Category Archives: Photography

Cotton Thistle

Leica, Macro

Prickly Customer.




Click the image for a larger version.

I took heavy leather gloves and Felco pruning shears to cut this puppy down and still managed to get injured by the finer-than-hypodermic thorns. The stalk is woody and very hard, precluding my usual technique of inserting a bamboo skewer for mounting in the home studio. I had to resort to a couple of cable ties instead. You can just see the skewer at the base of the stalk.

Talk of a passive defense mechanism. Thorns everywhere. Whoever named this the ‘Cotton’ Thistle had a pretty warped sense of humor.

Here is the plant in its natural habitat, already some 6 feet tall:



As found.

Owing to the considerable depth of the plant I had to expose no fewer than 113 images for focus stacking, spanning the complete 6″ range of movement of the lower rack of the Nikon PB4 bellows.

A remarkable – and dangerous – plant.

Macro – Leica SL2S, 135mm El Nikkor, Nikon PB4 bellows, three strobes, ISO 100 at F/22. 113 images focus stacked in Helicon Focus. Habitat – iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Logitech G502 wired mouse

Mac Mini M4

Time for a new one.




The Logitech G502 wired gaming mouse.

My Mac Mini suddenly lost the ability to drag and drop files. Given the frequent use of this function and its general indispensability, this fault rendered the computer near useless.

I set about reinstalling the Tahoe operating system – no change – then restored files from my Time Machine sequential back-up. Still no joy.

That left the mouse and trying a basic old Microsoft two button mouse had drag and drop working once more, so the old Logitech G500 had to be replaced. As it had served me well I went with its replacement, the Logitech G502, and stuck with a wired design as that’s one less thing to go wrong and one fewer battery to recharge. At $38 it’s some 50% less than the G500 was 13 years ago, in inflation adjusted dollars, so no complaints here.

Like the G500 the G502 has installable weights to add heft and I loaded up the G502 with all six. There’s also one spare provided. Each weighs 36 grams/1.27 oz, so fully loaded you are adding 216 grams/7.6 oz, which confers just the right heft for my use. Also, like with the G500, the scroll wheel’s click-stops can be disengaged for smooth scrolling, much my preferred setting.

There’s a downloadable app which claims to do all sort of magic things, including changing the color of the LED logo (how dumb is that?). Well, it is a gaming mouse, which explains a lot about the typical user, I suppose. Rather than mess with that I stuck with the well supported SteerMouse which recognized the G502 immediately and programming the several buttons – there are seven – took a couple of minutes. After some use I had to turn down the pointer sensitivity and speed to get the settings I was used to. Simple to do. The G502’s buttons are located in a manner similar to that on the G500 which makes transition easy.

If the G502 lasts as long as the G500 I will be a happy camper.

Feather

Leica, Macro

Deposited in my front yard.




Click the image for a larger version.

This was formerly the property of a Great Horned Owl – the one with ‘ear’ tufts. The bird can be heard – and occasionally seen – at dusk in my neighborhood.

I used just one strobe to transilluminate the feather from the rear with a reflector next to the lens to confer some front lighting.

Leica SL2S, 135mm El Nikkor at f/16, Nikon PB4 bellows, ISO200, 1 strobe. 9 images focus stacked in Helicon Focus. The ‘floating in air’ effect was obtained by inserting a thin bamboo stick into the base of the feather and subsequently removing it in post. Take a look at the large version, by clicking the image above, and you will see that the El Nikkor enlarging lens does not disappoint.

A sad anniversary

Ramblings

On its 250th anniversary this is not the nation I once knew.




Our flag. Crown Graphic 4×5, 135mm Xenar, Kodak film.

I left the failed nation of England for America 49 years ago, full of anticipation and hope for this new adventure.

Today, the America I so proudly joined in 1977 is unrecognizable.

– Where there was love now there is hate.
– Where there was tolerance now there is bigotry.
– Where minds were open now they are closed.
– Where there was adulation of education now there is denigration.
– Where there was a Great Society now every man is out for himself.
– Where there was a decent leader now there is a common criminal.
– Where immigrants were welcomed with open arms now there is ICE.
– Where children could look forward to a better future than their parents now they cannot.
– Where there was peace now there is endless war.
– Where there was a thrust for equality now we have the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age.

I weep for my adopted country.

Hanging huge prints

Printing

Not a lot of fun.

Having mounted and framed the three 24″ x 36″ prints for my living room it came time to hang them. The post production time for printing, mounting, framing and hanging is a multiple of the time required to take and process the images, but there are no short cuts. Scrupulous cleanliness is dictated as even the smallest particle of grit will destroy the mounted print’s surface and white cotton gloves for handling everything are mandatory, if greasy fingerprints are to be avoided. In other words, the whole process is a royal pain.

First my son and I debated in which order the prints should be hung. After trying all the variations we decided on this:



Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

The print location is above three sets of louvered window shutters and we used a self-leveling laser level which projects a pair of 90 degree laser light lines on the wall, making alignment with the center of each pair of shutters a simple matter:



Laser level on the Linhof tripod.
A very tall ladder is involved.

As this location has a 19′ ceiling and we wanted the prints approximately half way up a very tall ladder was called for. Not much fun, I confess.

Here is the result after much struggling with this monster ladder, not to mention moving furniture around to accommodate it.



Common Ninebark, Common Blanketflower and Flax wildflowers.

A lot of work, with much fun finding the wildflowers in my community and photographing them, followed by hours of mirthless, hard labor to complete the project.

This will convey a sense of the enlargement ratio. I am holding the original of the Common Blanketflower in my right hand:



Holding the original and the print.