Once I completed the previous book review, I dropped the authors a courtesy note to make them aware of it. This led to some correspondence, with the result that Matt Young, a professor of physics at the Colorado
Category: Photography
Frustrations, part five
Now that the season for such things is effectively over, I can admit to myself that I didn’t get what I was after this year, and go with what I have so far.
The Sphingidae is one of the more interesting families of moth. While not as big or impressive as luna moths, they have a very finely developed protective camouflage, which is exhibited not only in coloration, but in body size
Just because, part three
Sometimes, you just have to.
(Yes, I know “Frank” is actually a female – it just didn’t have the same impact…)
Two can play that game
While I had been planning to put this post up soon, Dr. Jerry Coyne over at Why Evolution Is True beat me to it with his own post about snakes, but his includes some great video, including a stunning sequence of an egg-eating snake! I hate it when someone on my blogroll to the right upstages
Things change
Just a few posts ago, I featured some yellowjackets working on their underground nest. Today, I discovered I was not the only one who had found them.
Sometime in the last few days, something had dug up the opening into the nest and removed several large portions of comb, leaving them strewn about the ground nearby. It was a bit curious, because the excavation wasn’t
Can you see the light?
From time to time, I play around with infra-red photography, because it can produce some really cool effects, and also because there are ways to make it relatively easy. An old digital camera of mine, the Canon Pro90 IS, can not only capture infra-red light, it can focus it and calculate exposure reasonably as well. All that’s
More from the neighbors
Early this evening, as I spoke on the telephone while standing on my upstairs patio, a “conversation” from the trees across the driveway drew my attention, and I cut the call short. While I couldn’t see anything, some very soft “wheet-a wheet-a” sounds were emanating from quite close by. Naturally, I grabbed the camera and started tracking
Frustrations, part four
So this afternoon, noticing the massive activity at a yellowjacket’s burrow in my yard, I decided to try and get some nice close shots of their work. That would be called, “foreshadowing,” in English Lit classes, wouldn’t it? Ah, not in the way that you’re thinking…
Eastern Yellowjackets (Vespula maculifrons) are generally ground-nesting wasps,
On composition, part five: It’s the law!
Yes, I know, I just did a composition post. But the last one got me to thinking, and this one is more than simply composition. Bear with me.
The compositional guideline in photography that everyone learns quickly is the Rule of Thirds. Simply put, and illustrated above, you break the frame into thirds, a tic-tac-toe board, and then place your key elements on the lines, or for preference, on the intersection
On composition, part four
Okay, I went a little longer between posts than I prefer, due to several things, so it’s time to get back into it. In recognition of my absence, I give you a compositional element: empty space.
A very basic goal in photography is simplicity – strive to include only the elements that help the photo and leave out anything extraneous. The idea is to give the viewer a strong focal point,