Perfect subject



Panorama. It’s never too late to learn a new trick. Colleen suggested… inspired, a true muse. Right time, right place, right subject, a panorama is not for every image. You are looking for something that does not require height and is long (width). Great idea! The mantle Santas were perfect! The room was too busy. And the Santa’s on the table were not squared away. Close but no cigar. That reminds me of Three Kings of Orient are smoking a rubber cigar… till there were none…. Silent Night. Right subject… it makes a rather stunning panorama. Perfect. Apple iPhone has had this trick for a while; it’s easy. Photoshop? You can do it. It’s work. I have lured into how easy Apple is!

Alternately, the images don’t make themselves. There is some planning and thought involved. I got down closer and squared. So, it’s still a work in progress.
Once in a lifetime
Photography of the night sky is an entirely different subject and one I am not likely to master. The skies cleared after a cloudy rainy day and we got to see the confluence of Jupiter and Saturn. Ian and Liz saw the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. I got two white dots. Actually, my camera got the dots. I could only see one by naked eye. And if I shot long exposure, there was streaking due to movement of the planets – us and them. But hey! I got something. …. Two bright lights in the sky. That was exciting. ??? umm… sort of, kind of, oh! What the heck! It was night photography. Hubble telescope, we ain’t. This event, this close happens about every 2000 years. Nice. I’m glad I was here for this one.
PC
Not (PC)! – There was the old joke about Polish people and changing light bulbs. You can’t do that humor. It could incur objection from all sides…. So, how does a Chinese (former) neurosurgeon get to a light fixture 16 feet above his head? (No, retired not dead.) Answer: Two seven foot (P)oles?
I do not own a cherry picker. And if I did, I could not get it into my house. How the #@#$! do you get up 16 feet to change a can light bulb? My spiffy 50, 000 hour LED blew fssst! after about 3 months. Colleen heard it sizzle just before it died. I nearly fell off the ladder the last time around. They make grabbers about 3 foot long. Bulb changer? They sell it at Home Depot. It won’t grab that bulb inside the fixture. Some more cursing #@$#%!!! please. Who the “f” planned this? Internet – they sell a 12 foot grabber. Really?! Damn!! It was not many $. The grabber unscrewed the bulb. The changer (yellow) got the new bulb screwed in. 50, 000 hours. It will be a long time till I change another bulb. Ha ha. It took five minutes with the right tools at hand. The internet? Rent a cherry picker. Build a scaffold.
Do you care?
No, probably not…. Hey! It’s my blog. Ha ha! So, there was glitch in the Nikon scanner. Long story short, you wouldn’t likely care for the details, it needed a couple replacement motors. I just love it when they give me the parts they removed. It’s a nice touch. Now, I have something more – to never throw away.It works again. Dust! Cat hair! They are the bane of clean scanning. You don’t want it in your scanned image. Nope! Not! Ha ha! Try and avoid it. I have an overhead ceiling fan. Ray, the cat, stepped on the remote and turned it one. In a testament to my cleaning skill, the room looked like snow was falling, a blizzard!! It was cat hair and dust from the blades, The visual alone is worth a laugh. I was shocked; Colleen giggled.
Digital
Whether you’re interested or not, I have shot more than 596,000 digital images since June, 2004. That would be 4251 (days) entries in my database out of 6200 or so days in the past 17 years. It’s nice to be able to review my data. It has been quite a journey through digital. I have evolved so much. Parsimony held me back when I used film. The cost of digital has dropped while camera technology improved so much. I am thankful. Truly! There are gems among my early digital. I am happy to say I am better than I was and not as good as I’m gonna be. By way of comparison, I shot about 117,000 slides over 32 years from the 70’s to 2004. I make it a point to try to shoot something everyday.
Insanity
I am unable to reliably compare my mania to others (who scan slides). But, I have an external hard drive with nearly 2 tb of scanned slides. I can tell you there are about 117k legitimate slides. This covers the 1970’s to 2004. In early June, 2004, I received my digital Nikon D70 and David’s graduation was the occasion of the last slides I took. Boom, just like that. I was digital. Jules hated digital for a long time. “They don’t look real.” And she could always tell the difference. Today, she tells me, “But dad, I always have my phone (iPhone 12) and it’s so handy when Noa does something cute.” My darkroom and all its equipment sits in the basement gathering dust. Digital is “free!” I just got 256gb SD cards for $20 a piece. A roll of film today would run around $9 a roll of 36 images. 256gb of memory card will give tens of thousands of images. It’s FREE! I am still poor from my film days and parsimony was ever with me. It’s why I bulk loaded my own Kodak slide film, developed it, and eventually printed a few. When I finally had money, it was a long time to shed those habits. Now, it’s off to CVS or Mpix for prints/enlargements with minimal turnaround time. Efficiency? It takes about a minute to scan one slide. You do the math. External hard drives started at around 40mb and now are up to 12tb. Memory keep dropping in price as my need keeps increasing. No need to be efficient or sparing, there’s always more memory you can get. Eventually, my kids asked, “Dad, why is the dog your screensaver on your phone?” “Because,” I replied, “I like the dog better.” I’ve come a long long way. i hope there is still a ways to go.

