During today’s walk I found a crow feather I had stuck into a crack on a telephone pole during the summer and then forgotten about.
aremaC. SKEW.
aremaC. SKEW.
FundyBrian’s Explorations
- Thread starter FundyBrian
- Start date
From our Upper Salmon River walks. A brief mild spell brought melting and puddles to the icy road.
I was having a hard time seeing the screen with the bright light and the wind making my eyes water. What I didn’t notice, and I’m surprised to see them even show up in the picture, thousands of snowfleas (springtails) floating on the water. More on them in another post to follow later. I was happy enough with how the picture came out except the snowfleas added a degree of “graininess” I didn’t like.
I experimented with iColorama but ended up with Becasso Oil 1. I liked this well enough except for the reduction in detail.
I brought the new oil version back into Affinity Photo with the original and applied the oil version on top of the original using a lighten Colour blending mode at 85%. This worked out quite well. The only thing is the residual brush pattern in the foreground. Fading the top layer back to zero I could see it followed the pattern of the snowfleas so the next stage would be to go back to the original and retouch out all of the foreground snowfleas, which I didn’t have time for this morning.
I was having a hard time seeing the screen with the bright light and the wind making my eyes water. What I didn’t notice, and I’m surprised to see them even show up in the picture, thousands of snowfleas (springtails) floating on the water. More on them in another post to follow later. I was happy enough with how the picture came out except the snowfleas added a degree of “graininess” I didn’t like.
I experimented with iColorama but ended up with Becasso Oil 1. I liked this well enough except for the reduction in detail.
I brought the new oil version back into Affinity Photo with the original and applied the oil version on top of the original using a lighten Colour blending mode at 85%. This worked out quite well. The only thing is the residual brush pattern in the foreground. Fading the top layer back to zero I could see it followed the pattern of the snowfleas so the next stage would be to go back to the original and retouch out all of the foreground snowfleas, which I didn’t have time for this morning.
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How cool that it’s still there! Great edit.
Yes, about those snowfleas I mentioned in the previous post. Sure I’ve seen them on mild days in late winter. You might think the dark specks you see on the snow are just wind-blown dirt. Bend down and get about 1 foot away from the snow and look again. Watch those little specks for a minute and you are bound to see one or two disappear and reappear somewhere else. They jumped! Impressive jumps, too, considering how small they are. They aren’t really fleas at all, but springtails that live in the soil. They are everywhere but we never see them unless they come out onto a light coloured surface so we can see them. At this time of year they come to the surface to mate.
This last walk was much like others, except it was a bit milder. There was water on the road from melting ice and snow. I had not noticed the springtails at all, even when I made this picture. It wasn’t easy to see the screen and my eyes were watering from the wind. If you zoom in on this picture you can see the snowfleas are actually on top of the water, not in the water.
Then I noticed a bunch of them collected on the water surface in one of the big puddles on the road.
It appears to me that they came up out of the snowbanks at the side of the road and in their wild leaping about lots of them ended up in the water. The current carried them along the road where they collected in little rafts in places where the water was held back by bits of slush. This was made with the Moment Macro lens. In real life that means the full long dimension of this picture is 3cm, to help you gauge the size.
We then, how about this collection. Must be thousands in there!
Never before in my life have I seen such a mass of snowfleas so I had to document the happening. Today at the same place there was nothing unusual happening.
Here’s another close-up with the Moment Macro except this time on the 2x lens.
I was also using the Moment camera app making DNG format photos. Quickly developed in Snapseed.
This last walk was much like others, except it was a bit milder. There was water on the road from melting ice and snow. I had not noticed the springtails at all, even when I made this picture. It wasn’t easy to see the screen and my eyes were watering from the wind. If you zoom in on this picture you can see the snowfleas are actually on top of the water, not in the water.
Then I noticed a bunch of them collected on the water surface in one of the big puddles on the road.
