Visibly different, part 53

Al Denelsbeck

I said this was coming, and had intended for it to be the last one of the year, but it ran longer than intended; I wasn’t going to rush it, for reasons that will become obvious.

This began in early December when The Girlfriend was helping move her mother into a new home and brought back a box of family photos. Among them was an old 4×5 inch glass plate negative, broken sometime in the past and now missing a piece. I looked it over carefully, trying to judge the age, but of course it was a negative and thus hard to really discern the details. With as long as I’ve been both shooting my own stuff, and working in a lab making prints from negatives, I still find it hard to mentally invert what I’m seeing. So, out of curiosity, I carefully placed the two remaining pieces on my light table and simply fired off a few frames with the camera aimed from above; I do have a scanner that could handle 4×5 negatives, but it hasn’t played nice with the computer for a while and might simply be fried.

Then after looking over the initial images, I did a little research in cleaning old plates, because the mildew was excessive and highly visible. The non-emulsion side was easy enough to clean, but I started very slowly with just warm water on the emulsion side, already showing notable degradation around the edges, and realized that I would remove the emulsion trying to get the mildew off, so I halted any further attempts. Then I carefully aligned the pieces again and reshot the image.

original light table image of old 4x5 glass plate negative
This is the original light table image, before any level controls or inversion. You can see the darkening of the emulsion around the edges from age, and one other bit that will be more visible in a second: the two pieces had been exposed to different conditions, light or air, over the years and one was notably lighter than the other.

inverted non-negative image of glass plate negative
This is the initial inversion, before I tackled adjusting the light levels – this couldn’t be done automatically in software because that missing piece would skew the registers. You can easily see the difference in ‘exposure’ if you look along both sides of the break, and lots of mildew, along with a few scratches. Plus one other peculiar detail if we go in close:

closeup of 4x5 glass plate showing scratched out eyes
At some point in the past, someone had scratched out the pupils of the eyes of the older gentleman, and I could only speculate on why. It’s easy to blame kids and perhaps not inaccurate, but it was done so specifically (and refer to the original to realize how fine this was) that it might have been done to create a more distinctive pupil in the print. Not the best way to do it of course, but not everyone had the ability to correct this in the darkroom, or by touchup dyes on the print itself.

The worst part is it destroyed too much of the original eyes. While I can do a lot with very selective cloning, copying minute details from one part of the image to reconstruct the damaged part, there was little to copy from, so the eyes would have to be recreated almost entirely. This is what I ended up with at this stage:

repaired eyes of glass plate negative
Near as I can tell, the eyes were originally blue, so that’s what I went with. Motion blur is evident in several spots within the photo, indicating a long exposure image which lends some weight to this being a quite old photo. But I could see evidence in the girl’s eyes of the main lighting from front, and so not only had to recreate both pupil and iris, but this light as well – and, if you’ve ever had to draw eyes, you know that getting them aimed correctly, not faintly crossed or walleyed, requires careful attention, in this case lots of very close work interspersed with zooming back out for the overall perspective. I’m pleased with the results.

From various cues within the image and the glass plate itself, I’m estimating this as being at least 80 years old, possibly well over a hundred. The Girlfriend did not know who these people are, but from the age I feel pretty confident saying this isn’t her mother in the photo; possibly her grandmother. There’s also a hint of a hatline on the older gentleman, the lack of tan above the brim.

I’m self-taught in Photoshop and GIMP, with little bits of online tutorials here and there, and I did a bit of looking to see if there was an easy way to remove the mildew spots and patches, perhaps by removing just the brightest registers, but found nothing, and nothing that I tried worked, save for simple cloning. All over the image. I stupidly failed to keep careful track of how long this took, but I estimate it (based on the various saved versions that I have) as between fifteen and twenty hours. This is the final version, finished two nights ago, with perspective correction and cropped for printing:

restored 4x5 glass plate negative
But that doesn’t make the difference as clear as it could be, so let’s go with this:

animated gif showing initial scan and restoration of old 4x5 glass plate negative
I’ll be honest: while I see a few tiny details that could have been better, overall I’m pleased with the results, and will be sending this in to print as an 8×10 sometime soon. I also plan to sit down with the other family photos and see if I can spot any clues as to who these people are. Meanwhile, as an exercise to see how my restoration skills are, well, someone might deride the time that it took, but I’m happy to put it in my portfolio at least.

