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So....I ended up sending this one to one of the contests I´m in . www.ljosmyndakeppni.is/challengeresults.php?challengeid=523
Pretty happy with the resault : 5/152 :o)
Being in this group and partisapating in those contests are very challenging, but above that it´s just so instructive and endless fuuuuuuuuun !!
Catching up in tiny steps when ever I can :o)
Enjoy your week
Ása B
Large View On Black
From a sociological and urban planning point of view, this cliché is instructive.
It shows the gentrification of a once working-class neighborhood.
These high-end cars, carefully sheltered under covers or various means of protection, indicate the presence of an upper middle class.
* * *
D'un point de vue sociologique et urbanistique, ce cliché est instructif.
Il montre la gentrification d'un quartier, autrefois populaire.
Ces voitures haut de gamme, soigneusement mises à l'abri sous des housses ou divers moyens de protection, indiquent la présence d'une classe moyenne supérieure.
How about a small splash of colour to brighten your morning? And I mean small – the only notable colour here is found in the center of a snowflake “adornment” to the main crystal. Even still, it’s quite vibrant! As I like to question everything: why are some colours found in snowflakes more muted than others? Why are some colours more common?
Optical interference doesn’t produce a traditional “rainbow” of colours. The patterns and connecting colours are different from that you would see emerging from a prism. Because the same type of physics creates colours in soap bubbles, there’s a fair amount of “popular science” written about these colours, and there are charts: soapbubble.fandom.com/wiki/Color_and_Film_Thickness
You’ll notice that the more vibrant colours tend to be seen with the thinnest film. Dull green and magenta-type colours are also far more common because they readily repeat when these films become thicker. Some colours, such as the blue we see in this snowflake, are rare; blue only occurs twice, and only one instance allows this particular light-blue hue. That can also tell you the exact thickness in that area of the snowflake! Whichever ice / air layer responsible for the optical interference is roughly 250nm thick. 250 nanometers = 0.00025 millimeters.
Onto the larger snowflake, we see a lot of surface features that reveal the contours and texture this snowflake possesses, through the use of reflected light photography. Many of these features would simply appear transparent if I was lighting the snowflake from behind. It can appear chaotic on larger snowflakes, making it difficult to understand exactly how the various features form; this includes the center, which at first glance is a hexagon! But no. The geometry is fractured.
On a smaller snowflake, such features could be inspected and a hypothesis might emerge as to how the top left of this hexagon appears to break away from the rest. There might be clues on the outer edge, or details that we cannot see from this far away. The bubbles in the center also appear peculiarly asymmetrical, but these mysteries cannot be solved at this distance. We can still admire the overall beauty of the final form, however!
Oh, and can you spot the third snowflake in this image? Upper right branch, just hangin’ on. It’s tilted from the camera and doesn’t get the same sparkly “glare” effect as the other two crystals; this makes it appear transparent, but it’s a helpful remind that ALL snowflakes are transparent like glass. :)
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A classic pair! This is what we imagine when we think of “snowflakes”, right? Pseudo-symmetry and balance in the shape of a star. While these are depicted in decorations, movies and cartoons, they are just one narrow example of how snowflakes can form – and the deeper you look, the stranger things can become.
The very center of the larger snowflake is a small dark dot. Is this what “nucleated” the snowflake? No, it’s the remnants of a column-type crystal that grew plates. Snowflakes do, however, need something to start their growth – a speck of dust smaller than a grain of sand is all it takes. It could be started with airborne bacteria! The central column here is the smallest feature we can see, but it illustrates that this particular snowflake is a “split crystal”.
Split crystals form when plates grow on either side of a column, with each set of corners fighting for building blocks. Six simultaneous battles ensue, one for each point on the parallel hexagons. If one of the two points ends up growing slightly larger than its competitor, it’s game over. Whatever sticks out the farthest, grows the fastest. In this specimen, the top plate won three (top, bottom, upper left) and the bottom plate won the remaining three plates. The snowflake is stuck together by a very fragile column of ice in the center; it wouldn’t take much to break it into two pieces, and snowflakes of this design after reach the ground in fragments.
There’s also the anomaly in the lower left branch. It appears like a sheet of ice is ground on top of the branch as it leaves the center. What gives? It’s hard to be certain just by looking, but I have seen some spines on branches reach a considerable height above the branch and shape into a near-90-degree edge. This, in turn, can cause outward growth from the top, like an anvil. It’s the basis for a rare type of snowflake referred to as a “skeletal form” crystal, but we see hints of it in more common specimens. Interestingly, the same reasoning can apply to the “sheet” behind the top branch. Since this branch has (most of) its surface features opposing the camera, the sheet of ice is also growing on the opposite side of the crystal.
The smaller stellar snowflake in the upper right is a fun example of growth conditions – these snowflakes formed in the same cloud, at the same time, yet they come out differently. Broad branches tend to mean stable, lower-humidity growth, but a cloud isn’t a controlled environment. The two primary variables of temperature and humidity are always fluctuating, and the tiniest change results in unique features. Each snowflake flies its own path in nature, which is why you’ll never find two identical snowflakes in the natural world. Even lab-grown crystals from my friend Ken Libbrecht at CalTech, in their attempt to be “identical twins” still have a unique fingerprint to them.
This image was photographed using my Lumix S1R with the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens, a combination I have used reliably for most of my snowflake imagery. Lighting is provided by a Yongnuo YN-14EX II ring flash, F/2.8, ISO 200 and 1/160 sec exposure time (this is the fastest flash sync speed of the camera). I could shoot at ISO 100, but the flash would be required to double the light output, and it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rate of shooting. Even at ISO 200, an external battery back needs to be plugged into the flash to keep it firing for every image.
On average, I photograph 2-300 images of each snowflake gathering slices of focus handheld, and then choose an average of 40 images with different parts of the snowflake in focus to bring the entire image sharp from tip to tip. Even still, I sometimes miss a frame and there is a slight blurry area where the details of adjacent slices of focus don’t completely cover the gap. A trained eye can spot it – can you? There are two areas in this image where the details lack perfect sharpness.
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Praktica LTL
A supposed to be instructive photo for a change.. the lower part of the lens mount was getting loose on this Praktica. As instructed online you can genlty remove the plastic ring by pressing through the 2 larger holes at 10 and 2 o'clock from the back to the front. Remove the mirror and shutter curtains from the scene via Bulb and do mind the wires around the 2 o'clock hole! Maybe a photo of the mount can be of use to someone.
Got hold of this camera looking for a candidate to mount some m42 lenses on.. Light meter seems to be dead so far, shutter works fine.
Last week Saturday I have participated in a workshop for macro photography, with the goal to learn more about this difficult part of photography. The workshop was very instructive and during the day I have made my first macro. There are a lot of things which are not right in this picture yet, but the take-off is realized . I love the details in macro photography, so more macros will follow !
Happy New Year! May 2023 be a year of happiness and prosperity for everyone. Since the latter part of 2019, the world has been a place of uncertainty. I sincerely hope that 2023 is the year that brings back stability and safety to everyone around the globe.
I feel a bit strange celebrating “now”. Why now? The end of the arbitrary calendar year. What about the Byzantine calendar where the year begins on September 1st, or the Islamic calendar based on the lunar cycle? Luni-solar calendars like Jewish, Indian, and Chinese calendars are observed by a large percentage of the world’s population, but I suppose now is as good a time as any to mark a completed trip around the sun.