It appears to me that they came up out of the snowbanks at the side of the road and in their wild leaping about lots of them ended up in the water. The current carried them along the road where they collected in little rafts in places where the water was held back by bits of slush. This was made with the Moment Macro lens. In real life that means the full long dimension of this picture is 3cm, to help you gauge the size.
We then, how about this collection. Must be thousands in there!
Never before in my life have I seen such a mass of snowfleas so I had to document the happening. Today at the same place there was nothing unusual happening.
Here’s another close-up with the Moment Macro except this time on the 2x lens.
I was also using the Moment camera app making DNG format photos. Quickly developed in Snapseed.
That is amazing!!! And the macro shots are really cool.... that says something that never in your life have you seen this many.
Waterside Beach this afternoon between rain showers.
I often find that an outing to the beach on a dull day is always rewarded by some beautiful moments. Moment cam. Affinity Photo.
I often find that an outing to the beach on a dull day is always rewarded by some beautiful moments. Moment cam. Affinity Photo.
Wow
More pics from the Upper Salmon River. Spring is the time for interesting ice sculptures as the big ice cakes begin to melt.
The bigger ones here are about 8 feet long and close to 3 feet thick. If you look near the tip to the left of the dark land mass of trees, you can just make out a gap in the snow. That is the part of the river where the ice is moved around by each high tide. As spring comes closer the clear area will gradually move upstream and more and more of the ice breaks apart and floats away on the tide. This far back from the edge the ice is only moved by the higher high tides. You can see by the pattern of the ice and snow on the left, sort of wavy, that is where the tide has come in and melted some of the snow but the tide was not high enough to lift the bigger ice cakes and move them around. Around the full moon things will get more interesting.
Walking out there is a bit tricky. I should have had my snowshoes on but didn’t have them in the car. With snow fallen on top of the ice, and filling in spaces between, it is hard to tell how solid the ground will be at each step. I didn’t want to fall into the space between two ice cakes. These larger ones were free of snow so it was easier to tell where the edges were. With each step you tromp your foot around a bit to see what is down there before putting all you weight on it. I managed to climb up on the closest one, just about a 2 foot step up but the top surface was nothing but ice so it was hard to get a grip on it until I was in the middle. I could see in several places the ice ledge was 6 to 7 feet high so it wasn’t possible to clamber down on the other side to get the ice/no ice view.
I came across an area where the water must have come in from below and frozen on top before the water left again. It was all sheets of ice crystals, about as thin as a sheet of paper, just fluttering slightly in the breeze and occasionally tinkling down as the sun warmed parts of it. There was a few inches between layers.
Fabi didn’t want to leave the road with me and later I learned she had made a picture of me photographing the ice. This picture is cropped a fair bit. You can’t see my iPhone because my mitts are folded back so my fingers could be out and holding my phone. That little teal patch of colour is the neck strap on my phone. I made several pictures holding my phone out beyond where I could see the screen and hoping to get some pictures in focus.
I’m not using any close up lens for these pictures. The ice crystals were quite large. The little window areas between crystals was about 2” on each side, mostly triangles. If you look closely you can see the snowfleas on the ice near the bottom of the picture. In real life the snowfleas are about 2 to 3 mm long. There are 3 snowfleas that are easy enough to see.
The bigger ones here are about 8 feet long and close to 3 feet thick. If you look near the tip to the left of the dark land mass of trees, you can just make out a gap in the snow. That is the part of the river where the ice is moved around by each high tide. As spring comes closer the clear area will gradually move upstream and more and more of the ice breaks apart and floats away on the tide. This far back from the edge the ice is only moved by the higher high tides. You can see by the pattern of the ice and snow on the left, sort of wavy, that is where the tide has come in and melted some of the snow but the tide was not high enough to lift the bigger ice cakes and move them around. Around the full moon things will get more interesting.