Tripod holes, part 1

Al Denelsbeck

Wow, time for a new weekly topic already? I was just getting used to the old one…

‘Tripod holes’ is a semi-obscure photographer’s term, referring to locations that are so popular, you can use the same holes that other photographers have used to put your tripod feet within. This isn’t quite the same thing, but close; this year, we’re going to take virtual trips out to the locales of some of my favorite, or distinctive, or perhaps just stumbled across, images from times past – and maybe not even all that past, but I have to at least unload the memory cards so it almost certainly won’t be while I’m right there; that’s social media horseshit, and we all know how lame that is. Suffice to say though, that if you run right out to the locations the moment you see a new post, chances are you won’t find me there.

To assist with this (providing the locations, I mean,) there will be links to Google Earth Placemarks right in the posts, along with the latitude/longitude coordinates; if you have Google Earth installed on your computer, clicking the link should take you right there (though at the moment I’m having issues and this may be removed in later posts,) and if not, you can still get there by popping those coordinates into the mapping service of your choice. And I mean right there, because I try to be accurate and it should place you within a few meters of my precise shooting position. Exciting, isn’t it? There should be plaques…

So, our first, definitely one of my favorites:

high-contrast head shot of American alligator Alligator mississippiensis in water of Savannah National wildlife Refuge
N 32.154375° W 81.089437° Google Earth

It’s cheating a little, because this appears in the main gallery and even has the placemark therein, but I really like the shot, so there. This was taken within Savannah National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina, right across the Savannah River from the city of Savannah, Georgia, which I only mention because there are no nearby towns in South Carolina to refer to. It is of course an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis,) nowhere near as imposing as it appears here, though it’s often not hard to find a much larger one there. Initial frames were about 75° off this angle on the opposite side, using the sunlight more, but this side created better contrast, shadows, and color from the water. I mean, it’s not exactly an accomplishment to make a gator appear menacing – it’d be much more skillful to make them not – but this one just seems to lurk in the shadows while in bright sunlight, I think mostly because of the eyes. Plus those textures, of course. Yes, I’d keep a gator as a pet if I thought I could swing it in the slightest, both practically and ethically, and I have to note that friends of ours actually had one show up in their pond and they removed it. Put a strain on our friendship, I can tell you…

And take your year with you

Al Denelsbeck

So here we are at the end of the month, and somehow at the end of the year – at the exact same time too, who’da thought? I admit to shooting extremely little this month, and even less that could be considered ‘abstract’ that I did not, thoughtlessly, already feature. I did toy around with freezing soap bubbles again when the temperature dropped low enough, but was not achieving satisfactory results and so they shan’t appear here – especially since I didn’t even get far enough to warrant taking any photos.

But we need something, so I selected a handful from earlier months that never got featured then. Lazy, I know, but c’mon, there’s been some decent content this year – you can’t have it all.

raindrops in bright sunlight on Ginkgo biloba leaf
One of the late spring rains left behind some residue on the ginkgo leaves, not long to be around now that the sun was out.

green heron Butorides virescens cleaning foot on log at edge of water
A close crop from a wider scene, this barely counts as abstract, but you know, if you’re looking for the quality abstracts, those come with the Premium Membership, which also includes a goody bag and part of this nutritious breakfast.

low-hanging leaves dipping into water
In deep shade and probably set for brighter, more contrasty light, this composition is a nice accent but a bit muted – let’s see what we can do about that.

same image in very high contrast
Much better – now it looks like a soft drink can. Which is just the kind of thing you come here for.

