Scattered Thoughts . . .

F irst, I should probably write a few things about the tick bite that I got this past Thursday.  Actually, I think it is past time for an update. The site of the bite hurts...  all around the area hurts.  The tick was latched onto the right side of my abdomen under my waistband and the pain radiating from that relatively tiny spot is felt past my groin to the left and down below my right hip on the right.  I can also feel the pain deeper into my body at the site of the bite.  It is sort of an ache...  a mild burning ache...  maybe not "burning" but a warm ache.   When I got out of the shower today, I noticed I have about a two inch diameter pale white area around the red bite area.  It is not a bullseye but it is an odd pale lack of skin coloring around the bite area.  I'm not sure what this means, to be honest.  (Note:  After being out of the shower about an hour or so, that pale white area is no longer visible...  s...

Over the past few days, I've been having a conversation in a photography forum about how to shoot monochrome images.  More specifically, someone had asked how to better utilize the in-camera color filters to get darkened skies.   She was having difficulty seeing much of a difference between images shot without a filter and images shot with a filter.   It just so happens that I spent some time running some experiments pertaining to this topic a couple of years ago so I had quite a bit of useful advice. This photographer explained that the skies were hazy and most of the scene was green foliage but that she could not see much of a difference between images shot without any in-camera color filters and those shot with a red in-camera filter.  Now she was wondering if she was doing something wrong or wondering if a true physical filter on the lens would be better. I was the first in this forum to respond to her.  I explained that hazy conditions are lousy f...

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 ...

T oday I went digging into old hard drives searching for some old photos from the camera that I just sent in to be converted to Monochrome Infrared.  The camera I am having converted to monochrome is my old Panasonic Lumix G3.  I won't be able to shoot color photos with this camera anymore so I figured I should dig out some old color photos that I shot using this camera as a reminder of its colorful days.  Truth be told, I never really shot a whole lot of photos using this camera.  For a relatively short one or two summers, however, it was my main camera for wildlife photography while at the lake house due to its slightly larger crop factor (2x) which provided me with a longer zoom.  I have captured quite a few really nice images of loons, ducks, and nature but each of those images always needed a lot of post-processing work.  This camera was replaced as my primary wildlife photography camera when I purchased my first Sony camera.  Those Sony cameras p...

I had another rather lousy day yesterday.  I awoke in the morning having difficulty breathing.  My breathing improved a bit after I got up and took my morning dose of medications but I continued having difficulty breathing off and on throughout the day.   At this point, I'm really at a loss for what might be causing this ongoing breathing problem...  generic medications as opposed to brand-name medications?...  a worsened mast cell condition?...  a new condition that is more acute?...  having COVID again but continued to test negative?...  I really have no idea and I'm thinking we won't have any idea until after my next bone marrow biopsy.  That is scheduled for early in March so I have one more month to wait.   Most of yesterday was spent on the couch but I did manage to spend some time at the computer editing a few landscape photos.   This first photo was shot in Burlington on Lake Champlain... The State Capitol in...

I finally purchased a much needed dedicated solar astronomy camera and it arrived last night!   I've been using a sort of generic beginner astronomy camera (well...  maybe one step above entry level) meant primarily for guide scopes and planetary imaging.  There are far worse cameras than the one I've been using until now but this camera is not really an ideal choice for solar imaging.  It has been slow, difficult to use, noisy, and the image quality has been seriously lacking.  Producing good results out of this old astronomy camera has been difficult, frustrating and requiring a lot of extra post-processing.  I've had to work very hard at finessing fine detail out of the images and I've only managed to succeed at doing that because of my decades of photography experience.  I admit that I've managed to produce some nice imagery with the old camera but it has been difficult to accomplish requiring a lot of extra work and time.  Plus, much of...