Walking out there is a bit tricky. I should have had my snowshoes on but didn’t have them in the car. With snow fallen on top of the ice, and filling in spaces between, it is hard to tell how solid the ground will be at each step. I didn’t want to fall into the space between two ice cakes. These larger ones were free of snow so it was easier to tell where the edges were. With each step you tromp your foot around a bit to see what is down there before putting all you weight on it. I managed to climb up on the closest one, just about a 2 foot step up but the top surface was nothing but ice so it was hard to get a grip on it until I was in the middle. I could see in several places the ice ledge was 6 to 7 feet high so it wasn’t possible to clamber down on the other side to get the ice/no ice view.
I came across an area where the water must have come in from below and frozen on top before the water left again. It was all sheets of ice crystals, about as thin as a sheet of paper, just fluttering slightly in the breeze and occasionally tinkling down as the sun warmed parts of it. There was a few inches between layers.
Fabi didn’t want to leave the road with me and later I learned she had made a picture of me photographing the ice. This picture is cropped a fair bit. You can’t see my iPhone because my mitts are folded back so my fingers could be out and holding my phone. That little teal patch of colour is the neck strap on my phone. I made several pictures holding my phone out beyond where I could see the screen and hoping to get some pictures in focus.
I’m not using any close up lens for these pictures. The ice crystals were quite large. The little window areas between crystals was about 2” on each side, mostly triangles. If you look closely you can see the snowfleas on the ice near the bottom of the picture. In real life the snowfleas are about 2 to 3 mm long. There are 3 snowfleas that are easy enough to see.
Smooth with detail.
Generally I like photos with a lot of detail but sometimes it doesn’t give me what I felt when I was there. I find I am becoming very fond of the smoothing effect I get with BeCasso Oil but I don’t want to lose too much detail. The smoothing gives it a slightly ethereal glow. I think I have the best of both worlds now by mixing the Becasso smoothed version back with the original and using belending modes to get the smoothing but still have some critical details that prevent the overall picture looking mushy or painted. I first do quite a bit of spot retouching on the original photo to eliminate anything that draws attention to itself. In this case, little rocks and bits of seaweed on the beach. The original photo was made using aremaC so even though it might appear natural it is quite far away from what a straight photo would have looked like. For instance the way the bottom became blue instead of yellow, and the waves became much lighter.
Generally I like photos with a lot of detail but sometimes it doesn’t give me what I felt when I was there. I find I am becoming very fond of the smoothing effect I get with BeCasso Oil but I don’t want to lose too much detail. The smoothing gives it a slightly ethereal glow. I think I have the best of both worlds now by mixing the Becasso smoothed version back with the original and using belending modes to get the smoothing but still have some critical details that prevent the overall picture looking mushy or painted. I first do quite a bit of spot retouching on the original photo to eliminate anything that draws attention to itself. In this case, little rocks and bits of seaweed on the beach. The original photo was made using aremaC so even though it might appear natural it is quite far away from what a straight photo would have looked like. For instance the way the bottom became blue instead of yellow, and the waves became much lighter.
It might be spring in some places but here’s a picture of the outside of one of my solarium windows during the snowfall today.
In fact, our satellite internet (non)service went offline today because there was too much snow on the dish.
In fact, our satellite internet (non)service went offline today because there was too much snow on the dish.
Sign of Spring! We still have lots of snow at home but at the river the ice is starting to break up and float away with each high tide.
This is looking out at the edge of the river ice where pieces are breaking off as the tide rises under the ice, breaking it into pieces.
We watched the river ice moving downstream very slowly, like a slug. While at the same time the incoming tide was backing it up again.
This is looking out at the edge of the river ice where pieces are breaking off as the tide rises under the ice, breaking it into pieces.
We watched the river ice moving downstream very slowly, like a slug. While at the same time the incoming tide was backing it up again.
Thus is too weird. I had to post a picture.
The remains of the Harbourview Restaurant and General Store in Alma. See fire pics above.
This ice machine was right up within a few inches of the front wall of the building that burnt down but it sits there relatively untouched while all the rest of the building is completely burned. Not only that but the ice inside is still frozen, even after several days with no power. Not for long, though. The days are starting to warm up a little.