And finally, one that really is from this month, the precursor to the holiday. Not, not that one, the proper one.

holiday lights in darkness, mostly defocused into bokeh
I wasn’t really wowed by any of these, mostly because I found the LEDs tended to have overpowering blues and purples. Which is funny, because the incandescent holiday lights tend to have weak blues. Maybe I’ll market a set of lights, carefully balanced in output, specifically for photographers to mess about with. You’d buy a few sets, right?

There’s still time, so perhaps I can sneak in a proper abstract later on today, or maybe something else entirely, No guarantees – this means I don’t actually have any plans for such, much less a post waiting in the wings (that’s a bloggers’ secret.) But maybe.

Until then, enjoy yourself today, celebrate wisely, pick a random time during the day to consider it a whole new year (why not?), and I thank you for coming by!

Profiles of Nature 55

Al Denelsbeck

* Hold on a second. While the last post was the 2,500th, there was one in there that wasn’t actually written by me, which means the accomplishment is a little hollow, like celebrating two millennia of something on New Year’s Day 2000 even though it had been only 1999 years – New Year’s Day was the start of the 2,000th year. Can’t have that…

black-crowned night heron 'Uzma' peering warily from some kind of cedar I think
This week we get to meet Uzma, or at least we would if we saw something more of her than a fleeting glimpse as she ducked back behind her drapes. Uzma likes to ‘keep an eye on things’ in her neighborhood, meaning that she’s constantly trying to watch everything her neighbors do in case they’re as degenerate and creepy as she suspects. That this has yet to be confirmed doesn’t impinge on her consciousness, because it can always happen tomorrow, nor does she recognize that constantly spying on her neighbors is pretty damn creepy in itself. Worse, if she ever does see something unsavory, she won’t know what to do about it since the last person she had to gossip with died because he didn’t trust EMS not to go through his stuff while he was unconscious. We’d like to provide more fascinating facts about Uzma here, but she wouldn’t answer her phone even when we knew she was right there, so we’re going to do a first for these Profiles and simply make stuff up. Uzma probably used to work in HR, denying medical leave when she couldn’t fully interpret the doctors’ signatures, and was the kind to draw her feet up in the restroom stalls so no one knew she was there, hoping this would encourage people to talk freely. Alas, all she ever heard was desperately-relieved flatulence. She doesn’t actually have a beak; those are just seriously pursed lips. And no, there’s isn’t a weird blank space between her eyes and the top of those lips. Uzma (likely) spends too much time in the children’s section of the local library making a list of unsafe books, like those that show kids playing outside, and writes angry letters to TV stations when someone uses the word, “cherry” – the baking shows are really tired of her shit. She never misses a church service, but it’s mostly because she’s always trying to figure out just what kind of impudent undergarments people are wearing under their clothes; if it’s not visibly bulky and lumpy, it must have some kind of animal pattern on it. She doesn’t even put lace doilies on the arms of her furniture because that’s too provocative. We bet, anyway. Uzma used to subsist on a strict diet of prunes and plain shredded wheat, but had to give that up when she realized she was spending too much time in the bathroom, and you know what they say about that. Uzma’s favorite adjective (we imagine) is, “astringent.”

Given that there were, what, 36? American Pie movies, you can be sure that the Profiles are not dead yet. Take heart in the fact that they’re no longer weekly, but then realize in horror that this means they could appear anytime.

As good a time as any

Al Denelsbeck

So, on this date fourteen years ago came the very first post on the blog. And I realized, at the beginning of this month, that another milestone was coming up, so I made sure to have them converge: this is the 2,500th post itself. I have to admit that no one’s congratulatory cards have arrived yet, but I’m putting this down to the holiday rush – I’m sure they’ll be along any day now.

Shelving that for the moment, I figured it was time for a podcast, since we’ve had so few (like, one) this year. Plenty of other stuff, mind you, but only one podcast. Two, now.

