Category: Freeverse

Oakey Dokey

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A walk in the natural world
Does wonders for the soul
It is not magic
Nor does it make all problems go away
It just sets persepctive in its proper place
Hmmm
Maybe it is magic, a little

Life comes at us so fast and sometimes we just get caught up in the swirl of it all.
Our “new” digs came with a couple of years of required maintenence fixes and upgrades in our future.
Floors, paint, appliance/fixture fixes/upgrades, leak reapirs. You know, the stuff that even black holes avoid.

In the meantime I allowed my WP payment to lapse and I was punished with having to “recover” my account.
“If you’ve lost access to your WordPress.com account, our Accounts Recovery team will get back to you as soon as possible to help you gain access to your account again. Please use this form…”

After 10 or 11 password attempts/changes I think I’m back.

Cover image is a 10-stack/stitch effort of an oak made on the Ramona Grasslands Preserve. (Trail is too close to it and I was using the 200-600)
I cannot image oaks without thinking of Alexander Kunz, who is a master at imaging these stately trees.Thanks for the inspiration Alex. you can find him here: https://www.alex-kunz.com/
I also have to say that I am thinking of you Alessandra and I my hope for you is to eventually see beyond the abyss.
My heart goes out to you.

The same tree, different perspective. Photographers seek different perspectives

Oak on Ramona Grasslands Preserve

Sky Trippin’

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Searching for Andromeda
Finding Cassiopeia
Tripped over Jupiter
Looking for Saturn

These first renderings are so amateurish and yet so satisfyingly fun.
What a ride this is becoming.

Spent some time processing the Andromeda Galaxy. It took some searching, but I found it after multiple tries.

Andromeda

While searching for Jupiter I found Saturn! Very tiny. Barely 40 pixels wide on the originals!

Saturn

Jupiter was a horrible mess to process…too much atmospheric interference. These are all good lessons for future imaging. Looks like there are a couple of rogue pixels in there still. And the moons are a little hot as well.

Cover photo is of the Cassiopeia constellation…though I’m not sure it really looks like that!
Here are the separated channels it took to get to the final output:

By a Thread

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Our little world
Hanging by a thread
If you look up
You see the spin

I’ve been exploring the sky. Finding the north star (Polaris) was my latest goal.
It’s set directly above earth’s northern axis so there is little movement. Every thing else appears to spin around it, though it is earth’s rotation that causes this. The cover photo and video below is the resulting image after stacking several hours of photographs.

On another note, the heat wave here in Cali will be abating and making way for some rain. Rain?
High winds are expected as well (80mph gusts) so it’s batten down the hatches here.
With the clouds here, I will not be able to make any full moon work.
This one is from last light.

Hello moon!
Photos that make up a star trails photograph

Astronomical Failure

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Conditioned to believe
The finality of any experiment
Before its due time
IS the failure

A couple of months ago I started down a path of photographic exploration.
Noticing some issues with image quality (under extreme conditions), I began experimenting with different approaches to reveal what the problem is/was. I’ve been watching/reading MANY advisory tutorials, some good, some not.
As of today, I am still not much better off or confident that I have fixed the issues. After two months of capture-edit-output, capture-edit-output I have folders full of sub standard results. Good results, but still, sub-standard.
But, I have not failed. I have learned. And tomorrow I will stay at it, and the the next day, and the next.
I will tweak my approach each time and test it until I have abolished the issue or concede that it is unfixable.
The latter is likely. Some things just take more time and effort than what was first believed. Learning and exploration has great value. The effort to expose that value is predetermined and I must stay the course if I am to overcome my “failure.”

TImelapse

Thoughts

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There are places we go
In our minds
And it just has to be good enough
For the moment

Crystal Lake, Mammoth, CA
A short quick ascending hike to make this pano.
Big stressful day at work today. Not too unusual, but I’m glad to have this nice memory.