The remains of the Harbourview Restaurant and General Store in Alma. See fire pics above.
This ice machine was right up within a few inches of the front wall of the building that burnt down but it sits there relatively untouched while all the rest of the building is completely burned. Not only that but the ice inside is still frozen, even after several days with no power. Not for long, though. The days are starting to warm up a little.
Bizarre.
Sunday was the first really spring-like day. Unseasonably mild, light breeze instead of steady wind. We went out to Alma Beach a couple of hours before low tide and followed the Alma side of the shore towards Joel’s Head.
This is the first headland you come to - Joel’s Head. I was enjoying photographing the unusually nice reflection. I wondered why the water had not run off the beach more as the tide went out but it was perfect for reflections. At the point we got to the beach there was still a lot of snow and we had to thread our way between lots of big ice cakes grounded on the upper beach to get out to open beach.
Following the water and reflections along I photographed lots of sand ripples and realized there was a large tide pool here where there had not been one before. I came across the answer. The thing I thought was a small sand bar turned out to be an enormous gravel bar at least 8 feet high when I got closer to it. It must be at last 300 yards long. There’s more of it behind me to the right. I climbed up on top. This side was fairly steep but up top it was flat and as wide as a one lane road and quite solid. The bay side tapered off more gradually but just on the other side is the Bay of Fundy and on this side a sheltered tide pool.
The sky was quite cloudy but short periods of sun appeared. When it was cloudy the scene was a lot duller.
Here I have climbed to the top and I’m standing just at the corner separating the top and slope. The gravel bar makes a turn towards the shore but doesn’t quite make it. There still a gap of maybe 25 feet but the water is fairly shallow. Too deep for my rubber boots, though. When I climbed up on the gravel bar it was still an hour before low tide so we hade some time to explore.
I’m within 25 feet of the end of the gravel bar at this point looking back the way I came and you can get an idea of the scope of the tide pool made by this gravel bar. Hundreds of tons of gravel mounded up by the current. And all that material has been stripped off the beach a kilometre back in front of Fundy National Park. I have to wonder if it was caused by the construction of a new breakwater built to protect the Alma Wharf.
Walking back along the gravel bar close to the point I climbed up, but on the bay side, you can see how it tapers off more gradually. And out there at the point farthest out into the bay, a good mile from shore, there’s Fabi taking pictures of the waves. By now the tide was about to come back in and we started heading back feeling quite satisfied with our adventure.
We had such a terrific outing and I’m anxious to return for sunrise sometime that low tide coincides with sunrise.
This is the first headland you come to - Joel’s Head. I was enjoying photographing the unusually nice reflection. I wondered why the water had not run off the beach more as the tide went out but it was perfect for reflections. At the point we got to the beach there was still a lot of snow and we had to thread our way between lots of big ice cakes grounded on the upper beach to get out to open beach.
Following the water and reflections along I photographed lots of sand ripples and realized there was a large tide pool here where there had not been one before. I came across the answer. The thing I thought was a small sand bar turned out to be an enormous gravel bar at least 8 feet high when I got closer to it. It must be at last 300 yards long. There’s more of it behind me to the right. I climbed up on top. This side was fairly steep but up top it was flat and as wide as a one lane road and quite solid. The bay side tapered off more gradually but just on the other side is the Bay of Fundy and on this side a sheltered tide pool.
The sky was quite cloudy but short periods of sun appeared. When it was cloudy the scene was a lot duller.
Here I have climbed to the top and I’m standing just at the corner separating the top and slope. The gravel bar makes a turn towards the shore but doesn’t quite make it. There still a gap of maybe 25 feet but the water is fairly shallow. Too deep for my rubber boots, though. When I climbed up on the gravel bar it was still an hour before low tide so we hade some time to explore.
