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#MacroMonday
#Zed
Photo taken by Roby (please see the first comment) as she approached the fourth planet of the Zed Zolar Zystem on another mission to cause some UFO sightings. Ever since Earz's closest neighbour, the Rose Planet, had been made inhabitable, and a commercial shuttle service has been established, it has become the dernier cri for Earzlings to have a cottage on Marz, and to spend at least a few weeks there each year. Since Roby so enjoyed to cause UFO sightings on Earz – they always cause such a pleasant buzz, and they always guarantee such a huge TV, internet and newspaper coverage –, she had decided to expand her planet coverage.
As you know, Marz possesses two irregularly shaped moons, Phoebe and Deizel, and here you can see Phoebe with its characteristic protrusions facing Marz' west pole in the famous "Afternoon Tea" constellation that Phoebe reaches every day precisely at five o'clock in the afternoon, while Deizel is still hidden from the beholder's view, hovering over Marz' south pole (also known as "Marz' kitchen"). Unlike the Earz-like Marz, both Phoebe and Deimos consist mostly of NaCl. This breakthrough discovery made during the 2021 Marz mission "Perzeverance" – which had been expanded to the exploration of Phoebe and Deizel in 2022 after the Marz rover's AI had miraculously developed awareness, and was therefore able to conduct and expand self-reliant experiments beyond Marz' surface – was the final proof that Marz, Phoebe and Deizel originated from the Zechstein Zea (located in the European Permian Bazin which stretches from the east coast of England to northern Poland). It layed the foundation for the settlement of Marz under Perzy's (the name the Marz rover chose for it-, pardon herself) conduct.
So what do we have here: A backlit rose quartz sphere / ball – 2,5 cm / 0,98 inches in diameter –, and a side lit rock salt (Steinsalz) crystal which is 0,9 cm / 0,35 inches wide. I had to focus-stack both the salt crystal and the rose quartz, because anything stopped down further than f/4 resulted in a too prominent background (black glitter foamsheet), but with this relatively wide open aperture I never managed to get both the salt and rose quartz sharp in one shot. The salt crystal was held in place by tweezers (which I'd mounted on a clamp) – another idea had been to photograph the salt crystal only and make it look like a precious raw diamond held by a diamond cutter's tweezers for a close inspection of the "stone's" quality –, and I've retouched the tweezers with the clone stamp in Photoshop post-processing. Further processing was done in Analog Efex.
HMM, Everyone, and stay safe and healthy!
#MacroMonday
#unusualpatterns
Weather forecast on a knife blade. On a Damascus steel knife blade, to be precise. Not what I initially had in mind, but that so often is the case when it's one of the "MM themes of the 1000 possibilities". Usually, for such a wide theme, I only have a few vague ideas what I could do for it, and the end result is pretty much a random surprise of what looks, firstly, most interesting through the macro lens, and, secondly, best as a photo, of course. Also, what is easy when it's not asked for - such as finding interesting patterns - becomes nearly impossible when it's required: patterns positively seemed to escape me as I went looking for them around the apartment ;-) And when I saw the knife in the kitchen (I hadn't even considered it as a possibility) I just thought "OK, that's probably very boring, but I'll give it a try." As for the "macro lens surprise", that was that not only did the banding typical for Damascus steel looked like waves (often an intended effect, but I only learned about that when I did my research on Damascus steel for the description and the tags), but those scratches from sharpening the knife that you can see in the upper part of the image also looked like heavy rain. And here it was, unfolding before my eyes: the high seas tempest.
The setup for the photo was as simple as it gets: I simply propped the knife, sharp side of the blade up, against a jar of sugar (my photo studio also doubles as breakfast and dinner table), both of it sitting on top of a heavy book to give it the same height as my camera on its small table top tripod, positioned one LED lamp (warm light) at the side of the table and grabbed my LED torch (cold light) to illuminate the blade from above (which also added the ever so slight 3D effect on the upper part of the blade), enabled the in-camera focus-stacking function, and hit the shutter button. I shot three focus stacking sequences of different parts of the knife of which this looked best.
Processing steps: The cold / warm light effect is something I get quite often when I use different light sources as above mentioned. It even works with one artificial light source (provided it gives warm light) and daylight from the window. Here I liked the split tone effect very much because I think it adds more depth to image. I wish I could have achieved the vivid colours you see here entirely by the use of light and the use of a colour filter (warm-cold or a combination of a cooling and a warming filter), but I've only recently considered to buy a few photo filters to improve my landscape photography, and since a good filter is expensive, I think I will buy one or two more versatile filters first before checking out the more exotic colour filters. So the colour enhancement here was done in Lightroom, where I tweaked the saturation and luminance of the blue, yellow and orange tones, and then in Nik's Color Efex, where, as final touch, I applied a Bi-color filter. I hope that these processing steps are deemed OK according to the new MM rules regarding the editing of an MM shot. I also did some sharpening and de-noising in Topaz Sharpen AI ("Focus" yielded the best result).
HMM, Everyone, and have a beautiful and safe week ahead!
