The Great White (Egret) Way

Revisiting shots from my laptop that I had previously skipped over, I've retrieved a couple of additional shots of the Great White Egret (Ardea alba).

I like the first one for the sharpness of the foreground detail, combined with the blur of the background.  In an earlier posting of the Great White, the water was reflecting the blue sky.  In this one, you can see the actual greenish funk of a long-used rookery pond.

The following shot takes us into the tree tops, where an egret is coming in for a landing with some nest-building material in its beak.

My notion of a touchdown

Since my trip to Florida in early July, I have been neglecting my laptop, which contains the photos I had taken while down there.  A second glance at the files today led me to pull out this plum:

Meet the Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), shown here touching down for a landing.  This was shot at the same rookery at which I had seen a Great White Egret.

I've severely cropped the image to show the detail of the bird landing, but I've also made it look more "natural."  Below is the full frame, which doesn't hide the somewhat  urban locale of the rookery.

Perspective be Damned

I've fiddled with this June 8th picture of Woodburn hall perhaps too much (June 10 and June 14), but I wanted to return to it one more time.  Just this last time, I promise.  Yeah, right.

This time, I wanted to do a few things differently.

One is the aspect ratio. Previous shots were all cropped to some "standard" proportion.  This one is as I had framed it within my viewfinder.  Proportions be damned.

Another thing is that I pushed my meager PhotoShop skills to remove the handicap railing that I had previously cropped out or had left in to clutter the bottom of the picture.  It required a bit of reconstructive surgery, but my hope is that the scars and blemishes are not where someone is apt to look.

Finally, I've opted to render this image in black & white, albeit with some sepia tones.  Once again, I used the Silver Efex Pro plugin for PhotoShop to tweak the settings.  The red brick on blue sky has been replaced by a study in tones and shades, FWIW. 

I think I'll submit this one to the amateur photo contest for the county fair.

Pysanka for Dog Days

There's nothing particular about the dog days of August that would inspire me to try a new pysanka design in Illustrator.  It's just been a while, and I felt like futzing.

The main part consists of Illustrator stars -- a couple of eight-points and a four-point.  The "bug antennae" added to the outer white star lend a unique look to the design.

Here's the pattern that I used for the symbol.

The scroll work between the diamonds is recycled from an earlier Poppy design.

Here's the completed egg:


I wish that I could take credit for this design, but I've adopted it from So-Jeo's work.

Abort/Retry/Fail

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a little thing about sneezing -- or sneezures, as they have been called.  An article today in Eureka Alert, Allergies? Your sneeze is a biological response to the nose's 'blue screen of death' offers some insight.

Much like a temperamental computer, our noses require a "reboot" when overwhelmed, and this biological reboot is triggered by the pressure force of a sneeze. When a sneeze works properly, it resets the environment within nasal passages so "bad" particles breathed in through the nose can be trapped. The sneeze is accomplished by biochemical signals that regulate the beating of cilia (microscopic hairs) on the cells that line our nasal cavities.

Wouldn't it be amusing if one could associate the fatal error with an audible sneeze from the PC's speaker?  On the other hand, if I had a computer that rebooted like my nose, I think I'd toss it.

A Pity There are no Firewheels in West Virginia

Meet the Firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella), which is also know as Indian Blanketflower or Sundance.

This pretty native wildflower grows in much of central United States, from northern Mexico to southern Canada. Oddly, however, it does not grow in West Virginia, to the best of my knowledge.  A cursory bit of Googling confirms this.

This specimen was shot in a vacant lot in North Port, Florida.

Florida Gothic

The creek behind my mother's house in Warm Mineral Springs, Florida, has always fascinated me with its black water and trees hung with Spanish moss.  It is fed by the actual Warm Mineral Spring, which maintains a steady 86-degree F.  During the winter, warmth-seeking Manatees work their way up this far and loll around, letting fish pick things off of them.

This shot was taken around 5:30 p.m. on July 6,  from the next property downstream (Canon EF-S60mm f/2.8 Macro USM at f/4.0).  In the center of the picture, you can see a part of her lawn that juts out in a slight bend.  The reflections in the black water also add an interesting photogenic touch.

I thought that this picture would be an interesting test of a PhotoShop plug-in suite called Silver Efex Pro, which lets you create some nice Black & White photography effects.  Here's the same shot as above, rendered with a faux infrared effect:

There are of course, a variety of old sepia effects.  I liked this antique sepia effect with vignetting:

Beyond the dozens of presets, you can also add your own tweaks to the settings. The two shots above are with just the default presets. I could play around with these effects for quite a while.