And to celebrate, here’s a snowflake! One very star-like, which is why they are referred to as stellar dendrites. “Dendrite” coming from the Greek word “déntro”, meaning “tree”. While the tips of the branches show signs of moderate sublimation, it’s the center of this snowflake that truly shines; it’s blooming like a flower trapped in the ice.
The flower shape is an unexpected thing to see in a snowflake, but the explanation is rather mundane and simple: inward growth. If the outer edge of a snowflake has become thicker – common in less humid conditions – that thicker wall can grow back in towards the center. It rounds out as it does this, creating a circle in the center of a hexagonal plate. If the crystal has branches, then you’ll see additional rounded growth from them. Look carefully and you can spot this type of growth all over the snowflake – easy to see in the right-most branch.
The flower-like indentation on the snow appears to be a protrusion, which would be more difficult to explain. It’s a bit of an optical illusion here, but again it’s a simple answer: the indentation is on the backside of the snowflake. However, there are still some mysteries here; look just beyond the “petals” of the flower. You’ll see more rounded shapes, with the contrast indicating that these features are on the frontside of the snowflake – and they are less perfectly rounded.
Could the wavy lines be influenced by the surface textures of the branches? Maybe. The more I stare at them the less confident I am about their origins.
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A classic “stellar dendrite” snowflake – always a crowd-pleaser! But the real treasure here isn’t the snowflake itself, but the camera gear used to photograph it. This was shot with a Micro Four Thirds camera and a standard macro lens. Nothing exotic, nothing extreme; camera gear you may already have!
I often push the limits of what cameras can capture, right up to the resolving limits introduced through diffraction. At a certain point, no matter how expensive or advanced your camera equipment, you can go no further. However, such equipment can be intimidating to people that want to casually explore a subject. For this snowflake, I used the Lumix GX9 and the Leica 45mm F/2.8 macro lens. The Panasonic 30mm macro or the Olympus 60mm macro would have had comparable results. The Lumix GX9 is an excellent tiny travel camera!
I’ve long suggested that the Micro Four Thirds system is great for macro photography, as you have a perceived magnification increase when you compare the field of view of cameras with larger full-frame sensors. A 1:1 macro lens on full-frame camera would “feel” like a 2:1 (2x) macro lens at the closest focusing distance – which is a huge advantage for subjects like snowflakes. Ideally, you’d want to have at least 2x-3x magnification with larger sensors, sometimes much more than this.
The Leica 45mm macro (Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Lens) is a very decent macro lens that I happen to have had handy at the time of this shooting. However, if there was a lens I’d recommend people buy for snowflake photography on the m4/3 platform, hands down it’s the Laowa 50mm F/2.8 macro: www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1585695-REG/venus_optics_v... . Less expensive than most macro lenses, good quality glass, manual focus only but with the ability to shoot 2:1 magnification, you can get the equivalent of 4x on larger sensors. Perfect for snowflakes!
The photos are not just taken with a camera and a lens, but also a ring flash. The best on the market is also far from the most expensive. I always use the Yongnuo YN-14EX II: www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1462725-REG/yongnuo_yn_14e... . It’s designed to work with Canon TTL, but I just use it on my Lumix cameras in manual mode. Works perfectly that way (though they also make a native Sony version, manual exposure is ideal for snowflakes).
Are there some limitations? Sure. The GX9 as a small buffer, so only a few dozen images can be captured before you have to wait a while. The resolution of the camera is only 20MP, but for most of my career that was the range I was completely comfortable with. I would argue that there is also an advantage in having a larger camera body for certain subjects, as the extra heft can aid in stability. But the question is: can you photograph a snowflake with extreme detail with a smaller “every-day” camera setup? Yes.
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Sure, there are snowflake “types”, but often times there is such an overlap of characteristics. Rarely would you find a “purebred” snowflake with only the features that match a particular description. Such as with this snowflake, there’s a lot going on!
A capped column grows outward on two planes, but why asymmetrically? Take a look closely at the right side of the central plate. Its growth is blocked by branches here, but that shouldn’t happen; they should be on different planes and allowed to overlap. The clues to why this happened are all around – you may spot little “gems” on the surface of the snowflake, hexagons that jump out of the surface. The easiest one to spot is on the upper right branch, just past the central plate.
These embedded gems are the result of a super-cooled water droplet colliding with the snowflake, and freezing on impact. Over time, if there aren’t too many of them, they’ll grow proper crystal facets. If one of these forms close to the outward-growing edge of a branch, it’ll do even more than become faceted; it’ll grow branches! The reason why the central plate is not symmetric is because of this – the side-branches are indeed growing on the same plane.
Look to the outer edges and you’ll see some dark circles. The tip of the lower right branch has two of them, and if you look around the snowflake you’ll spot more. These are the more primitive version of those gems, having very recently collided with the surface of the snowflake. If these appear in abundance, the technical term is “rime”. Heavily rimed snowflakes will lose their pristine crystalline figure, and eventually are referred to as “graupel” when the original snowflake shape is hardly recognizable anymore. This particular snowflake just has a few marks that add to its character.
Some branches are fusing together, others are overlapping. Bubbles are being created all over the branches as the ice fills in. “Skeletal form” growth can be seen as the main spine of four branches grows outward from the top. A snowflake always has a lot going on, and these photos are just a snapshot in time of their brief existence. They eventually return to water, again to vapour, and the cycle repeats. It has repeated on Earth for billions of years, before life existed. And so it continues!
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It was as lightening struck for me to both find this bird and for it to pose for me so well ... if but for an instant. Nashville warblers' migration path in both spring and fall is to the west of Georgia so they are rare in both seasons, and they breed well north of here.
This bird is extraordinarily dull for this species. Both the alula, and primary coverts are brownish also pointing to a first fall bird.
The primaries and tail feathers appear quite brownish and appear somewhat tapered. The eyering is more buffy than white and there is little contrast between the head and upper back. The throat is whitish, and there is little yellow in the belly and flanks. It is instructive to compare this bird to an adult male from Michigan breeding grounds posted earlier in the summer on my photo stream. This is probably a first fall female. She stole my heart if but for an instant.
Kennesaw MT. 9/13/2017.
let's leave the Kazakhs for a while ( I somehow got used to them, it's almost the territory of Kazakhstan here now )) .. I recently read in the comments that some people are more interested in my black and white photos. And I want to straighten things out a bit...
when, due to a trip, I buy the right lens and look for its strengths, I always experiment with people.
I don't like making the test with a "brick wall" view.
This, of course, is instructive, but I'm bored.
So often in my film there are random portraits, not always meaningful. Here is one
camera Nikon FM2n
it's probably MF Nikkor 105mm f2.5 ai-s
probably Kodak Eastman Double-X 5222 panchromatic black-and-white negative film 250 iso rewinding a house on a fujifilm-reel
NORITSU KOKI scanned
BACKGROUND:
First fall female Blackburnian warblers are the dullest of all plumages of that species. Warbler ID resources mention how that plumage can be confused in the field with fall female and first fall male Cerulean warblers. I thus felt it instructive to construct this collage on that very issue. Dunn in his Warbler Peterson Field Guide mentions that many late season Ceruleans may be in fact mis-identified first fall female Blackburnian warblers. Also while the Cerulean warbler is a very early fall migrant, it is also possible to run into first fall female Blackburnian warblers during their entire migration.
THE PROBLEM:
1 illustrates the problem with limited views in the field which are compromised by distance, obstruction, and lighting much of the time. Is 1 a first fall female Blackburnian warbler or a fall Cerulean warbler? They both have paired wing bars, a distinct light stripe above the eye (supercilium) and a darker auricular area, and may both have a lemon yellow or ochre type wash on the throat and upper chest areas, and some darker side striping.