Walkabout podcast – That’s 14 down

Some of the accomplishments this year:

The (so far) longest gap between visits

Woodpeckers, first mention (though I did get a peek at one in February)

Woodpeckers, confirmation of the nest

Woodpeckers, first video compilation

Woodpeckers, second video compilation

One of the young adult woodpeckers

The first indication of beavers

The first images of the beavers themselves

Further, with some video

Still more of the beavers, with some great behavioral clips

The nutria clips, so now you know what they are.

Possibly the first day out of the nest for the juvenile green herons

A brief anole video, though the violent territorial dispute that I mentioned was two years ago instead.

In fact, I uploaded 14 video clips this year, so that’s been expanding nicely.

We’re letting you know because this is liable to be on the quiz, but the 2,000th post was 21 months ago. That’s, let’s see, off the top of my head it would be an average of 23.8095238089 posts per month in that bracket – somewhere around there, anyway – and should that rate continue, it would put us at the 3,000th post in September 2024; I predict it will be September 24th, just for the sake of it and to use the <sup> tags one more time.

But yeah, that’s enough harping on a meaningless number. It was a nice recap excuse, though…

Visibly different, part 52

Al Denelsbeck

I had plans for a particular offering for this ‘last’ post in the topic, but it’s been taking longer than I have time for, and so we have this instead, though the original choice will appear later on – it’s in progress and one of those things that you shouldn’t rush.

So our opening image is from July 2012:

adult Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis
This is a Chinese mantis (Tendoera sinensis) of course, and taken right out in front of where we used to live. There’s nothing terribly compelling about this image, or at least not now, because it came early on in my extended pursuit of the species – it shows how the eyes darken at night, and gives a hint of the facets of the compound eyes which I would later capture in much better detail. The reason that I selected this image is because it came a few months earlier than the next:

orchid mantis Hymenopus coronatus in Museum of Life & Science, Durham NC
In fact, this was taken exactly ten years ago today, part of the reason I chose it. This is an orchid mantis (Hymenopus coronatus,) and not at all native, hailing from southeast Asia instead, though my travel to get this image was considerably less than implied, since it was on display at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham – the only time, in fact, that I’ve seen them out on display. And yes, I did the best I could to provide similar poses among the self-imposed constraints of this post, because I do things like that – don’t ask why, and you won’t embarrass either of us.

Mantids of any kind are cool of course, but some varieties around the world are particularly stunning in terms of their camouflage and appearance, and I did what I could with the terrariums of the museum, but wanted to get a lot more images. This may take place some day: orchid mantises are available for sale, though not cheaply, and of course would almost certainly have to be shipped. The egg case would be the best manner of shipping, except that they’re not native so no one needs a few hundred of them to house and feed while preventing escapes, even if it is only for the season (March through October, generally – mantids are only summer insects.) Not to mention that, if they’re charging nearly $50 for an individual, no one’s going to sell an entire egg case.

However, my brother did bring me down two egg cases from New York, and I suspect these are European mantids which I’ve never seen around here, so perhaps in the spring I may have some slightly different species to tackle.

But back to the topic. Visible differences? Well, color and head shape, obviously, and I unfortunately could not get a decent full-body shot of the orchid mantis for better comparisons. One visible difference is actually incorrect: the top one was shot at night, the bottom one at midday, but the macro flash was enough to illuminate the close background of the Chinese mantis and disguise the darkness, while it was inadequate to get any background for the orchid mantis, which is fine because it would have been the exterior of the terrarium in the museum. Do the orchid mantis eyes go dark at night as well? I have no reason to believe otherwise, but no proof either – the security at the museum is too good. The mantids were pretty comparable in size, but their antennae are significantly different, don’t ask me why.

So, another of this topic will slide in eventually, but perhaps not before we begin a new yearly topic. What will that be? Ah, you just have to wait (mostly because I don’t actually know yet myself.)

