You can buy one of those fish for about $1100 Cdn.
So what do you think? Not abstract enough for APPstract?
FundyBrian’s Explorations
- Thread starter FundyBrian
- Start date
So what do you think? Not abstract enough for APPstract?
A bit high for my budget, unfortunately.
I think it’s perfectly abstract worthy.
It’s been well below freezing for weeks and today we had a mosquito in the house. It must have been tucked into the bark of a piece of firewood I brought inside. It suffered a fatal incident with my hand when it tried to bite me but it made a good subject for a close-up photo with my Moment Macro. The mosquito got a bit out of shape.
A thousand curses upon this new 1000 x 750 size reduction. You can no longer appreciate the wonderful detail that exists in this photo. It looked great on my screen before I sent it. Now the detail is gone. Hmmmph!
I have been successfully making several Focus Stacked images using Camera Pixels but this time I wanted to see if I could make the Focus Stack manually. I used PureShot for my camera, using DNG as file format. I used a focusing rail to move the camera forward part of a mm for each photo giving 10 exposures, and then combined them in Affinity.
This is a 1000 x 750 px crop out of the upper photo. It even shows the paper texture.
A thousand curses upon this new 1000 x 750 size reduction. You can no longer appreciate the wonderful detail that exists in this photo. It looked great on my screen before I sent it. Now the detail is gone. Hmmmph!
I have been successfully making several Focus Stacked images using Camera Pixels but this time I wanted to see if I could make the Focus Stack manually. I used PureShot for my camera, using DNG as file format. I used a focusing rail to move the camera forward part of a mm for each photo giving 10 exposures, and then combined them in Affinity.
This is a 1000 x 750 px crop out of the upper photo. It even shows the paper texture.
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This was a step along the way to the image I posted recently on APPstract. This is a higher resolution version which has its own features of interest even though I preferred the lower resolution rendering for the APPstract.
It started life as a Procreate painting using a variety of brushes. Then it was wrung through some iterations in Painnt.
It started life as a Procreate painting using a variety of brushes. Then it was wrung through some iterations in Painnt.
Urgh, they are horrible looking creatures. Great result though.
I get so busy doing other things I completely forget about this project.
The other day I was just walking by the window and happened to notice a wonderful light in the foggy mist. The top of the sun was visible but the bottom half was obscured by fog. I dashed to the bedroom to collect my iPhone & Moment 58 tele and by the time I got back just a minute later the effect had changed completely.
I made a picture anyhow and soon realized the fog was in constant motion. This was made with the 2x lens plus the Moment 58 tele through a not entirely clean window. There were bits of snow and ice on the outside of the glass. When it is stormy we also get salt spray on the windows from the bay. I did my best to find a clear space. It was too cold outside to open the window for a while. I used two or 3 camera apps, made a couple of HDR sets, and then decided to try the Chromatica app I recently got.
The bigger trees are along the front of my yard about 100 feet away from the house, while the straight line of of treetops is the top of the tree line at the top of the hill across the road, across the field, beyond the gully to the top of the hill - about 600 feet. It is a gradually descending ridge line high at the right and lower progressing left.
This one was made without the Moment 58 but still using the 2x lens so you can compare how much closer the 58 tele appears. Over a period of about 5 minutes I made about 20 photos and every one was different. The fog was in constant motion, rising and falling as well as gradually moving left. This was the only one showing some blue sky through a hole in the fog. The lighter spots in the fog to the left of the sun were bits of ice on the window. With the 58 those spots didn’t appear.
Afterwards, as I was reviewing the photos I wanted to differentiate which were saved RAW and which were tiff, but my check revealed an HEIF file! Yikes, I thought. I know from past experience that if even one HEIF image is in my camera roll then Lightroom freaks out and cannot see a single picture so I had to track down those pesky HEIFs and process them right away and delete the HEIF originals.I found the best way to spot them was using the image browser in the RAW Power app. A little file type tag appears on all the RAW and HEIF images I had made.