The view in 1 alone is therefore not diagnostic to species. It is either a first fall female Blackburnian, or a fall female or first fall male Cerulean. Either 2 or 3 is another view of 1 and both are diagnostic to species. One of them is a Cerulean, and the other a Blackburnian.
THE DIFFERENCES:
I believe the easiest way to separate the two is a look at the length of the undertail that protrudes past the undertail coverts, or said another way the length of the tail beyond the meaty part of the bird. There is a marked difference in this characteristic between 2 and 3 above. 2 with a very shot undertail extension is a Cerulean, and 3 is the Blackburnian with the much longer undertail extension. Since many views are distant, and from well below the canopy this characteristic is the easiest to see in the field. Even a poor photograph can be useful when blown up.
Above 1 and 3 are the same bird.
In fall both species can be seen foraging quite low sometimes allowing decent views of the dorsal aspect. When the dorsal aspect (top or backside of the bird) is seen well the species have marked differences. in 4 you can see the pale central forehead spot on the Blackburnian, and the pale pair of longitudinal stripes on the back. Ceruleans will have neither of these dorsal findings as per 5 which shows a fall female and first fall male side by side. The male is the brighter/bluer bird in 5 and it has some evidence of dark streaking on the back, and dark streaking on the lateral crown. Finally compare the length of the undertail between the fall Cerulean female in 6 and the first fall female Blackburnian in 3.
WHAT YOU CAN'T RELY ON:
Some warbler sources mention the 'rounding off' of the auricular as a way to differentiate the two. This is helpful only if clearly present as many first fall female Blackburnians may not show this in the field. The bright lemon yellow color of the throat and chest on some Ceruleans can also not be used to identify a bird as a Blackburnian as shown in 2. Finally given close looks and good lighting it is fairly easy to separate these species based on coloring alone. Ceruleans are either green, or shades of blue dorsally, and first fall female Blackburnians are shades of brown
and whitish. Side streaking is generally sharper and browner in first fall female Blackburnians. However with many situations such as 1 and 2 it is difficult to discern true colors.
2 Species Swan
Adult
Tundra Swan TUSW (Cygnus columbianus)
&
1st year bird
Trumpeter Swan TRUS* (Cygnus buccinator)
British Columbia
record shots
DSCN5274
although poor quality , this photo is instructive
the size disparity is not as apparent as in most cases
some other other aspects discussed below
Field Mark Cues ^i^
This Obs.
1. "Pinch Point"
This is what i refer to as how the black 'of' bill area connects to the eye
As with other aspects of swan differentiation this is not an absolute but i would say it is perhaps the single most reliable .
If a bird has a "Pinch Point " less than the diameter of eye AND yellow in the lore.... TUSW confirmation
This Adult has no discernible yellow in lores but pinchpoint and has a flat brow line [vs a V shaped brow line (TRUS)]
TRUS pinch point almost always has a black connection to the eye that is equal to or wider than diameter of the eye
Such as this immature individual , which also has a V shaped brow.
Both aspects of brow line not easily apparent in photo ,but discernable with care
TUSW brow appears 'bunched ' and stands higher , while TRUS tapers more so on towards bill.
3.Bill shape
TRUS is more elongated triangle with a flatter straighter culmen (top of bill)
TUSW may show a concave upper edge of bill
TUSW here has a nicely pronounced "Dogleg "pattern on cheek' -- contrast line between white feathers and black bill
TRUS here has a more marked angle change than many (more typical ) TRUS but is still a relatively simpler pattern.
other aspects of "swanology "are discussed in other postings this photostream
Merry Christmas! I usually save something special for Christmas Day, and here it is – one of the biggest snowflakes I have ever encountered. Asymmetrical but stunning, with countless layers of detail and adornments. While the average snowflake takes about four hours to edit, this one set me back 14 hours across three days.
There’s too much to describe in this jewel, but one prominent feature stands out: faceted rime. All over this crystal, with a few prominent locations on each branch, you can spot hexagonal gems growing in clusters, like a top-down view of some futuristic crystalline city. This is the result of extremely prolonged growth after a collision with super-cooled water droplets (droplets of liquid water that are technically colder than the freezing point. They’ll turn to ice with any disturbance, such as hitting a snowflake mid-air).
Snowflakes don’t normally get this big, with such broad branches and layers. This snowflake fell in a rare cloudless event that I have only seen twice in a decade. By some meteorological phenomenon, a wave of snowflakes calmly descended on me in the late evening with stars in the sky. These were big snowflakes, with similar features to this one; thick, broad branches and gargantuan size. These jewels were only landing for a few moments, and very sparsely. Then, they were gone. Was it some sort of travelling ice fog? A simple low-lying cloud? I am uncertain, but the conditions were incredibly gentle, resulting in a snowflake design usually only found in lab-grown specimens.
If you look closely, you’ll see what appears to be the possibility of a second snowflake in the background, almost the same footprint. There are so many branches growing completely behind the main crystal that this is possible. You can also spot two completely separate snowflakes, one beneath the center and one to the lower right. The same weather system made snowflakes of all sizes and shapes.
A Christmas miracle? Hardly – this snowflake was photographed on February 13, 2021. It has taken me a while to get around to this arduous edit, and I still have over 1000 unedited snowflakes from many years ago to get through. We don’t get much snow here near Varna, Bulgaria – but I’ll be out photographing whatever comes my way.
I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas. Some of you have the same luck as I do – to spend the day celebrating with family. Do not take this for granted, as many people in the world are suffering greatly this Christmas; imagine the cold and hopeless winters of the early 1940’s, but today. Hug your family, tell silly jokes, embrace everything that has no material value in your life. Be happy. Be healthy. Find the motivation to make 2023 the best year ever - not for you, but for those you care about.
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A simple as the outside shape of this snowflake presents itself, the interior looks incredibly alien, like a dark portal to another realm. There are a few key areas to focus your attention on, and the reality of what you’re seeing should become clear.
These wobbly patterns – we see them all the time. They are most often seen as bubbles, but this is a “pre-bubble” state where they haven’t had a lid closed off on top of them. For example, here’s some similar wobbly patterns that are fully-formed bubbles: flickr.com/photos/donkom/24544721337/ . I am assuming these are the result of the cascading growth seen on a number of crystals in this year’s series, chosen to help illustrate the concept in its many forms. I can now properly identify this growth pattern in snowflakes originally published many years ago (like this flickr.com/photos/donkom/46357643062/ ). But in this new snowflake specimen, this growth seems to be surrounded by strong outer walls at the edge of the crystal.
There’s a ring around the outside of it, with rounded corners. You typically see this type of rounded internal feature when a snowflake is growing back inward from an outer thicker layer – thick outer edges often form in lower humidity environments. This can act like a barrier to the free flow of water vapour across the surface of a snowflake that would normally fill in some of the wobbly bits to be solid, thicker ice. Instead, the inner edge of the thicker wall collects any building blocks (water vapour) that fly across the surface, slowly extending it further and further inward.
This hexagon-slowly-rounding-to-a-circle grows inward, and has just made contact with the inner details. Some of which have started to become bubbles – look for the bright areas. There are brighter edges forming on the outer area of inward growth too, easiest to spot at the top and bottom. The ceiling has begun to form. Or at least, this one theory suggests. It all makes logical sense from an observational perspective, except for one small problem.
