Scattered Thoughts . . .

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 produce so much nicer results a

Yesterday morning, I packaged up a small mirrorless camera of mine to ship to a camera facility for service.  Sheila and I then dropped it off at the Post Office.   The short trip down to the Post Office and back was enough to do me in for the rest of the day though.  Riding in a car, especially on the rougher than usual roads in the winter, is brutal.  Riding in a car normally bothers my spinal injuries and often affects my Systemic Mastocytosis by agitating and activating my mast cells but yesterday's very short trip to the local Post Office was a painful ride due to my recent bone marrow biopsy.  I was glad to be back home after this short trip. I sent my small Panasonic Lumix G3 camera to a place on the west coast that specializes in infrared conversions.  This conversion will allow my camera to record in the infrared wavelengths rather than the usual visible light wavelengths.  To be more precise, I am having it converted to pick up light only in the  wavelengths from  830nm

I'm slowly but steadily recovering from my bone marrow biopsy.  It seems like the biopsy was the day before yesterday but today is the fourth day of recovery.  I've done a lot of sleeping when the pain would allow for some sleep.   I slept about 13 hours last night so that was good.  I awoke at around 5:30am but, contrary to the past few mornings, I was able to go back to sleep with no difficulty.  We got up at around 9am and Sheila did some yoga and then I made a fairly big breakfast.  So, I suppose I'm feeling well enough to do some cooking. Breakfast was good! I still have quite a bit of pain whenever I attempt to do anything.  Bending especially is painful...  sitting back against anything that puts some pressure on the site of the biopsy is even more painful...  and laying on my right side is better than it has been but at least it is possible now for short periods...  so things are improving.   At rest when nothing is touching the area of the biopsy, the pain is now a

I had no problems falling asleep last night.  I was dozing off by 8pm.  I awoke at 4:30am this morning when I tried to roll over onto my right side.  I was quickly reminded that the bone marrow biopsy was on my right side though so that woke me up suddenly.   I read in bed for a bit and then got up out of bed with Sheila when she got up for work at just before 6am.  However, I was unable to keep my eyes open by 8am and slept on the couch until just before noon (on my left side, of course).   I didn't even eat anything for breakfast because I was too exhausted to make anything.  I was originally planning to make some bacon and French toast because I was starving.  Due to a serious lack of energy, I changed my breakfast plan to just having a bagel with cream cheese.  I still didn't have the energy to make even that.  Instead, I grabbed a couple pillows from the bedroom and laid down on the couch.  I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow and didn't get up until almost n

W hat I realized very quickly yesterday during my third bone marrow biopsy is that the brain does a great job at blocking out most of our most painful experiences.  I thought   I was accurately remembering my two previous bone marrow biopsies quite well but I was sort of fooled by my brain doing what it does best...  adapting and protecting us.   As the doctor was digging deeper and deeper into my pelvis yesterday and the pain was getting unbelievably unbearable, a lot of my memories that I had completely forgotten from my previous bone marrow biopsies came flooding back in vivid detail. Apparently, the brain adapts to pain.  I've noticed this with my extensive spinal injuries as well as my everyday bone pain caused by my primary illness.  Honestly, for the most part, I don't really notice this constant chronic pain anymore.  It just sort of simmers there in the background.  I don't even remember what it is like to be pain-free.  I'm in significant pain everyday but my

O ver the past few days, I've been doing some periodic maintenance on my cameras and lenses.  Of course, this involved shooting some test images.  These images are really nothing special but I figured I would share a few of them here anyway.  All of these particular images are straight out of the camera with no extra processing.  (EDIT:  The last two photos did  require a bit of extra processing for the reasons mentioned at each photo.) This first photo was shot using my newest-to-me compact camera, a Fujifilm X30.  I like the background separation I can get with this very tiny compact camera.  It produces very sharp images as well.  This is my O scale trolley...   My recently purchased large scale trolley is up next.  Most people refer to it as a G scale model but, although I haven't taken any measurements of this trolley yet, I think it is an F scale trolley.  It is significantly larger than the trolley pictured above.  This photo, below, was shot using my Panasonic G3 at a

A fter my periodic camera sensitivity testing this morning in the infrared wavelengths, I pulled out one of my oldest digital cameras to shoot some snowscapes. As often is the case when I don't feel well enough to head outside, these images were shot through our open living room window because I didn't have the energy to dress for the winter weather outdoors.  For these photos, I used my Olympus E-500 with it's Kodak CCD sensor from way back in 2005.   This camera is nothing special but the Kodak CCD sensor is special which is the only reason why I continue to hang on to this camera.  The camera likes to clip highlights which is really frustrating.  I'm constantly applying a lot of negative exposure compensation to keep the highlights under control.  Also, I have found that the Olympus cameras don't auto-focus well on items with a lot of specular highlights like ice and wet snow in the sun.  These images came out fairly well though.   I shot in monochrome with a red

I've wanted to get into monochrome infrared imaging for quite a while but this has been one of those projects that keeps getting pushed to the back burner because it wasn't a priority.  Photographing in infrared is challenging with a very unique and distinctive look.  One of the reasons why I seem to keep pushing infrared photography to the back burner is that environmental and weather conditions must be "just right" for infrared imaging to work well.  You need the right weather conditions, the right environmental conditions, and the right scene for infrared photography.  You also need to use a tripod and infrared filters.  Just getting one good image can require many minutes of getting everything just right and then actually capturing a long exposure image. The first step toward getting involved in this type of imaging, however, was to see which of my camera bodies were best for this type of imaging.  I finally accomplished this over the past two days. This wasn'

I 've been trying to keep up with moving snow each day this week.  Winter finally arrived here in our neck of the woods and we are finally seeing some snowfall.   The snow this morning is deep and exceptionally heavy.  We're trying to dig out as quickly as we can because Lukey has a state championship hockey game at 1pm today.   Getting to the game depends on two things...  digging out the car...  and my health after digging out...  I've been moving snow almost every day this week.  Most days I've had to move about four inches of mostly light snow.  Yesterday or the day before was about eight inches of snow that needed to be moved...  that is from our driveway, pathways around the house including to the oil tank and gas tank, and removing snow from the roof.  Today was clearly a minimum of 12 inches of wet heavy snow...  more in some spots, less in others.  Most important is removing the snow off the roof when it is heavy and over about six inches.  The biggest problem

Our new refrigerator arrived today, as scheduled, so that is a bit of good news during perhaps the worst start of any new year in my life.   The furnace broke down in the middle of the night in late January and now needs to be replaced.  The refrigerator broke down and needed to be replaced because it was beyond repair.  Sheila's mom is in the hospital with a fractured spine, Alheimer's, and now COVID.  Sheila's dad also now has COVID.  I spent some time in the hospital and I need to head back to the hospital next week for a bone marrow biopsy.  My health is still rather poor with continued problems that had landed me in the hospital about a month and a half ago.  It really has been a miserable start to the new year. Just as I finished shoveling the deck and snowblowing in preparation of this refrigerator delivery, the truck pulled up to the house.  That was perfect timing since it was still snowing fairly heavily.  If they had arrived later in the day I would have had to d