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
~ Marcus Aurelius ~
#surfing #florida_birds #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
Maybe it's the days getting shorter and darker as winter approaches, the results of the election, or my husband now in memory care, but the days ahead look grim.
"A good half of the art of living is resilience." ~ Alain de Botton
Looking East towards Alabama Hills and Death Valley National Park mountains in the far rear.
3 exposure HDR.
Thank you very much for your kind comments and faves.
#pair_barred_owls #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
Herbstreflexionen
7DWF, Saturdays: Landscapes
Have a lovely (and calm!) weekend, dear Flickr friends!
Ich wünsche Euch ein ruhiges Wochenende , auf dass uns "Grischa", "Vera" und "Herwart" nicht zu viel Sturm bescheren.
The Brighton Marine Palace and Pier is a pleasure pier in Brighton, England, which opened in 1899. It is generally known as the Palace Pier for short but has been informally renamed Brighton Pier
Goslar/Harz Niedersachsen GER
Bäckergildehaus von 1501, Obergeschoss von 1557, Sitz der Industrie- und Handelskammer in Goslar, Bergstraße…
balconies of the so called V Huset (V House) in Ørestad, Copenhagen (Denmark).
Designed by JDS Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_Houses
Such great architecture there in Copenhagen !!
Deliberately moody edit (DxO Silver Efex 2 and Affinity Photo) to emphasize the somewhat threatening spiky-ness ;))
I am just having fun going through my archive on this rainy Sunday while doing a backup ... Happy (Sliders) Sunday, everyone !!
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... "stachelige" Balkone des sogenannten V Hauses (Bestandteil der VM Häuser) in Ørestad (Insel Amage), Kopenagen, Dänemark
Architekten: JDS Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98restad
Kopenhagen hat tolle Architektur zu bieten - und wir haben lange noch nicht alles gesehen !
Bewusst 'düstere' Bearbeitung, um den Gesamteindruck dieser etwas bedrohlichen, stacheligen Balkone zu verstärken.
Einen schönen Sonntag wünsche ich euch !
Die ersten Mohnblüten recken ihre Köpfchen der Sonne entgegen.
Canon EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro via Sigma MC-11 on Sony A7III.
RAW developed in DxO PhotoLab - B&W post processing with Nik Collection by DxO.
Elgol, Isle of Skye.
Technical details;
Exposure 1/30 sec at F13 at ISO100
Canon EOS 60D & Sigma 10-20mm F4-F5.6 at 10 mm
Manfrotto 190 XDB tripod
Hahnel Remote Capture remotes
Mindshift by Think Tank Filter Case
Optechusa camera strap
Herzlichen Dank für euren Besuch, Favs, Awards und die freundlichen Kommentare! 😊
Thank you so much for your visit, favs, awards and kind comments! 😊
#sliderssunday
I guess I will "pester" you with more flower images in this stream in the near future, simply because I have photographed so many recently ;) Partly, of course, because there are too many wayside beauties out there right now to ignore. And then, I'm still testing out the little Sony's "macro" (or at least "tele close-up") abilities. It was the one thing that was a little of a downside with this tiny compact cam: that, with the Mark VI and VII, Sony had sacrificed the brighter lens and "getting close" capabilities for the longer zoom range. But I wanted the extended zoom (my phone camera's fault), so I had to live with that – or find a workaround. So, because the Sony wasn't specifically made for macro, I ventured out to take macro and close-up photos with it all the more so, and I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.
I took this photo (like so many others recently) in the same spot right across the street where I photographed the peashrub (please see the first comment if you like). Here, with these still tightly closed "three poppy graces", the big surprise came on the monitor. While zooming in with the camera, I hadn't even noticed these "farmer" ants and their "livestock", the aphids.
The main sliding I did was adding a discreet paper texture to the background only (in Analog Efex). The background's blur factor is unaltered, and that it was so soft in the first place was a rather unexpected (but very pleasant) result from the 1" sensor (and at F/4.5). I also highlighted the details of the poppies in focus (in DXO PhotoLab 9 with the masking function).
Happy (Sliders) Sunday, dear Flickr friends!
#morakami #florida_birds #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
... in B&W, conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, focus stack
Smile on Saturday 3.4.2021 "Eggs in B&W"
The Easter bunny was potted by me some time ago.
#kingfisher #florida #best_birds_planet #planet_birds #birdbrilliance #birdphotography #nature #wildlifephotography #birdextreme #bestbirdshots #discovertheworld #nature_perfection #wildlifeperfection #gregorymountainpacks #canon #gitzo #leofotousa #markins #manfrotto #TKpanel #luminarneo #adobe_LR_PS #nikcollection #topaz #dxo #capture_1 #rrs
At midday we arrived at Vik. And the weather was just brutal. Walking over the black sand, we had to be careful not to get blown over and our faces got a free scrub treatment. Luckily we found a shelter a little further on the beach. This is almost a sort of cave and we were protected against the wind completely. Although I do like rough conditions on the beach, this was a bit too extreme. So we waited, I started looking around and saw some interesting textures in the rocks. Maybe a bit far-fetched, but for me it was fun to find this fish on the shore, but not in the water!
Thanks for having a look! All faves and comments are highly appreciated!