Scattered Thoughts . . .

H ere is a photo that I shot this morning in our living room.  This is an Asiatic Lily plant sitting in sunlight coming through one of our living room windows.  I've mentioned a few things in previous blog entries about infrared light but this photo is a good example showing a few of these unique characteristics. First, the chlorophyll is glowing white which makes the green leaves render as a very bright white in infrared.  All else inside the house is dark.  It is like the lily plant is illuminated from within itself!   I've also mentioned that another characteristic of infrared imaging is exceptional clarity.  This is certainly visible in this shot but, honestly, it is really noticeable outdoors when shooting a wide landscape shot.  Infrared light seems to see through much of the haze that our human eyes see in visible light.  Well, it doesn't see "through it".  The haze that we see simply isn't visible in the infrared wavelengths. The...

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....

M y health is still quite lousy so I have been laying low and looking for things to do that require little energy and that take up little time.  I've been laying low since mid-January so this is getting kind of old.  I'm still not sure if this poor health is simply a "new normal" for me or if I am experiencing an extra long term recovery that is taking far more time than usual.  Or, if perhaps my health has worsened significantly...  or a new secondary illness...  or a newly ineffective medication...  I'll discuss all of this with my oncologist next week.  In the meantime, I am still struggling each day to do the smallest of things before sleeping away most of the day. I've been extremely and overwhelmingly fatigued.  Even on those rare occasions when I feel "okay" for a short time, I am quickly so exhausted that I must lay down.  I'm also still struggling with significant difficulties breathing a few times each week.  Then throw in the ...

I had previously written about sending one of my old camera bodies in for service.  I sent it to the west coast to have the sensor converted from seeing and capturing images in visible light to only seeing and imaging in infrared light.   There are different levels of infrared conversions that can be done but I chose to have this camera body converted to see only light wavelengths above 830nm which is deeper into the infrared wavelengths.  These wavelengths make for very interesting, very crisp black and white images with a clarity you simply cannot attain in visible light.  Some things render the same in infrared light but many things a quite different with a very noticeable increase in clarity. Naturally, I couldn't wait for my old camera to arrive on my doorstep.  It arrived last night about two weeks earlier than I had expected, but still, it seemed like an eternity to me.  I think it spent more time traveling from and to the east coast during sh...