Some Spring Photography

As I suspected when my health crashed last night prompting the need for emergency medications, today was pretty much a down day.  I was groggy from the medications and lacking energy so I laid low all morning and napped all afternoon after lunch.  

Just before making lunch, however, I grabbed my infrared camera and headed into the backyard.  I've been waiting for some leaves to grow on the foliage so I can really test my old camera that I recently had converted to capturing infrared light only.  Green foliage (well, really chlorophyll) really lights up and glows in infrared light so green leaves glow brightly against blackened blue skies in monochrome infrared photography.  Although the leaves are not fully grown just yet, there is enough small young leaf growth on the trees and shrubs to see how this old camera captures infrared light today.

These first two photos show sunlight catching just a few leaves on a branch that are in a small bit of sunlight.  Just a little bit of sunlight on green foliage filled with chlorophyll makes for a nice contrast with everything darkened around the illuminated foliage.  Even in visible light, I like when the sunlight illuminates just one main subject like a flower or a leaf while being surrounded by shadow but this stark contrast between light and shadow is even more pronounced in infrared light.  This makes for some very dramatic black and white images with amazing clarity.

Here, below, we have partially grown leaves on trees against a clear blue sky.  Blue skies render as black in infrared light...

I'm really liking what I am getting from this camera now that it has been converted to infrared light!  I didn't really care for this camera when it captured color visible light so it is nice that I found a purpose for it in infrared photography.  Plus, it is a very small camera with very tiny lenses so it is an easy kit to tuck into a bag.  I look forward to using it more often throughout the summer.  

Also, I want to point out that I shot the photos in the blog entry using a different lens than I have been using up until now.  For wide landscape photos, I have a 24-64mm lens (full frame equivalent) that I've been using.  For these images here with closer images of the subjects, I used my 70-200mm lens (full frame equivalent).  I was wondering whether this lens would work well in infrared and it appears to do just fine!

On a sidenote related to an update on my rather lousy health...  My breathing is kind of lousy again tonight.  I'd rate it in the eight to nine range out of ten tonight.  On the positive side, I haven't been sick in the bathroom since late last night.  I was in and out of the bathroom until around two in the morning or so.  I've had worse nights but last night was still kind of lousy. 

My bone and joint pain has been relentless lately and today was no different.  I've been walking around like I'm 80 or 90 years old.  My doctors aren't sure if this is a result of my mast cell disease or if it might be a Long-COVID thing or if it is a result of my mast cell disease being activated and worsened by Long-COVID.  I guess the "why" doesn't matter.  The only thing we recently ruled out was bone cancer and leukemia which is good.  I guess the problem with not having a definitive answer is that is leaves you wondering...  constantly...  it nags at you...  

On the positive side, my breathing didn't deteriorate enough last night to need the hospital again so that is good. 

EDIT:  May 9th, 2023 - Well, I only managed to get about four hours of sleep last night.  I got up out of bed very early this morning because I was having much greater difficulty breathing.  Using my inhaler and taking my morning dose of medications helped ease the breathing difficulties within a relatively short time.  When you are having breathing difficulties, even mere seconds seems like an eternity, however, when I say "short time" here I'm talking about a more realistic timeframe of a half hour or so. 

Unfortunately, four hours of sleep for someone who is already struggling with a debilitating chronic illness is not nearly enough to even try to push on through the day.  I might need to take a short nap this morning and then take another nap after lunch.  We'll see how it goes....