The top of the inner rounded hexagon, supposed to denote inward growth, also appears to have an “opening”. This doesn’t compute with anything I’ve just suggested. Parts of the theory could be wrong or incomplete as a result. It remains somewhat mysterious, but the end result would have been that all the internal features would be covered in a layer of ice like we have seen many times before. This doesn’t happen at the leading edge of outward growth; it happens much later in the life of a snowflake.
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Okay, time for a really strange snowflake! One of the more exotic varieties, here’s a “crossed plate”-type crystal. I’ve only ever documented a handful of these unusual gems. So, how do they form?
In a similar way to arrowhead crystals, some misalignment of the crystal lattice at the beginning of a snowflake carries on as a repeating pattern. Normally, water molecules connect together in a way that vaguely resembles a hexagonal prism, and this constitutes the vast majority of snowflakes. Sometimes, mistakes happen. These alternate patterns are discussed at length by my friend Ken Libbrecht in the most comprehensive books on snowflake science ever written: www.amazon.ca/Snow-Crystals-Spontaneous-Structure-Formati... (this is NOT a light read).
I’ve sat here thinking about the best analogy to give for this. Honestly the best way is to just think back to that molecular diagram: crystalsymmetry.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/ice_ih_molecu...
This is by far the easiest arrangement for water molecules to from a crystal lattice, and thereby it’s abundantly more common – but what if something at this scale came together in a less-tidy way? That initial connecting pattern can repeat, like a zipper of sorts, connecting two “normal” pieces of fabric (crystals). They are twinned together along this anomalous growth.
In this specimen, we’ve got an interesting twist. The “zipper” runs along the length of the length of the snowflake in the middle, having a twinned crystal growing from either side… but also, jutting out from the top! It’s hard to visualize because of all the overlapping layers of ice, but there are a number of plates rising up and away from the main body of the snowflake; It reminds me of wings on a butterfly.
A different mis-aligned beginnings are also responsible for the creation of arrowhead snowflakes, equally uncommon. Here’s the best example of an arrowhead I have captured to date: flickr.com/photos/donkom/49409793147/ - you can clearly see the horizontal line running down the middle. It’s there on today’s snowflake, but it’s harder to spot through all the layers of ice.
There you have it: not your average snowflake!
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Snowflake 935 – Close-up
This requires posting separately, as many people would not properly be able to dive into the details of this snowflake. Just the heart of it, also featuring one of the adorning crystals resting on top. In something so small there is an unending level of detail!
One of the benefits of shooting with a higher-resolution camera is the ability to capture incredible details. Because this snowflake was so large, I was able to use lesser magnification – this is important! The higher your magnification, the smaller your effective aperture becomes and the more likely you are to lose details due to the limits imposed by diffraction. This was shot with my Lumix S1R and the Canon MP-E 65mm 1x-5x macro lens and Yongnuo YN-14EX II ring flash. My best snowflake results have been from this combination of equipment.
The focus stack of this snowflake was over 80 images, allowing for complete focus from everything tip-to-tip. I'm not sure how many would have covered this cropped section, but it was a monumental effort. The editing process took 14 hours, with a lot of additional time spent on the faceted rime. These areas are very volumetric and transparent, which confuses the heck out of all focus stacking algorithms. Plenty of manual corrections were required here.
The finish touches are always important, and one element I have been adding into the mix this season has been the use of Topaz Gigapixel AI, in a controlled fashion. Because snowflakes are mostly geometry, it’s relatively easy to sharpen up the lines. The software “guesses” at details, and it doesn’t always get it right. I flip the AI layer on and off and make adjustments to areas that don’t match what’s expected of the original snowflake. It works to overcome some slight detail loss from diffraction or optical issues, but it cannot be let to run the show. It’s amazing how far we’ve come to continually push against the limits of physics with technological advancement.
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Proof that UFOs exist? If an alien spacecraft was less than a millimeter across and made entirely of water, perhaps! Tiny hexagonal snowflakes can exhibit vibrant features via thin film interference if the conditions are just right.
Notice how the edges of the colours areas are “echoed” with a fine line positioned to the lower left. This is a reflection from the edge of the bubble, off the back of the snowflake. It’s amazing what you can do with reflected light – which is the only way you’d be able to see these colours at all! This would be a rather boring snowflake if the slight was coming from behind the crystal, as if it was on a plate of glass. You’d see the vague outline of the shapes, but nothing more.
This snowflake is a great example of “circles in the snow”. If a snowflake grows with six-fold symmetry and plenty of 60-degree angles, how does a snowflake form a near-perfect circle? Imagine that the outer edge of the snowflake grew a bit thicker – common in lower-humidity environments. This thicker outer edge can continue to grow outward, but it also has the ability to grow inward, back towards the center of the snowflake. The ice would slowly thicken as this “wall” extended inward. Cool! But why round?
Whatever sticks out the farthest, grows the fastest. This is a fundamental rule of snowflake growth. The corners of a snowflake have a greater ability to collect water vapour, but that may also apply to the inside of the corners as well. At the very least, these corners are locations where it’s likely that water molecules can find a place to “stick” to the existing crystal lattice quite easily. This makes the corners grow faster than the sides, but when this growth is positioned inward, it allows the snowflake to create a circle.
Understanding the physics of a snowflake makes it more beautiful. At least, to me it does! It adds a layer of appreciation through the acknowledgement of the rules of the universe on such a minuscule scale. If I can spend this amount of time opining on a single snowflake, imagine what can be said when countless millions of them are gentling falling to the ground.
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September 2017 at a Glance: the usual monthly bookmark I use to divide up the seamless flow of the Flickr photostream.
In rural Aberdeenshire September ends with some of the harvest lying in waterlogged fields, after what seems like a month of rain, gales and grey skies. There have been some breaks in the gloom, but you have to grab a camera and dash in order to catch the sunshine! I've got a box of cameras loaded and ready to go - and I feel like one of those storm-chasers at times, only I'm chasing the fleeting sunshine. ;o)
I've been quite adventurous in the lenses I'm using - Lensbaby Edge 80 and my favourite, the Sweet 50. And I'm getting to know the vintage lenses I've been collecting from eBay too. I've got 2 Helios 44-2 lenses, and a Pentacon 50 ...and a vintage Meyer-Optik Gorlitz in my future too ;o)
And I 'resurrected' my first macro lens, the Sony E30mm F3.5. I learned macro on that lens! Since then I've added the tele-macro and Zeiss 50mm, and I had almost forgotten my starter lens. Coming back with more experienced eyes, I've been surprised and pleased with it.
I've also been doing some reading to expand the range of post-processing techniques ... always fun and so instructive to discover what it is possible to do with the RAW file. B+W has been quite a focus - is it better to shoot in B+W or work on Photoshop conversion?
And I have been returning to shooting glass - taking crystal spheres out to the seashore and country to see what I can create. I've raided eBay for some interesting marbles too. I think I see more such experiments when I look into the crystal ball ;o))
I do hope you enjoy the quick look back - I certainly enjoyed taking and processing the shots!
Have a great weekend as October begins ;o)
At a glance: At a Glance
I've said this many times but I always prefer action shots to straight portraits, and this Little Ringed Plover running at full pelt certainly qualifies as an action shot. Most of my photos of Little Ringed Plover are of adults in spring so this subtle juvenile is quite instructive. In this plumage it is quite similar to juvenile Ringed Plover but you can still see a narrow orbital ring around the eye, and it lacks a white supercilium (eyebrow) which is present on Ringed Plover. The leg colour is dull mustard whereas it is orangey on Ringed, and when it flew it had plain wings, lacking the white wing bar of Ringed Plover.
