Pileated Woodpecker

I have been on the lookout for the Pileated Wood Pecker that occasionally comes thru here. My neighbors say they see them but in the six months here i've not seen any. Today they made up for their absence ... a pair, i think young ones, played in and around a couple of trees allowing me to get a few good shots:

This blog, owned by Google, does not allow me to put images side-by-side nor make them as large as i'd sometimes like. I think i need to create my own photo-blog as i do rent server space that is more then enough to create such a bog.

'Nuff of that ... here are a few more of this wondrous looking bird - the largest wood pecker in North America.

That one WP has a serious contemporary hair look!

Clouds

Almost every evening there is some, and occasionally a lot, of thunder and last night lots of lightening. Usually there is not rain. The cloud formations are to the south and southwest of us and the cloud formation is a delight to see.

Humm, the images are a little dark for my taste ... my monitor keeps telling me it needs recalibrating - guess its time to do that.

Still, the clouds here on the mountain side, 2211 feet at our house, are amazing and i never tire of sitting and watching them. That may be because in the SF bay area there are essential no clouds like there 'cepting for the fall and then only for a short while.

Peeking

Thistles ll

Sometimes i get excited, actually a lot of times, about an image i made or am making. This is in the, or is that a, process and i'm liking what's coming out:

Perhaps i've mentioned that to get details at such a close distance requires 'stack focusing' which i now hearing is beginning to be built into cameras. The usually way is to take a series of shots, each one in a slight different plane of focus which, when combined/stacked, will yield a depth of field (DOF) that is much greater than a single image can produce. Perhaps an example will help those who don't work with macro photography:

The top image is the first of 21 shots and the bottom image is the final image. You can see that the top image has some sharpness on the closes tips of the of the thistle and the bottom image has sharpness on the furtherest leaves and there are 19 incremental images in between these two that are put on top of each other (hence, stacking) and then the software melds them together creating a single image. And if all goes well, it is sharp - like this:

And there you have it: a mini-lesson in focus-stacking.

Thistles

I have been photographing a thistle that is growing along side of the house. Its beautiful and the neighbors said it was a weed. I've heard that before but know that a weed is any plant you don't want growing 'there'. As i'm happy with the thistle and its beautiful colors, its as good as anything i've planted - however, the needles are very sharp and pierce even my heavy gloves; i'm very careful with it.

Sometimes they host guests

 As the plant is a couple weeks old, it is beginning to fade so i pruned it -this is the unpruned shot- with the idea it'll last longer and grown new blooms; time will tell. The whole plant looks likes this:

It feels like i've just begun to work on the photographic portrait of this plant ... we'll see together where it leads.

Porch Tomatoes

I have been doing more shooting around the house, literally, and enjoying a kind of photography that i don't do so often which is more journalistic then i usually care for. For journalistic styles to work, the photographs (so i understand and that may be more of what i'm struggling with then the actual photographs themselves) have to tell a story in 2 or three images otherwise, there is no story just some photographs sorta hanging out in the air with the viewer wondering why the photographer shot that image.

So, these two images:

which i rather like as they are rich in color and the dripping leaves makes me a bit cooler as i can tell it is early morning. The new tomatoes with their blooms still hanging around gives me a sense of the impending growth that is happening. And the second image - yum.

In fact, an hour ago i harvested all the red tomatoes, and the orangish one that had turned red by this morning, and they are downstairs waiting to be tasted.

Bird Sculpture

This post is less about photography then it is about place & art.

In Jan of this year (2017) we drove from the San Francisco Bay Area to Asheville, NC. While i didn't do much shooting on the way as we didn't really want to stop while i fussed around with cameras, lens, etc.. Still, we stopped outside of Los Cruses, NM for what was to be a bathroom break and then we discovered this sculpture in the rest area:

Road Runner Sculpture

It was hugh; so here here an image with Susan:

While the sculpture was amazing in it size, what was more amazing was what it was made out of:

That's right: tennis shoes, computer key boards, ironing boards, crutches, etc., etc.. Wow! i could have stood there most of the day looking at the various objects it was made of ... 'cepting for the fact it was close to 100º even in Jan.

Los Cruses is 40 miles north of El Paso where i lived for three years in the late 60's and early 70's. Except for the intense heat -it was a very dry heat so stepping in the shade was an immediate relief- i love it. It was a very different place then with easy crossing to Juárez where there was good music, excellent food and many friendly shopping areas. And the surrounding country was really desert ... some of it, must of it, rolling sand dunes which i was just learning about when i move to the Bay Area.

Looking east towards Los Cruses and the Davis Mountains

I don't believe i have any photos from the time i lived in El Paso that are of the country side but now i'm interesting in looking to see how true that is. Maybe more to follow.