It was holiday ritual, the family group shot. In retrospect, any picture was precious no matter who had their eyes closed or was making a funny face. Duty. I’m glad i did it. I wish I had been more diligent. There were a lot of missed opportunities too.

If you would believe it, my kids liked raking leaves. Go figure. And then they would jump into the pile from ladders and trees. The compressed them for me to make bagging easier. It was an annual fall ritual. Fondly, I remember the time.
Some of the earliest slides come from my med school years. Yes, I lost a lot of early memory and experience before I started keeping track.
Changing batteries
I’ve done it before in older Macbook laptops. Then, they (engineers) changed things! The battery was a simple in/out affair sort of like changing a flashlight battery but with a few screws involved. Nope, not any more. When I took the time to read the instructions, it was 90+ steps and required removing the guts of the computer in addition to disconnecting some very fine connectors. It was heart surgery tough. Fortunately, I was a brain surgeon (in a previous career). Skill!! And nerve! Ego! There is a disclaimer that comes with the battery. Let a professional do it! That’s little solace when you already have the battery in hand. However, this is not for the faint hearted! You can see the old battery. It’s old cells are completely bloated. I came by this realization when I was scanning old slides and noticed the bottom of the laptop computer was rocking. Ninety steps later the computer turned back on. Ninety ++ steps!! The keyboard did not work. Keys? Nope! I missed re-connecting the cable. Disassembly, voila! It works! Then, I discovered the keyboard backlight cable had been missed as well. The instructions are explicit. Don’t forget the cables! But, the cables are tiny. I missed them. Finally, it works. It was challenging. Don’t try this at home. I might not the next time out.
Scared
I was in the closet. Don’t ask. We have a window in a closet. Would that make it a room? The window faces northwest in the direction of the Comet Neowise that was in the news. A challenge. I don’t do astrophotography. I still don’t. The weather was cloudy on most nights. Hey! It was the steamy hot part of summer. Nada! Nothing! Nuthin’! I never knew for sure if I was looking in the correct part of the sky. Urban light pollution was abundant. The effort was a miserable failure. Scary? I was in the closet and couldn’t hear Colleen calling. She nearly had a heart attack looking for me. Sorry. I came out of the closet with moon shots. (poor choice of words? Don’t ask.) Discovery?! There is a man in the moon. I have seen him. The ancients were right. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ with it.
Detail
We’re beyond just another pretty flower. I have been striving to get detail – close-up of the inner anatomy of flowers. For some flowers it’s not an easy task. The angle and the light conspire to obscure the target. Bees have it easy. But it’s not so for me and my camera. And then, you get it! Serendipitous? No, skill. Ha ha! It’s more like 50% close your eyes and shoot, and, 50% skill. Eh? Let me tell you that it took all summer to get to the point where I got these shots.
Pan(dem)ic
I am a firm proponent for cameras. After all, right tool, right situation. Soup should not be eaten with an iPhone for a spoon. Alas, I am shoveling shit against the tide. Digital camera sales are 10% what they were in 2010. Aha! Everyone has one. The system is full! Nope! Not hardly, it’s more like everyone uses an iPhone as their prime camera. Can you really squeeze all that power down from my trusty digital camera into the little itty bitty iPhone? Uhhhh… no! But that doesn’t stop most of the world from using iPhone. My lament, a lone voice among so many iPhones. I suppose you can drive either a Hyundai or a Porsche. You choose. The camera fallout: fewer cameras to choose from. It’s not so bad. Hardline phones have evolved into mobile communicators. We see the world through two eyes. There’s no telephoto zoom on my eyeballs. Check the fine detail in the flowers. iPhone would have a hard time matching my camera. Easy or hard, it’s a choice. I shall not let a podiatrist do my brain surgery.
(Happy) – memory