I’m within 25 feet of the end of the gravel bar at this point looking back the way I came and you can get an idea of the scope of the tide pool made by this gravel bar. Hundreds of tons of gravel mounded up by the current. And all that material has been stripped off the beach a kilometre back in front of Fundy National Park. I have to wonder if it was caused by the construction of a new breakwater built to protect the Alma Wharf.
Walking back along the gravel bar close to the point I climbed up, but on the bay side, you can see how it tapers off more gradually. And out there at the point farthest out into the bay, a good mile from shore, there’s Fabi taking pictures of the waves. By now the tide was about to come back in and we started heading back feeling quite satisfied with our adventure.
We had such a terrific outing and I’m anxious to return for sunrise sometime that low tide coincides with sunrise.
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Do you remember just in the last post how I was saying how wonderful that first spring-like day was? Well things are back to winter again. One nice day was our allotment I guess.
Woke up to snow falling , maybe 3”, dull day.
But the birds were quite busy at our bird feeder.
This is the full frame view out my window towards the bird feeder with my phone in 2x mode and the Moment 58 Tele mounted. Still too far away for birds. Even this fairly big blue jay.
This is a cropped version. I started out making a few jpeg images using zoom. Not pretty. Of course zoom doesn’t work with RAW files so when I switched the the Moment app with RAW image format I had to use the true full frame view.
It turned out to be better to photograph RAW and drop later rather than to shoot jpeg zoomed in, which is just pre-cropping.
The birds we have at the feeder these days (for you Mobi birders)
Lots of Black-capped Chickadees
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Dark-eyed Junco
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
Song Sparrow
In the yard we also have visiting Grey Jays, American Robins, and today we have an invading hoard of Grackles - arrived too early and looking for food.
That lovely warm Sunday (above) we saw hundreds of American Robins on the bare patches of fields where the snow had melted.
I always wonder what happens to those ground feeding birds that come back a bit too early to discover the next day everything is snowbound again.
Woke up to snow falling , maybe 3”, dull day.
But the birds were quite busy at our bird feeder.
This is the full frame view out my window towards the bird feeder with my phone in 2x mode and the Moment 58 Tele mounted. Still too far away for birds. Even this fairly big blue jay.
This is a cropped version. I started out making a few jpeg images using zoom. Not pretty. Of course zoom doesn’t work with RAW files so when I switched the the Moment app with RAW image format I had to use the true full frame view.
It turned out to be better to photograph RAW and drop later rather than to shoot jpeg zoomed in, which is just pre-cropping.
The birds we have at the feeder these days (for you Mobi birders)
Lots of Black-capped Chickadees
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Dark-eyed Junco
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Blue Jay
Song Sparrow
In the yard we also have visiting Grey Jays, American Robins, and today we have an invading hoard of Grackles - arrived too early and looking for food.
That lovely warm Sunday (above) we saw hundreds of American Robins on the bare patches of fields where the snow had melted.
I always wonder what happens to those ground feeding birds that come back a bit too early to discover the next day everything is snowbound again.
We are still getting new stowstorms and new snow accumulation. That one nice spring day was just a teaser. Lots of cold wind too.
This young raccoon has been hanging around our bird feeder the last few days.
I presume last years’ young ones have been booted out of the nest now that the mother has new little ones on the way.
Made with the Moment 58 lens mounted on the 2x lens and then cropped about 50%. I found it was better cropping a DNG file than zooming in with a jpeg. Made with the Moment cam and edited with Darkroom.
As you can see we still have plenty of snow, as well as new snow falling almost daily.
I presume last years’ young ones have been booted out of the nest now that the mother has new little ones on the way.
Made with the Moment 58 lens mounted on the 2x lens and then cropped about 50%. I found it was better cropping a DNG file than zooming in with a jpeg. Made with the Moment cam and edited with Darkroom.
As you can see we still have plenty of snow, as well as new snow falling almost daily.
I love what you have done to this image. I don't suppose you remember what AremaC effect you used?
Awwww...too cute!
Crazy....