I tracked down the source of the HEIFs to be the Chromatica app I was trying and I had not realized it defaulted to HEIF. That was soon changed to RAW to prevent the problem in future.
The two pictures above were from the 8 HEIF images I found.
The other day I was just walking by the window and happened to notice a wonderful light in the foggy mist. The top of the sun was visible but the bottom half was obscured by fog. I dashed to the bedroom to collect my iPhone & Moment 58 tele and by the time I got back just a minute later the effect had changed completely.
I made a picture anyhow and soon realized the fog was in constant motion. This was made with the 2x lens plus the Moment 58 tele through a not entirely clean window. There were bits of snow and ice on the outside of the glass. When it is stormy we also get salt spray on the windows from the bay. I did my best to find a clear space. It was too cold outside to open the window for a while. I used two or 3 camera apps, made a couple of HDR sets, and then decided to try the Chromatica app I recently got.
The bigger trees are along the front of my yard about 100 feet away from the house, while the straight line of of treetops is the top of the tree line at the top of the hill across the road, across the field, beyond the gully to the top of the hill - about 600 feet. It is a gradually descending ridge line high at the right and lower progressing left.
This one was made without the Moment 58 but still using the 2x lens so you can compare how much closer the 58 tele appears. Over a period of about 5 minutes I made about 20 photos and every one was different. The fog was in constant motion, rising and falling as well as gradually moving left. This was the only one showing some blue sky through a hole in the fog. The lighter spots in the fog to the left of the sun were bits of ice on the window. With the 58 those spots didn’t appear.
Afterwards, as I was reviewing the photos I wanted to differentiate which were saved RAW and which were tiff, but my check revealed an HEIF file! Yikes, I thought. I know from past experience that if even one HEIF image is in my camera roll then Lightroom freaks out and cannot see a single picture so I had to track down those pesky HEIFs and process them right away and delete the HEIF originals.I found the best way to spot them was using the image browser in the RAW Power app. A little file type tag appears on all the RAW and HEIF images I had made.
I tracked down the source of the HEIFs to be the Chromatica app I was trying and I had not realized it defaulted to HEIF. That was soon changed to RAW to prevent the problem in future.
The two pictures above were from the 8 HEIF images I found.
Lovely....
The wonderful contrasts of the Bay of Fundy. It’s been plenty cold in recent weeks. Certainly cold enough for ice. On the way home I stopped at the bridge between Fundy National Park and Alma and made 2 photos. I wasn’t really dressed warm enough for an outdoor excursion but OK for popping over the the village office.
Standing on the bridge looking towards the bay. No ice. Fishing boats still in the water. In fact still going out fishing.
Here’s a view from the other side of the bridge. The river has been well frozen but the ice has been broken by the rising tide. Every other body of water surrounding New Brunswick is frozen solid. No boats in the water anywhere else except here.
Standing on the bridge looking towards the bay. No ice. Fishing boats still in the water. In fact still going out fishing.
Here’s a view from the other side of the bridge. The river has been well frozen but the ice has been broken by the rising tide. Every other body of water surrounding New Brunswick is frozen solid. No boats in the water anywhere else except here.
The snow fleas are out!
They aren’t really fleas at all but that’s their name. In fact they are springtails that live in the soil and we never see them any other time of year. On mild winter days in the 2nd half of winter we occasionally see the snow peppered with tiny black specks. Only about 2mm long. Most people never see them at all. When you look much closer you can see they are insects and some are walking around on the snow, coming out of the snow or going back down but always quite busy.
Occasionally one just disappears. What really happens is they jump like, well, springtails.
They all come to the surface for mating!
This picture was made with the Moment Macro lens on the 2x lens position which gives twice the magnification of the 1x lens. This is full frame un-cropped.
For a size comparison I found this housefly in the snow and made a picture exactly the same way. Same magnification, un-cropped.
