A Quick Photography Project

My health has been quite lousy since returning from Long Island last weekend and it is still lousy...  perhaps even worse than I had thought it was this past week, actually.  

Sometimes I don't realize just how poor my health is until I either get worse or start to improve.  Then I can better gauge just how miserable my health is or has been.  In this case, I'm very slowly improving (I hope) but, as I can think more clearly, I am beginning to see just how poor my health has been this past week.  A few days ago I couldn't think clearly at all!

At this point, mostly, I am worn out...  too exhausted to even stand for more than a few short minutes.  I could easily sleep away each day and night.  The only problem is that I want to accomplish something!  This is a frustrating place to be...  wanting to accomplish something and not having the energy to even begin to accomplish anything.

Today the weather was beautiful...  sunny, warm, big puffy clouds in the sky, good visibility...  so my initial thought was to do some solar astronomy since I haven't had an opportunity to do any astronomy since our eclipse on April 8th.  Our weather has been even more abysmal than usual this past year but today probably would have been great for some solar astronomy.  Unfortunately, just the mere thought of collecting some astronomy gear and setting it up outside was enough to put me off this idea.  I knew I didn't have the energy for setting up astronomy gear nevermind putting everything away afterward so I went over to the piano.

I've had problems at the piano all week.  My hands are not cooperating with my brain...  not in the least.  I'm stumbling through easy pieces, making elementary mistakes and all the sheet music that I see almost daily looks unfamiliar to me.  I think my vision is struggling too which might explain some of my problems reading sheet music.  Today's short session on the piano was a little better than a few days ago but I still found it unfulfilling and even frustrating.  

I've never been one to find playing music to be "relaxing" nor "stress-relieving".  It's actually quite the contrary...  I must be relaxed and stress-free to play.  I've always felt that playing music is more like a job.  On rare occasions, however, I do get lucky and actually "feel" the artistic side of playing music but, mostly, it feels like just any old menial job...  sort of like washing dishes or doing laundry.  

Anyway, for the past week I've been struggling to find playing music anything less than frustrating.

Then, as I stepped away from the piano, I noticed the deep blue sky and puffy clouds again.  This was a perfect sky for infrared photography!  Puffy clouds look great against the darkened infrared sky.  I picked up my infrared camera, dusted it off (I haven't used it in a while so it literally was covered in dust) and headed out to the backyard.  I shot only a handful of photos but at least I accomplished something.

Even though I was only outside for about five minutes, when I came indoors I was completely spent again so I just placed my camera on my bed, laid down, and slept for the rest of the afternoon.  Although something small, I did accomplish something today.

I need to head to bed.  Maybe I'll add more to this blog entry tomorrow.

EDIT: It's the next day - I'll go ahead and write a bit about each of the photos as I had hoped to do last night.

This first image as well as the last image on this page are good examples of why you should not shoot directly into the sun when shooting in infrared.  You end up with tons of lens flares and, depending on the lens, you will get some odd artifacts around the bright sun if it's in the frame or even near the frame.  Personally, I do not mind lens flares...  actually, I kind of like them...  but I'll admit that they can definitely be too much of a distraction in certain compositions.

Incidentally, I'll mention it again, these photos were all shot in our backyard...

All of these photos are typical monochrome infrared images...  the blue skies render near black, the big puffy white clouds are very white with an appealing texture, and foliage is white.  Another great feature of infrared imaging at this wavelength (830nm) is that the clarity is something that simply cannot be attained in visible light imaging.  Typical atmospheric haze that we see with our eyes is not seen in infrared at this wavelength so the images appear very crisp with a clarity not usually observed in visible light.  This clarity is actually what I like the most about shooting in infrared.

The sun was just out of the frame in the image below which caused the lens flares.  In this image, I would have preferred having no lens flares but I don't mind these mildly distracting flares...  they add a bit of character to the image.

As much of a perfectionist as I am, I have to say that there are far too many photographers out there complaining about less-than-perfect lenses.  In my opinion, lenses should have a little bit of character therefore should be a bit less-than-perfect.  

I wish I had more energy to head out for the day looking for scenes to shoot in infrared.  I could get a really nice series of images.  

It is worth mentioning here that I am still feeling exhausted.  I also just don't feel "right".  I'm a little nauseated...  a bit weak...  exhausted...  my vision is a little blurry...  my bones ache...  actually, this bone pain is the likely cause of most of my lousy mood this past week (clearly seen in previous blog entries).  The frustration of not being able to accomplish what I want to accomplish doesn't help either especially when the weather is perfect outside for a change. 

Anyway, I'm still feeling lousy.  Also, I'm still waiting to hear from my oncologist about more testing.  We're actually waiting on my insurance company to approve the tests.  Then, if we see the results we expect in these tests, there will likely be a bigger fight with the insurance company to approve treatment.  This certainly is not improving my mood at all either!