I was just flicking from one preset to the next watching for something interesting. The writing on the presets is too small to read except under ideal conditions so I don’t know what it is called but I recognize it when it comes up. It requires a similar situation to get the same effect so my tests indoors did not find it. I’ll stumble upon it again outdoors sometime and I probably won’t be able to read it then either. The biggest amount of my work was in retouching anything that stood out where I wanted it to be smooth.
Speeding up time.
I’m sure I have mentioned in the past and even posted a picture or two of the cute things Fabi makes with beach glass. The problem is finding enough good beach glass. A lot of it has not yet been “sanded” enough. Or a piece may have one edge freshly fractured. In any case, the pile of not-quite-usable glass grows and the “perfect” pieces are too soon used up.
We don’t find much good beach glass on Bay of Fundy beaches. I presume they get ground to smithereens too quickly. So we have to travel some distance to look for beach glass.
Some people speculate, based on the type of glass being washed up, that it takes up to 50 years for broken glass to reach the “usable” state.
I kept looking at those pieces of glass that were not quite finished enough to be usable and I decided to accelerate the process. I dug out my old rock tumbler. It needed some work to get it going. The motor was seized and one of the roller bearings had to be replaced. And then it took another week to find the drum for it, and what was left of my rock tumbling supplies.
Anyhow, after a week of tumbling in the medium coarse grind the whole batch was rendered perfectly usable. I should have done this a couple of years ago.
When we are looking for beach glass we usually throw back any pieces that are “not finished yet” - which usually amounts to 3/4 of them. Now we can save those pieces too and tumble them.
After that one magnificent Sunday about 3 weeks ago there has been a setback in the weather. About every 3rd day it snows. Enough to completely cover all the bare patches. Then it starts melting again.
I’ve just put on my summer tires which usually means a big snowstorm will arrive any day.
One of my big projects has gone to the printer. The next one is dragging its heels. Or should I say the suppliers of necessary information are slow providing the copy and photos required. (Sound of drumming fingers). But no shortage of other work to catch up on. So this is why I have been largely absent from MobiTog lately.
I’m sure I have mentioned in the past and even posted a picture or two of the cute things Fabi makes with beach glass. The problem is finding enough good beach glass. A lot of it has not yet been “sanded” enough. Or a piece may have one edge freshly fractured. In any case, the pile of not-quite-usable glass grows and the “perfect” pieces are too soon used up.
We don’t find much good beach glass on Bay of Fundy beaches. I presume they get ground to smithereens too quickly. So we have to travel some distance to look for beach glass.
Some people speculate, based on the type of glass being washed up, that it takes up to 50 years for broken glass to reach the “usable” state.
I kept looking at those pieces of glass that were not quite finished enough to be usable and I decided to accelerate the process. I dug out my old rock tumbler. It needed some work to get it going. The motor was seized and one of the roller bearings had to be replaced. And then it took another week to find the drum for it, and what was left of my rock tumbling supplies.
Anyhow, after a week of tumbling in the medium coarse grind the whole batch was rendered perfectly usable. I should have done this a couple of years ago.
When we are looking for beach glass we usually throw back any pieces that are “not finished yet” - which usually amounts to 3/4 of them. Now we can save those pieces too and tumble them.
After that one magnificent Sunday about 3 weeks ago there has been a setback in the weather. About every 3rd day it snows. Enough to completely cover all the bare patches. Then it starts melting again.
I’ve just put on my summer tires which usually means a big snowstorm will arrive any day.
One of my big projects has gone to the printer. The next one is dragging its heels. Or should I say the suppliers of necessary information are slow providing the copy and photos required. (Sound of drumming fingers). But no shortage of other work to catch up on. So this is why I have been largely absent from MobiTog lately.
Great! So is the image “before” tumbling or “after”? I’m guessing after?
Ugh!! That would drive me crazy.
Yes, after tumbling, no more rough spots.
We haven’t had snow for almost a week so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. We should start to see signs of spring in May sometime.