Little Ringed Plover is a common and widespread summer visitor to Britain but only nested here for the first time in 1938 (Tring Reservoir, Herts). A national survey in 2007 estimated 1239 pairs, breeding as far north as the Moray Firth, which was nearly double the population from the previous national survey in 1984. When the Wildlife and Countryside Act came into law in 1981 the bird was considered rare enough to merit the highest level of protection (Schedule 1) reserved for our rarest breeding birds but it seems a little odd for such a common bird to be on that list today.
When it was first named (by Johannes Scopoli in 1786) there was real doubt that the bird was different to the Ringed Plover so it was given the scientific name dubius (meaning doubtful).
An diesem sonnigen Nachmittag beim 5.USk Deutschland Treffen in Augsburg hatte ich das große Glück an einem für mich sehr lehrreichen und gut dargebotenen Aquarell workshop von Anita Ulrich teilzunehmen. Ich habe viel dazugelernt, muß aber nun noch üben....
2019-08-31
On this sunny afternoon at the 5.USk Germany meeting in Augsburg I had the great luck to participate in a very instructive and well presented watercolor workshop by Anita Ulrich. I have learned a lot, but now I have to practice ....
2019-08-31
Here’s a very curious snowflake with a number of odd features, including one I haven’t seen before. If you’re wondering why there’s a focus on “oddities” in this series, I am tinkering with the idea of publishing a proper sequel to my first book, “Sky Crystals” in the coming year or two. These edge cases / anomalies are critically important to rounding out all of the snowflake science.
I suppose we should start with the fact that we do not have six-fold symmetry in this snowflake. Some sides of the central hexagon are longer than the others, resulting in a slightly trigonal shape. Snowflakes do not need to be perfectly equal! Imagine an absolutely tiny snowflake, as simple a hexagon as can be floating around in the air. Usually, they tumble so chaotically that all sides have an equal opportunity to collect water vapour and grow… but what if they didn’t tumble? What if they stayed facing the same direction for even a short period of time? The “leading edge” in terms of forward motion would collect more water vapour than the trailing edge, resulting in a trigonal shape.
The thing is, once this three-fold symmetry is established, a snowflake is stuck with it. Even if it tumbles through the are with a more evenly random pattern afterward, it will still retain some of the original trigonal influence. Trigonal snowflakes are not exceedingly rare, but what you’re seeing in the very center of this particular crystal is significantly less common. Where does that central triangle come from?
First, let’s try and decipher how many layers this snowflake is. I can’t settle my mind on the accurate number, but it’s at least five. There are multiple bubbles in the ice overlapping, many of which appear “solid” with simple rounded features. Rounded shapes within a snowflake typically start from a type of inward crystal growth from a thick outer edge echoing back inward, rounding out over time. I think we might be seeing that here… but how do they form bubbles?
The triangle in the center illustrates how this can happen. It’s an opening! And eventually, it would have completed closed off, forming another completed bubble. If the inward-growing wall of ice becomes steep enough, it can “cap over” as we’ve been seeing with many snowflakes in this year’s series. I’m not sure why the inward ceiling is so pointedly trigonal, but there are clues.
Take a look are the faint green / magenta area in the very center. Notice how there appears to be a thickening of the ice pointing towards the corners? This could indicate that the corners are receiving less water vapour that the sides, as more of the building blocks are making their way through the opening in these areas. The corners would then contract a little slower, tightening up the trigonal shape. I can pick up on the observational physics (“why”) but the actual molecular theory (“why”) often eludes me.
This is one of the most complex snowflakes in terms of internal layers I have ever discovered, and I didn’t even mention how the “branches” are all growing on a different plane as well! I’ll save that description for another day. :)
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Day three of the computer being in the shop, so all pics are straight out of camera. Again, very challenging, but very instructive.
just to see who you would thank :-)
Robert Brault
HBW!!
zinnia, 'Double Zahara Salmon', j c raulston arboretum, ncsu, Raleigh, north carolina
The Delivery of the Keys, or Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino which was produced in 1481–1482 and is located in the Sistine Chapel, Rome.
The commission of the work originated in 1480, when Perugino was decorating a chapel in the Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Pope Sixtus IV was pleased by his work, and decided to commission him also the decoration of the new Chapel he had built in the Vatican Palace. Due to the size of the work, Perugino was later joined by a group of painters from Florence, including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and others.
While the work was still being created, a visit from Alfonso II of Naples resulted in his addition to the far left of the group of foreground figures. To balance out the image, an apostle was added above St. Peter.
The scene, part of the series of the Stories of Jesus on the chapel's northern wall, is a reference to Matthew 16 in which Jesus says he will give "the keys of the kingdom of heaven" to Saint Peter. These keys represent the power to forgive and to share the word of God thereby giving them the power to allow others into heaven. The main figures are organized in a frieze in two tightly compressed rows close to the surface of the picture and well below the horizon. The principal group, showing Christ handing the silver and gold keys to the kneeling St. Peter, is surrounded by the other Apostles, including Judas (fifth figure to the left of Christ), all with halos, together with portraits of contemporaries, including one said to be a self-portrait (fifth from the right edge). The flat, open square is divided by coloured stones into large foreshortened rectangles. In the center of the background is a temple resembling the ideal church of Leon Battista Alberti's On architecture; on either side are triumphal arches with inscriptions aligning Sixtus IV to Solomon, recalling the latter's porticoed temple. Scattered in the middle distance are two scenes from the life of Christ, including the Tribute Money on the left and the stoning of Christ on the right.
Detail of the central building
The style of the figures is inspired by Andrea del Verrocchio. The active drapery, with its massive complexity, and the figures, particularly several apostles, including St. John the Evangelist, with beautiful features, long flowing hair, elegant demeanour, and refinement recall St Thomas from Verrocchio's bronze group in Orsanmichele. The poses of the actors fall into a small number of basic attitudes that are consistently repeated, usually in reverse from one side to the other, signifying the use of the same cartoon. They are graceful and elegant figures who tend to stand firmly on the earth. Their heads are smallish in proportion to the rest of their bodies, and their features are delicately distilled with considerable attention to minor detail.
The octagonal temple of Jerusalem[citation needed] and its porches that dominates the central axis must have had behind it a project created by an architect, but Perugino's treatment is like the rendering of a wooden model, painted with exactitude. The building with its arches serves as a backdrop in front of which the action unfolds. Perugino has made a significant contribution in rendering the landscape. The sense of an infinite world that stretches across the horizon is stronger than in almost any other work of his contemporaries, and the feathery trees against the cloud-filled sky with the bluish-gray hills in the distance represent a solution that later painters would find instructive, especially Raphael.
The building in the center is similar to that in Marriage of the Virgin by Perugino, as well as that painted by Perugino's pupil Pinturicchio in his Stories of St. Bernardino in the Bufalini Chapel of Santa Maria in Aracoeli.
The fresco was believed to be a good omen in Papal conclaves: superstition held that the cardinal who (as selected by lot) was housed in the cell beneath the fresco was likely to be elected. Contemporary records indicate at least three popes were housed beneath the fresco during the conclaves that elected them: Pope Clement VII, Pope Julius II, and Pope Paul III.
I found myself on the Flickr page of a young teenage girl the other day and... it was instructive. She wrote, with typical teenish angst, about how she hated taking good pics... because she knew she only had so many in her... and, after a few good ones... she knew she'd be back to crap.
I used to feel the same way. In fact, I clearly remember doing a pic called "desperately searching" after getting... for the first time... a good response to one of my pics. It was nice to get the good response but... agggh. What then?