I pulled up a random pic in Lightroom. Boston, near the Old North Church, fall, 2016. How did I know? Colleen’s white winter jacket with liner. I got her those earrings. Nikon D200?? It was retired in 2014. Aha! I had dropped my Nikon D610 to the ground (October 2014) necessitating major repairs. Ha! I almost forgot that!
Jules has said it: “I don’t know what I remember because I’ve seen your pictures all my life.” True enough. Or: my own memory is linked to the cues from the pictures I have taken. … my external brain drive if you would so understand. Otherwise, I would have no direct recollection without the image posted here. But, now, I do recall much of that cold fall trip to Boston. Colleen? Her memory would not be so clear as mine on the events of that day. It seems that taking the picture “cues” my brain differently to recall events. Ha ha! (Photographic) – memory.
Morning star
I got a picture of the morning star. It’s the tiny white dot in the lower right quadrant. Shooting the moon was the challenge. The dynamic range of the image overexposed the moon. I went to manual exposure, got the moon’s detail, and tried to blend it back into the photo. It’s complicated and not perfect but closer to what I saw. … sort of.
Ruby throated
Hummingbird. In flight. Ho hum…. It’s a BIG freakin’ deal!! If you are the consumer, pics like these are a dime a dozen. Someone has come before and patients sat and waited and waited. Amazing! They got a shot and it’s commonplace enough that … yawn. It’s not an easy shot. No way! I got one. The circumstances were just perfect. It won’t happen again for me. That’s what makes this so special.
Good – Bad
The upper right and left are examples (i.e. poor exposure, composition) of pics placed in a newsletter posted by “cat proud” weavers who can’t take proper pics of their beloved cat. I laughed at Colleen. She contends they are sound (cute) photos. I disagree, of course. There’s no excuse for accepting a bad photo.

iPhone or camera? Jules makes a cogent argument for using her iPhone nearly exclusively. It’s always at hand. She will concede a camera is better. But iPhone is right handy. Me? Obviously, I’m all about the camera. (She shot with my camera.) Ha!
Rembrandt light



Rembrandt light. Before I forget, this lighting scheme reminds me of that. I have created a studio set up by chance. We were merely cleaning up and straightening things out. (The spinning wheel has provenance back to the 1860’s.) Colleen thinks I’m a genius. I work along the theory that even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while. Whatever! The effect first worked on my cat. And now it’s wildly successful on another precious subject. Gee, sometimes I am very humbled to get worthy shots.
Exercise
I have a good example of the zoom capability of the Sony RX100 VI. Three successive photos show the telephoto detail of the hydrangea in the distance. How far? … near ½ mile. You can’t see the petals. But, that dot of color indeed is a large hydrangea bush.
Of, course, if you saunter over, you just might get some nice blossoms.