Black and White Photographs

Monochrome itsy bitsy spider and a “H” stories voting reminder

Here’s a quick reminder to please — if so inclined — read the “H” Alphabet Challenge Stories. After, if receptive to the idea, the writers hope you’ll make the effort and vote for your favorite HERE.<<<this is a link

That post links to the individual stories and it’s where you ‘ll find the poll where readers can click a box and vote for their favorite. If you have friends (I mean, even I have a few, so I imagine most readers have many, many friends), you can share that link and help expand the readership. I mean, we’re not professional writers, but there’s usually at least one decent story in the bunch.

If you’ve already voted, thank you. If you’ve asked friends and family to read and vote, you’re an angel, or maybe a saint, or just a swell person, and we thank you.

Anyway, monochrome itsy bitsy spider . . . Yesterday, I told the tale (<<<this is a link) of me hurting a spider, likely breaking one of its legs. I don’t know much about a spider’s healing abilities, but I hope they heal and that Lefty healed quickly.

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“G” stories voting — the last days

We’re getting down to the last few days of the G-Stories voting window. Sometime this weekend (hopefully Friday or Saturday) we’re going to call the voting closed and tally up the votes. If you’ve read the stories, you hopefully saw fit to vote for one of them. For that, we thank you.

The writers of the Alphabet Challenge also hope that — if you’ve read them — you voted for your favorite of the “Alphabet Challenge G-Stories” HERE and also shared the link with your friends. That link has the poll and also where you can find links to the stories in case you want to read them before voting (you should totally do that).

This will be a short post . . .

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Leaf Is As Leaf Does

One of the things I regularly do is sit outside — back patio in the morning, front porch in the afternoon or evening — and watch stuff and birds and bugs unconcerned with quarantines go about their business.

I figure that, perhaps, others might be interested in seeing some of what captures my attention . . . or not, in which case, stop reading and go do something else.

Still here? OK.

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The next-to-last reminder about “C” stories

Youse read that correctly. This is not the last reminder to vote on “C” stories. It might have been clearer had I used penultimate . . . but I try to eschew arcane and brobdingnagian words when lesser words will do.

Anyway, I suspect them who had any intention of reading and then voting for their favorite story have already done so, but just in case, you can vote for them HERE as well as find links to the stories so that — you know — you can read them before you vote.

Right, done with that. Now, about trees . . . rather, one tree, but many photos of it.

Click for a larger version to open in a new tab or window.
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The last (for now) reminder to vote

Good news for them getting tired of these reminders — the nineteen who voted; this is the last reminder before the January 1 deadline for castig your vote for the best Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions for them who’ve yet to vote. I’m calling on the 1,573 non-voting followers of this blog to step up.

Meanwhile a few photos, including some from our January 2019 Panama crossing cruise.

The next photo is from when the bridge was in front of us.

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. . . yes, another reminder to vote

Good news for them getting tired of these reminders — the twelve who voted; don’t despair; there are only two more days before the January 1 deadline to cast your vote for the best Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions. Besides, this is mostly a reminder for the 1,551 other followers of this blog who have yet to cast a vote.

I mean, it seems pretty straightforward; read the stories, pick the one you like, click the circle next to its name in the short poll, sit back and bask in the glow of satisfaction that comes from participating in such an important . . . ok, ok . . . there is no glow of satisfaction. Look at it like this; you get the chance to annoy two of three writers.

Anyway, to lure suckers . . . er . . . to lure esteemed readers to this post, I need to put up a few photos.

Everyone has seen sea horses, right?

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Still more dramatic sky and a third reminder to vote

My third reminder for readers  — if they are so inclined and have not already done so — to vote. In this case, vote for one of the Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions. The poll is at the end of that post and we hope to surpass the ten total votes we had for the previous challenge.

Continuing where the last post left off, here are more photos from September of this year when I watched clouds morph into interesting patterns as a front passed over the area.

The workflow for the processing of the images includes a combination of DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection with the occasional tweak in Lightroom.

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More dramatic sky and another reminder to vote

My second reminder for readers  — if they are so inclined and have not already done so — to vote. In this case, vote for one of the Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions. The poll is at the end of that post and we hope to surpass the ten total votes we had for the previous challenge.

Continuing where the last post left off, here are more photos from September of this year when I watched clouds morph into interesting patterns as a front passed over the area.

The workflow for the processing of the images includes a combination of DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection with the occasional tweak in Lightroom.

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Dramatic sky and a reminder to vote

Yes, another series of posts reminding readers to — if they are so inclined — vote. In this case, vote for one of the Christmas Short Story Challenge submissions. The poll is at the end of that post and we hope to surpass the ten total votes we had for the previous challenge.

OK, on to clouds in the sky . . . some might remember THIS post where I showed a few photos I snapped as I watched interesting cloud formations pass over me. That post was my first foray into the Luminar 3 software. I’ve since upgraded to Luminar 4 . . . but that’s not what I used for the photos below.

Nothing against Luminar 4; I just felt like playing with DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection. Well, one thing . . . Luminar 4 loads really slow and then, when working with it, one isn’t sure if it’s doing something or if it went to sleep. I like the output from the program but it needs to address some bugs, preferably sooner rather than later.

Anyway, the following images are a combination of DxO PhotoLab and the Nik Collection processing with the occasional tweak in Lightroom.

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Cosmic Moon

I follow the blog Cosmic Focus where a recent post showed a photo of the moon. I hesitate posting other people’s photos here (as in: I rarely do) so if you want to see the photo, it’s HERE.

If I understand the process correctly, that photo is generated by taking a video of the moon (it requires a system that keeps the moon centered by compensating for the relative rotation of the Earth and Moon) and then using software that combines the frames from the video into a single composite image.

Well, I got to wondering how close I could get from a single photo from my Nikon P900 . . .

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Yellowstone Memories — No. 1

For them not interested in reading, you can explore the photos in THIS SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE. When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the bottom-top of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

Yellowstone June 2015
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Laptop Adventures in Color and B&W

OK, so I’ve screwed around with the calibration and think I have an adjustment where things look like they used to. It may yet be the calibration I’ve picked results in me thinking I’m presenting one thing (gorgeous colors expertly balanced) whereas, in reality, I get a completely different thing (an off-color pastiche only colorblind individuals will find pleasing). 

So, this is another post where I play around with a few different post-processing programs and see what comes out the other end. These are the photos I’ll be using (shown as they came out of the camera without any post-processing):

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