Thankfully I'm much more philosophical about it now.
I no longer see each photo as a contest with myself, as a challenge to constantly improve.
Instead, I've been going back through my old files and looking at the pics with the benefit of distance - and not being quite so judgmental about it all. Sure, I've been deleting stuff (that, after all, was my initial reason for trolling through my files) but I've also been appreciating things in a different way.
Maybe when I get back to shooting (some day) that will be different too. For now, I've been immersing myself in the works of Barbara Ess. Her images refuse to just lie flat. They demand your attention, and your participation - and in the process remind you of the crucial role that you, the viewer, play in their creation. Her images are dark, and blurred, and murky. She shoots with a home-made pinhole camera and is masterful in her manipulations of distortion. But the images do not reveal themselves easily. You, the viewer, have to work for it, think about it, enter the photograph and feel your way around.
Ess's art is decidedly not representational. She once said, "I don't take pictures of the world to represent the world. For me the world is already a representation of something that can't be photographed."
You go, Barbara. Can't wait to see what you come up with next.
Meantime, I'll just keep going through my files and filling my eyes with other people's work. When my brain and eyes are ready, the camera will find its way back into my hands.
Fused Plates. Sometimes, snowflakes stick together after colliding mid-air. This results in 12-sided snowflakes if they happen to collide at exactly a 30-degree rotation from one another, with symmetry further enhanced if the tiny plates were exactly the same side. What if there is a size difference, or the two crystals stick together at an odd angle of rotation? You’ll end up with something like this snowflake!
In the very center, we see a tiny splash of colour; thin film interference often becomes visible at the fuse point between plates and usually with a smooth gradient of colours. The rest of the snowflake isn’t so colourful, but it makes up for that with structure. We don’t need to look too far to spot some interesting characteristics!
Take a look at the lower left branch, particularly the outer edge area. Notice the dark spots? These are holes in a ceiling of ice that are quickly being filled in. This can be seen on all of the branches in various forms, which if allowed to keep growing in the same conditions would eventually be completely covered in bubbles.
The bottom branch is a bit odd, too. Why is it longer than the others? This has to do with an unequal share of resources. The central “deformed plate” only ended up with four branches due to early starvations of water vapour; at these unbalanced angles, not every corner gets a chance to grow equally. This left a gap in outward growth precisely where the bottom branch was growing, allowing the bottom branch more building blocks to grow outward faster.
The opposite can be said for the lower right branch, which is slightly shorter. It shared more of it’s building blocks (water vapour) to the extended top plate. The finite resources are simply allocated differently. The presence of the top plate may have also affected the designs of the bottom branches, resulting in subtle changes in topography among all of them.
Sometimes snowflakes grow with a bit of dumb luck, but in the end still have to follow the same basic underlying rules. There is randomness and chaos of the atmosphere, and snowflakes are either constantly growing or sublimating; often both simultaneously. You’ll never find two natural snowflakes to be identical.
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There’s something forever endearing to the tiny plate snowflakes, especially those with a splash of colour. This one has been fading for a while, however. There’s a clue that always proves true.
This crystal was about to grow branches; you can see tiny nubs in each corner. However, they would not have grown as “nubs”, they would have been faceted with a 60-degree angle on the tip. When you see outward rounded features like this, particularly at the branch tips, you have identified sublimation. Snowflakes evaporate back into thin air, and the process begins when they leave the clouds – even before they hit the ground.
The freshest snow is always the best to photograph. Once a snowflake has been resting on the ground for a half an hour or more, it becomes a ghost of its former self. If you wake up in the morning and see a glittery sparkling field of snow before you, you’re probably too late (unless it’s still actively snowing). The glitter you sometimes see from fallen snow is light reflecting off pristine basal crystal facets, like this one.
Hexagonal plate crystals rarely get larger than 1mm across. In order to fill the camera frame with a gem of this size, you need more magnification than the average macro lens can provide you. Even the new Laowa standard macro lenses that get to 2x, as much as I love them, can’t get you where you need to be. The Canon MP-E 65mm F/2.8 1x-5x lens is still a solid option, as is the Laowa 25mm 2.5x-5x lens, though it’s difficult to mount a ring flash to the front of it (no filter threads). Other lenses have come along in recent years, such as the Mitakon 85mm 1x-5x macro, but it trades resolving power for a longer working distance. I’ve used microscope objectives as well, but it’s near-impossibly difficult to use them handheld in the freezing cold.
To fill the frame of a full-frame camera, with a subject 1mm across, you’ll need as much magnification as you can get. 5x was often not enough, so adding extension tubes to the Canon MP-E 65mm could get me a bit closer, to 6x. Depending on your teleconverter, you could often add it to the extension tubes in this configuration to possibly double that magnification further. Many of these crystals were shot at roughly 12x magnification using the Canon Life-size Converter EF, a long-discontinued add-on to the equally-obsolete Canon 50mm F/2.5 Compact Macro lens. It worked, though the optics were never the best. I wish there was a new, modern extreme macro lens to take the crown away from equipment released in the late 1990’s!
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Well, that’s different! Column-type snowflakes are not what you imagine when you’re asked to conjure an image of snowflake in your mind, but they are incredibly common in the right conditions: warmer temperature, around -8C with relatively low humidity.
My friend Ken Libbrecht has a great snowflake morphology diagram that you can check out ( www.snowcrystals.com/morphology/morphology.html ) that illustrates what conditions will allow for what type of snowflake to form. Note that these are the conditions in the clouds, not on the ground. Today’s snowflake is a hollow column, so you can see where they sit in terms of growth conditions. They can also be formed at much colder temperatures, but those are less likely where this particular specimen was photographed.
Column-type snowflakes are interesting in a number of ways. Their volumetric depth makes they incredibly difficult to focus stack, due to countless overlapping transparent layers. Those layers, however, also allow light to bounce around and split into subtle colours. These colours need to be isolated from the unnatural chromatic aberrations of the camera lens, which is a difficult balance to strike. In the end, I’ve always found them worth the effort.
It can be difficult to spot the hollow areas, aside from the open ends. If you look near the center, you can find two bullet-like shapes pointing at each-other. With a bit of imagination while looking for diagonal lines, you might be able to connect this area to the openings on either side. The very center of the crystal also has a hidden secret – right in the center length-wise, as if cutting the snowflake in two: an evaporation groove.
In this crystal, the only evidence of it is a series of slightly warped lines; It can be seen more clearly on this specimen: www.flickr.com/photos/donkom/24879275979/ . This is an area of the crystal structure that is less molecularly cohesive, and water molecules are more likely to evaporate (sublimate) from this region as a result. But why? This can happen if each half of the crystal is not in molecular alignment, but rather off-set by a 60-degree rotation. The facets line up, but the molecules at the connecting point do not form a strong bond. This allows for water molecules to sublimate from the surface over time at this joint. Columns are almost always “crystal twins” in this way!
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Here’s a very “volumetric” split crystal design – beginning to show some of the features associated with skeletal form crystals? Can you spot where? Let’s take a look at the details!
Before I do, however, I just want to make a quick note that the whole family is under the weather at the moment – and has been for roughly a week; that would be about the duration of this series. We’re doing okay, it’s not COVID, but likely RSV. Being sick sucks, it completely drains me of all energy and sleep is never enough nor is it rejuvenating. I think we’re past the worst of it now, but these posts have been about all I can motivate myself to accomplish. Your positive comments have been a huge boost, so this paragraph is simply to say thanks. I’m glad these images are appreciated.
