal distances of its era, it could never be cleanly adapted to older DSLRs. However, it works flawlessly on the mirrorless Canon R6 Mark II.

The Flash

 Previously, I mentioned that I got an AK Diffuser.  These things are purportedly made to order, based upon the type of flash unit/camera combo you have.  In my case it was a Canon Speedlite 580EX coupled to a Canon R6 Mark II.  That flash is pretty old and has been discontinued by Canon for some years.  To compound things, the flash was very fussy about what camera settings it would work with.

I opted to get the Godox V860IIIC as a replacement for the Speedlite.  I got mine from B&H Photo for the $229 asking price.  To cover the cost of this extravagance, I sold a bunch of old silver coins from my coin collection for around $320 -- more than enough.  I'm thinking, hell, I'm 72 and I can't take them with me.  In addition, most of those coins were pretty worn and of little or no collector's value.  I was told that even some of the uncirculated coins would be melted down.

So in upgrading my flash unit, I was taking a big chance that my AK Diffuser would work with the new flash.  I had spoken with a customer support representative at B$H, and he told me the Godox was not going to fit the diffuser.  I also tried ChatGPT, and it, too, said it was a "no."  I wanted a third opinion and asked the Google AI for advice.  It asked me to snap a picture of the diffuser, and it said that due to the Velcro attachments, it WAS likely to fit.

Guess what?  When the flash arrived I immediately tried it with the diffuser, and it fit snugly.  I've shot a few things with it, and I discovered that the TTL setting on the flash worked very well.  To increase the exposure a little bit, I could get away with using a lower speed than I usually did.  Speeds in the range of 1/30 and 1/60 per second.  Something that I had read earlier said that slower speeds can work pretty well because the duration of the flash was enough to dampen the effects of camera shake.

In a Pickle

 I've been bitten by the pickling bug, having bought a case of quart Ball jars and a kit consisting of caps with plugs, fermentation locks and glass weights.

My first attempt came to a sad end.  I tried to make sauerkraut in a jar, but I didn't follow any sort of recipe, opting instead to make it the same way my parents did.  Except instead of a big wooden barrel, I used one of those quart Ball jars.  I think I did a poor job of mashing the chopped cabbage down, because I was not able to generate much liquid from the cabbage.  That and the warmth of summer, my cabbage started to mold instead of fermenting.

From there, I tried my hand at pickled cucumbers.  I had very little dill weed, so I tried to compensate with other spices, like mustard seed, coriander seed and garlic.  I found a recipe online that had vinegar, water, salt and not much else.   In retrospect, I wished I has something to make/keep the cucumbers crunchy, but the end result was not too bad.  I'm down to my last pickle now.

Today, I murdered a bag of miniature cucumbers and made some cucumber kimchi using a recipe from this video:   Easy Korean Spicy Cucumber!  I had something much like this at one of the meals at the Black Bear restaurant.  I liked that "kimchi" so much that I committed to making a batch of my own.  I had just a moment ago done some quality control of my batch, and I pronounce it delicious. 

In anticipation of more things to pickle, I've planted a raised bed garden, which circumvents the perpetual problem that I've had with weeds.  What I didn't cover with a raised bed, I covered in plastic sheeting and cardboard in hope of killing off the goat weed that's been plaguing my ability to garden.  I've planted both some pickling and  eating cucumbers, two type of beans (pole and bush), some zucchini, lettuce, beets, tomatoes and broccoli.  Hoping for the best.  So far, I've harvested a couple of stunted tomatoes and some young zucchini.  I'd hate to have to put a price tag on my garden.

Everclear

I screwed up and left this post in draft mode for the past week. 

Mike and I went to the Everclear concert at The Ruby Amphitheater at Hazel Ruby McQuain Park.  The opening band was The Sages.  I had never hear of them before, but the played well to a full crowd.  Everclear, a popular band from the 90s,  played to an SRO audience.   I guess people like them a lot more than Leftover Salmon, which I saw last week.  

I only had a passing familiarity with Everclear's music.  I was in the minority there.   People were singing along to a lot of their songs.

Well, this time I brought my camera and a Canon RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens.   

Here's a good shot of The Sages:

As you can see, it paid to sit higher up and back.  We could actually see the band over the heads of all of the people standing in front of the stage.

Here are a couple of shots of Everclear:

A Visit to the Morgantown Botanical Garden

 As the the title implies, I toured the Morgantown Botanical Garden yesterday afternoon.  I saw this as an opportunity to try out my recent purchase of an AK Diffuser, which provides even lighting for macro photographs.  These are purportedly custom made for specific camera and flash combinations.

Using this diffuser, I took a variety of mushroom pictures in the woods.  Unpracticed as I am with using my ancient Canon Speedlite flash, I still had to resort to cranking the ISO level on my camera, alternating between 1000 and 2000 ISO. I've downloaded the manual for the Speedlite 580 EX, so now I can research how to increase the amount of light being emitted. 

Here's a cute little Yellow American Blusher (Amanita flavorubens): 

 

This is a tiny little Winter Russula (Russula cremoricolor) nestled deeply among the leaf litter:

As you can see, the AK diffuser provided an even lighting for what would normally be a dark, shadowy picture.

Finally, I was able to catch the Great Rhododendron (Charlie Brown), which was blooming in the forest:

If I had any sense at all, I should check out the Deckers Creek trail or the cliff at Coopers Rock State Forest for some more picturesque wide-angle shots.

The Macro has Landed

 Earlier, I had explained how I needed the old Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens to get the Canon 77D back in the game.   The lens has arrived and it seems to be working fine.

Today's Macro Monday theme on Flickr was "sports," bearing in mind that the representation of sport had to fall with a three-inch diameter.  My choice for that macro was to shoot the hub and spokes of my bicycle.  To try out the new/old lens, I set up a 20-shot stack.  From that, I picked alternating shots and stacked them that way.   This save a lot of processing time, especially since my laptop storage is teetering on "full."  Not owning any specialized photo stacking software, I performed that job in PhotoShop.  I left some blurry areas amongst where some of the spokes crossed over.  I laboriously went in and used the clone stamp and heal tool to fill in the blurred spaces.

Here's the final product:

The stacking really helped to bring out the depth of this picture.  You would have to know what to look for to even suspect that this picture had been edited.  In my defense, I wasn't putting in something that wasn't there, I was restoring some tiny blurry areas that PhotoShop had created when it processed that stack.