You know how big/small a regular housefly is so you can figure how small the springtails are.
They aren’t really fleas at all but that’s their name. In fact they are springtails that live in the soil and we never see them any other time of year. On mild winter days in the 2nd half of winter we occasionally see the snow peppered with tiny black specks. Only about 2mm long. Most people never see them at all. When you look much closer you can see they are insects and some are walking around on the snow, coming out of the snow or going back down but always quite busy.
Occasionally one just disappears. What really happens is they jump like, well, springtails.
They all come to the surface for mating!
This picture was made with the Moment Macro lens on the 2x lens position which gives twice the magnification of the 1x lens. This is full frame un-cropped.
For a size comparison I found this housefly in the snow and made a picture exactly the same way. Same magnification, un-cropped.
You know how big/small a regular housefly is so you can figure how small the springtails are.
Bizarre! I've never seen or heard of these before...
Really?
Nope. Maybe they live in New Jersey, but I’ve never seen or heard of them.
I’m almost never in position for spot news but today we heard the Harbourview Market was on fire so we went down to check it out.
Luckily my phone was charged up and ready to go. It was quite cold and windy.
Our little Alma volunteer fire department was at work. Supply of water was a big issue. They seems to be getting it under control when they ran out of water.
Shortly afterwards the flams sprang up again. Additional fire trucks arrived from Riverside-Albert about 20 minutes away and Hillsborough, about 45 minutes away. They brought water but it soon ran out, too.
After using up the extra water the trucks went off somewhere to get more water.
Just after this flames broke through the roof.
The whole back section fell in and towards the end they were just controlling the fire from spreading as they repeatedly ran out of water.
A lot of toxic smoke was filling the area. Most firefighters working closer were equipped with air tanks. Asphalt shingles, vinyl siding made billows of black smoke. The house next door was completely hidden by smoke. I tried to stay upwind.
I also made lots of video clips plus photos with my DSLR.
Luckily my phone was charged up and ready to go. It was quite cold and windy.
Our little Alma volunteer fire department was at work. Supply of water was a big issue. They seems to be getting it under control when they ran out of water.
Shortly afterwards the flams sprang up again. Additional fire trucks arrived from Riverside-Albert about 20 minutes away and Hillsborough, about 45 minutes away. They brought water but it soon ran out, too.
After using up the extra water the trucks went off somewhere to get more water.
Just after this flames broke through the roof.
The whole back section fell in and towards the end they were just controlling the fire from spreading as they repeatedly ran out of water.
A lot of toxic smoke was filling the area. Most firefighters working closer were equipped with air tanks. Asphalt shingles, vinyl siding made billows of black smoke. The house next door was completely hidden by smoke. I tried to stay upwind.
I also made lots of video clips plus photos with my DSLR.
Wow, it’s hard for me to imagine fire in your end of the world, let alone running out of water.
We have helicopters that scoop water from artificial purpose built lakes and/or the sea, whichever is closest.
We have helicopters that scoop water from artificial purpose built lakes and/or the sea, whichever is closest.
Wow.
A lot of fires start from trying to keep warm. Electric heaters, etc. Overheated wiring. The village water supply isn’t big enough for the residential use let alone to fight a fire. The reservoir would be emptied in no time.
Their normal method is to set-up water holders, like a portable pool, that are filled up by water tank trucks. The pumper trucks draw from the pool while the trucks go off to refill somewhere. In summer the river is handy enough. In winter the river is most likely frozen or the access to the river snowed in. If the tide is out they can’t get to the tide water. Alma is a village of less than 250 people so it doesn’t have money for fancy stuff like helicopters. One could come from far away I suppose. They are used for forest fires well away from roads. Still, it wasn’t encouraging to see how the fire fighting efforts were thwarted by insufficient water supply. Out here there are no hydrants, or municipal water supply. My own household water is gravity fed from a spring and we normally pause between the wash and rinse cycle of the washing machine to let the reservoir build up some more water.