This snowflake is definitely growing in layers. You can see a lot of lines running (vaguely and varying) 60-degrees from the main spine of each branch, and they can be quite thick! This snowflake answers another mystery with how these spines interact with the main snowflake as it builds thickness. For example, look at the bottom branch, right near the tip. See how tall the spine is above the rest? You can use the shadows/reflections to the right of it to get some visual comparison. However, take a look to the bottom right branch, in the middle. Where did the spine go?
We see a hint of the answer to the right of it, still in the middle. There are some dark spots! Those are little canyons in the surface, which are getting “ceilinged” over. The snowflake is filling in to become the same thickness overall. But then there was “eureka” moment for me. There’s a feature in SO MANY snowflakes that I never understood before. Why are there (so incredibly frequently) two parallel lines of bubbles running down the length of the snowflake? In this specimen, we can see them forming. Look to the lower-left branch!
See two parallel DARK lines, opposing the brighter lines on the lower-right branch? Bingo. They are in the process of being filled in. My theory is this: the spine forms as thicker than the rest of the snowflake, much more rapidly. However, the rest of the branch eventually thickens up to the same topographical height… but the walls of the spine are steep like a cliff, and water vapour cannot get inside to completely back-fill these areas. They in turn get a ceiling over top, forming bubbles. Woo! I think I’m correct on the “how” for this one, but the “why” is still outstanding to some degree. Why do snowflakes grow out thinly, then thicken up over time?
I believe this might be partially answered by the “knife-edge instability”. If you have two bricklayers each building a wall from available materials, and one is building a wall three bricks deep, he’d be a lot slower than someone building a wall only one brick thick. So then, utilizing this “thin wall” approach, a snowflake shoots out as a thinner piece of ice faster, but continues to thicken over time as the interior area still has access to some “bricks” (water vapour).
But don’t forget the skeletal form traits! You can also see it on the bottom branches, where there is evidence that the spines have grown so thick that they have “anviled”-out and are growing further along the top, with a gap underneath. Because this outward-growing ceiling is also quite thin, it can grow faster than some of the other surrounding features. You can see this easily on all four bottom branches, but such details are obscured on the top two, belonging to the other half of the “split” crystal with their surface features facing away from the camera.
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This is my current reading! As a matter of fact, I've almost finished it. It's a delightful little book on the basic and necessary elements for landscape photography. Author Michael Frye, an excellent landscape photographer himself, makes, all the time, interesting and instructive comparisons to the methods and ideas of great masters like Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston, including the well-known Zone System. A real bargain for what it actually delivers.
Splash! Some strange bubbles here, making this mysterious little snowflake quite beautiful. There are a few very interesting parts of this diminutive crystal to look at – let’s dive in!
Starting with colour, we’ve got optical interference of two flavours. Near the top of the snowflake there is a small shard of ice from another crystal that has fused itself to the hexagonal plate. Occasionally when ice fuses together, there is a thin slice of air stuck in between. The interference colours are often smooth and transitioning because water molecules will sublimate and then re-attach to different parts of the closed space, which can create smooth thickness transitions. The yellow-pink coloured ring in the center of the snowflake is less flowing in colour, being recently capped over at specific thickness. If time were to pass, one might expect these colours to have softer transitions. I’ve seen that happen on larger snowflakes with optical interference features in their centers.
The bubbles. I’ll try to explain this. Let’s start by identifying the two bubbles that have not yet completely sealed over – take a look at the right side of the plate. These are still partially indentations in the ice surface. One could image all of the squiggly splash bubbles to have been of the same design before getting covered over. That doesn’t explain how the indentations would have formed, however! This snowflake would have looked surprisingly similar to an earlier one in this series ( flickr.com/photos/donkom/52559172958/ ) before the surface dents became covered. These are caused by outward growth occurring in cascading levels, filling in the thickness of the crystal. If the “walls” of the dents get too steep, water vapour can no longer fill them in, and a ceiling forms at the near-90-degree angle at the top of them, a point where water molecules can attach more readily.
This is also true of the line-bubbles pointing towards the center – most noticeable at the top and bottom. If at some point there was a “spine” of thicker ice running from the center of the snowflake to each corer, then the surrounding ice would eventually thicken by this same cascading growth. It would have a hard time filling in the area right next to the spine. This often results in two parallel bubbles, but not always. Here’s a snowflake from a previous year that has strong parallel line-bubbles on all branches: flickr.com/photos/donkom/49357600758/
We still have a mystery here though – why the ellipses? Just outside the “splash”, we have ellipses that line up roughly with each side of the hexagon. These are either indentations or protrusions, the former being more likely. Circles form in a snowflake from inward growth, but they would all radiate towards the center, not around the edges like this. What gives? Well, there’s a subtle scar that might provide us with the answer. Look just down from the top corner, a little to the right. A slightly darker triangle-like shape with a perfectly straight faint shadow line running across the snowflake to the left – a line that does not align itself to any of this crystal’s geometry.
There was another snowflake stuck on top of it! This makes sense given the fused ice bits, and it would easily explain how some extra factor could have been involved in the formation of the ellipses. There’s always more to the story, even with the tiniest snowflakes.
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Grebe Twofer :: Size Ref Photo Doc
Winter Grebe Study Shots
Right Bird
Pied-billed Grebe PBGR (Podilymbus podiceps)
&
2
Horned Grebe HOGR (Podiceps auritus)
Near mouth of Reay Creek
Bazan Bay
Sidney BC.
DSCN6248 Cropped
although some photos in this series are distant and/or heavily cropped
They are still instructive and in some cases more accurate to typical observation conditions available
the profile and shape of PBGR is quite diagnostic in our region
and a great species to have as a standard 'known'
There are some indications of residual striping on cheeks which would indicate this is a Hatch Year PBGR
the HOGR here are pretty well classic early winter look & plumage
DSCN9540
although i have seen PBGR at marine locations during migration
this is the first time i recall photo doc.ing one with HOGR in the same frame
i was actually a bit surprised to see PBGR reads as the bigger structurally when the 2 species are in proximity
"Ah.... Intriguing, and possibly instructive as well...for both of us. Very well; have him masqued and spell-bound, and brought in immediately."
Part of an album of 11, making up a full story. Please view the entire album and read the story! My costume details and the location landmark on the last photo.
Our blog, Around the Grid, has an expanded form of this story and even more photos!
Straight out of camera because the computer is in the shop. I'm finding this process to be very difficult and instructive.
This was taken a the end of the day with just a sliver of light coming through the trees behind me.
Taken with Super Takumar 50mm, f1.4
The last of Xanthogramma species finally added to my album. Unfortunately, the photo is not very instructive, but it clearly shows the membrane between tergites and sternites and we can see that it is mostly yellow, with the only one dark strip connecting tergite and sternite 2. This strip is much broader than in X. laetum. The collor of legs clearly distinguish it from X. citrifasciatum (that has simmilar collor of membrane). Hind legs are partially blackish and te black strip on te frons is broadened. The black strip on the frons above the antennas is narrowed before reaching vertex.
Lesser Scaup LESC (Aythya affinis)
"Inside" shoreline
Esquimalt Lagoon
Colwood BC
DSCN5951
not the greatest but serves demonstratively instructive
Field Mark Cues ^i^
Male on Left one may notice the patterning on the back is progressively more course towards the rump
& patterning is more course overall ,than is case for GRSC
Head shape generally...keeping in mind variance in individuals , as well as postures and 'wetting' after diving etc.
LESC head length is thinner than height
LESC usually has a "corner" back of head , and/or giving comparative appearance of an overall (smaller) somewhat squared head
LESC - highest point of head is behind the eye..impression is slopes toward front of face
EXPLORED - December 15th, 2014
An (en)Visionographic Chicago Story
_Trump Tower & IBM Building Chicago – Arch. Adrian Smith & Mies van der Rohe_
Full article on my blog: blog.juliaannagospodarou.com/fluid-time-v-aligning-paths-...
My new image in the series Fluid Time is here. The fifth image in the series, and again showing two of the most representative and beautiful buildings of Chicago. I'm only posting the image today, together with a few details and I invite you to have a look on my book “From Basics to Fine Art – B&W Photography”, co-author Joel Tjintjelaar, to see many more details about how I created my images in this series and how I create my photography generally
In addition, because I've been asked many times to talk about my work in a video form, I decided to do it for this image and I put up a 30 minute video tutorial about the creation of this image that I will post over the next few days on my blog. I hope it will give some answers to the questions I've been asked about my work.
TECHNICAL DATA
TECHNIQUE: Long Exposure base image combined with short exposure.
LE image: T/S LE = Tilt-Shift Long Exposure, 241.0 sec. @ f/4, ISO 100
SE image: T/S SE = Tilt-Shift Short Exposures, 1/320 sec. @ f/3.5, ISO 100
Canon 5D MKIII, TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II
- T/S lens settings:
8.5 degrees - maximum tilt, 12mm – maximum shift (rise)
- 10+6 stops Formatt Hitech Filters ProStop IRND Filters
- Circular Polarizer
PROCESSING:
- LR5, PS CC , Topaz Labs B&W Effects +Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail + DxO View Point
Last but not least, I'll have another pleasant surprise in a few days.
It is related to my status as Image Master for the internationally renowned software Dxo Labs and it will be a very instructive and interesting event we are planning together. More details in a few days on my blog, but you can be a part of it too.
Book - From Basics to Fine Art – B&W | Website | Facebook | Facebook Page | Google+ | 500px | Art Limited | 1x.com | Twitter | LinkedIn
Another shot from the most incredible day in Jasper back in June. This was right before I went all wide-angle crazy. I like the perspective this gives in the mountains. To me the comparison has been very instructive. The temptation to over-use a new lens is great, but you can't let it overpower your sensibilities--especially when presented with a setting and light that you may rarely encounter. What is the compelling aspect of the scene that I wish to emphasize? Given complete freedom of equipment and technique, how would I capture this optimally? Given the equipment and techniques at hand, how do I most closely approximate my ideal capture method? Food for thought... I will definitely try to keep these things in mind :)
The best possible day to all of you!
Instructive Nature.
Glasaigh gan fasach buí beoga gormacha anaithnide fiáin lonrúil dearg gluaiseachtaí spontáineach péintéir sólás barbarachtaí nochtadh sonraí,
changements radicaux bogues extravagants poète controversé mots exhaustifs caricature insectes temps sauvage explications imaginables,
необъятные жесты, извилистые аранжировки, пристрастия, взгляды, проявления волнений, эмоциональные изгибы, рискованные необъяснимые цвета.,
concezioni classiche strane idee adagiate astrazioni considerazioni superflue grandi orchestrazioni arabeschi volumi,
megalkuvást nem ismerő művészet kétértelmű kifejezések monumentális káosz fontos századi privát impulzusok sötét árnyalatok tények átadása,
stări febrile instincte simple pensule lumini mari curgătoare judecății artistice tonuri muzicale învăluitoare coloriste sentimente informale,
深刻なレッスン 無料の極小のリーダー 特定のコーナー 数えられた日 不足した夜 たどった非伝統的な道 才能ある鳥の素晴らしい偉業 現代の市松模様の過去のボード.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Female
Mandarin duck MADU (Aix galericulata)
Beacon Hill Park
near "Warren Island"
Goodacre Lake
Victoria BC
DSCN3349
Field Mark Cues ^i^
Photo Doc.
Comparison WODU & MADU
Although not the greatest shots they are instructive
Front View
Similar white around eyes however MADU has less ,WODU head has feathers that can be showing iridescence.
This exercise is not meant to be an exhaustive/absolute ....and some review of photos online seem to show that "our" MADU female is still transitioning her plumage somewhat
Keep in mind :: Each individual duck species varies within stages of season moulting,and here we have different individual WODU females & only one WODU individual.
Having said all that -- it is still a fun geeky if not beneficial exercise
:)
Juvenile
Great Blue Heron GBHE (Ardea Herodias)
Saanichton* Spit
aka
Cordova Spit
aka
TI̸X̱EN 'the Spit" ( Tsawout First Nation )
TIXEN
Not the best photo either...distance means some heat shimmer lack of focus...but instructive in the sense that i hadn't paid enough attention to realize GBHE travel around in Juvie Gangs as do to other birds .
Field Mark Cues ^i^
Juveniles have a dark crown and no trailing head plume.
Adults will have a visible white cap above the eye along the top of head.
We're Here - If you had just one shot?
No retakes allowed on this one. So why would I choose a complicated shot that requires lining things up and getting the lighting just right? Because I am EEEEDIOT!!! On the other hand, it was very instructive. It's easy now with digital to take a bazillion shots until you get it right. I found it an interesting challenge to set everything up in my head first, then have only one chance at getting it more or less right. I had a cute little candy cane taped to the sign by the way...but had it on the wrong side, so it's behind the poinsettia (which is left over from last Christmas).
Put some zing into your 365! Join We're Here!
(Continuation. Please see the previous image and the beginning of the story at the Obniminsk album if you feel like that).
I could speak about this couple for a very long time. When we first met, I scared them with my wild music. Nevertheless, Mikhailich invited me to play at the big scientific celebration and to be a guest at his birthday. I from my side invited them both at my funeral: “It will be fun!”. Invitations have been mutually accepted. Mikhailich wanted me to spend the night on the regime object, where we drank and played and the head of which he is. He had heated debates about this with his wife Anna Vyacheslavovna (she drank with us as well, and the guard of that site, which is the big friend of Mikhailich and big fan of music, and one very good classical guitarist, and Yulia Ganja, of course (see about her at this album and previous post)). I decided that I’ll better stay in the tent at the forest. The day after Mikhailich didn’t wanted to call home: “What if she died?”. Fortunately, Anna Vyacheslavovna wasn’t. When Mikhailich and Yulia saw me off, I brought him my deepest apologies for my music. They were accepted, and after treating me and Yulia coffee and ice cream at the cafe he proposed to drink Horseradish moonshine on a bench (Obninsk is science city, town of the peaceful atom, high radioactivity, you know...). But there were kids. So, he decided that we’ll better go at his place. What we did. That way I had a chance to apologize to Anna Vyacheslavovna as well. The evening with the moonshine had been long and instructive. I should write a novel to retell all that was said at this event to you, so I’ll rather wouldn’t try. But you could imagine that evening, one of the warmest in my life…
(To be continued…)
just to see who you would thank :-)
Robert Brault
HBW!!
iris, sarah p duke gardens, duke university, durham, north carolina
One of the instructive signs in Richmonds’ South Dyke Doggie Park on the Fraser River South Arm.
Likely preaching to the converted..
Some will never comply.
Some will partially comply if being watched.
Some will bag it and not bin it.
Sometimes a fight ensues between compliant and non compliant.
Not a surprise the sign is posted, less surprised it is needed. Dog shit can be found in parks, on streets and sidewalks everywhere in Vancouver, bagged or not.