I never realized how good we have it here. About 2 years ago they completed a project to bring fire hydrants to all residential areas in our county. There are even hydrants out in the middle of nowhere that they anticipate will be more populated someday. We live in the middle of the Fingerlakes, so there is water a short drive from anywhere.
I just see all that snow (frozen water) everywhere . . . .
Wow. And so strange to have a water issue when there are tons of snow everywhere... I guess the time it would take to melt would be an issue...? I’m wondering why dumping great globs of it on the flames wouldn’t work?
That was my first thought... and it’s not even really *frozen*, like ice. Seems weird to me.
I found it quite amazing that the snow right around the house didn’t melt.
The problem is one of delivery. How to dump a bunch of snow inside a building. A big enough machine could dump enough snow on the roof to cave it in. People were talking about using a big snowblower but then nobody knew where to find one. There was snow on the roof and it wasn’t melting even with the fire inside. Eventually a bunch of water was seen running off the roof but it didn’t go anywhere useful. I remember seeing a fellow I know working in the fire wearing a fairly light jacket out in the cold temperature & wind and I wondered how he was keeping warm. Later I walked around that side of the building and from 50 feet away I could feel the heat radiating from the fire. That’s the answer I realized.
On my way to go snowshoeing I stopped by the scene of the fire. It looks like they used an excavator to pull the debris away from the foundation to get at the last of the fire inside. Needless to say it’s a total loss. There was still some smoke rising here and there.
On a curious note, one thing left standing and unburned is an ice machine that was right up against the front wall of the building. The bags of ice inside are still unmelted.
The Harbourview Market was half small town variety store and half restaurant. The restaurant has been popular for many years where you could get a home style meal at a reasonable price and it was the only restaurant in town the was open year round which made it the de facto place to eat in winter.
Rumours circulating say some people were seen moving some of the store fixtures out of the store earlier that morning before the fire. The owner also owns the other variety store in town and was combining all the grocery items to the other store to make room for expanding the Harbourview restaurant. Another rumour says that he was planning to tear the building down to make a new hotel on that site. Hmmm.
If you have ever tried melting snow to get water you soon discover that a full pot of snow yields about 1/10 of a pot of water. And it takes more heat to make a change in state than it does to simply warm water up. That means it is too slow for fire fighting.
The portable water containers they were setting up were about 8 feet square and the water would be about 2 feet deep. They would use that much water in just a few minutes. A little over 5 minutes.
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Back to my snowshoeing adventure.
My favourite part of the Caribou plain trail is the old beaver made lake. The beavers have already eaten all the nearby tasty trees and left for greener pastures. For some reason there remains a bit of a channel of open water even when it is very cold. All the rest freezes and piles up with snow. I would say there is 4 feet of snow on the lake.
I like to walk quite far out into the lake and close to the open areas because they provide an interesting contrast.
The cold wind was making my eyes water so much I could hardly see the screen.
About a foot down the snow was hard enough to reliably support my tripod.
Different snow textures and a mostly buried dead tree next to a water hole about 4 feet down.
The trees are some that were growing there before the beavers flooded the place.
Along the trail to the lake.
My favourite part of the Caribou plain trail is the old beaver made lake. The beavers have already eaten all the nearby tasty trees and left for greener pastures. For some reason there remains a bit of a channel of open water even when it is very cold. All the rest freezes and piles up with snow. I would say there is 4 feet of snow on the lake.
I like to walk quite far out into the lake and close to the open areas because they provide an interesting contrast.
The cold wind was making my eyes water so much I could hardly see the screen.
About a foot down the snow was hard enough to reliably support my tripod.
Different snow textures and a mostly buried dead tree next to a water hole about 4 feet down.
The trees are some that were growing there before the beavers flooded the place.
Along the trail to the lake.