Roped in

Al Denelsbeck

Back when I worked at an auto-parts store, I was familiar with the idea of the tinkerer, and even worked with someone who had a “Tuner Cult” decal on their car. In essence, it the person who is perpetually working on cars, improving, upgrading, tweaking this that and the other thing because if there’s any room for improvement, they can’t rest until this has been accomplished. Which is a never-ending quest, because someone always comes up with something new to be changed on any given automobile, especially the popular “performance” models.

I always viewed this with quiet dismissal – while I like having a decently-performing car, it’s not a competition, and I don’t judge anyone on their car and couldn’t care less if they judged me on mine, plus I could always find better things to spend money on. Hell, I don’t even spend that much on photo equipment.

But…

Back in March I picked up a small, second-hand 3D printer. I used to do a lot of model work when I was younger, cars and planes and spaceships, and still keep my hand in even though I don’t work on kits 1/10th as much as I used to, so the idea of producing my own parts and designs was pretty compelling – I’ve done it the old-fashioned way plenty of times before, combining parts or outright carving what I needed, but that was small potatoes compared to fabricating an entirely original design. Yet, I knew they were expensive and the learning curve for both the printer itself and the software for 3D design could be steep; I wasn’t anxious to delve into this for the occasional model work that I was doing. Still, when the basic printer came up for much less than I’d thought I’d ever have to spend, I took the chance and started learning all this stuff about fused deposition modeling.

It’s safe to say that I fell into this trap like a sucker, and am as bad as any tuner cultmember now. Not only did I do several serious upgrades to that little machine, in early November I picked up another, larger model, and have been upgrading that while printing dozens of designs – most of them not my own, I admit. However, I am getting my uses out of them and having an absolute blast.

3D printed model of tardigrade
This is not a printing failure but Kolosos’ model of a tardigrade, a real animal, though a few thousand times life size
A word about the recent purchase: I came across some listings for some ‘returned, unrepaired’ units from retailers, where they admitted that they hadn’t evaluated the printers to know what was wrong and thus sold them at significantly reduced prices. 3D printers are actually pretty easy to work on, most of them coming as kits anyway, and spare parts are easy to obtain; buyer reviews were primarily quite positive. I took the chance, and the unit that I received was brand new – all parts still in original packaging, nothing missing, basically an ‘open box’ deal. It’s printing as I type this, having cost me less than half what it retailed for. Can’t complain about that.

The ‘upgrade’ thing needs some clarification too. While it implies that the printers aren’t as carefully designed or built as they could be, which is true in some cases, it’s more often the idea that someone found ways to improve performance or usability, very often by 3D printing parts for the very machine, and shared them with others; the 3D community is vast and extremely helpful. 95% of the time, any issues can be resolved with a websearch and a few tweaks, or perhaps a new part, and within two days of the arrival, I’d already added a better filament feed system, some slot covers to prevent collecting debris within, and a corner tool stand – that I also altered the design of to accommodate my own preferences (it needed a spot for forceps.) A lot more has been added since, and for christmas I received a few more upgrades intended to seriously expand performance and capability – and here I am typing up a post…

Blender illustration of 3D printing model
Not my own design, but a modification of works by fukumay and DieZopfe
There is a podcast coming up where I talk about luck this year, and one of the things that I forgot to mention therein was a windfall of raw materials for the printer. A nearby company was getting out of FDM printing in favor of SLA (resin,) and was unloading all of their unused filament – they hated the idea of it going to a landfill. I responded to their ad, with the result that I got a couple dozen spools of material, several hundred dollars’ worth, for free. This has not helped my restraint in the slightest.

The most used material, by virtually everyone, is PLA, or poly-lactic acid, which is essentially corn starch – seriously. It’s non-toxic, produces no harmful fumes during printing (a faint sweet smell, actually,) and is biodegradeable. And you couldn’t distinguish this from the plastics of your smutphone case or computer keyboard. Other materials are available of course, optimized for usage and not as environmentally friendly, but overall the impact is significantly less that you’d expect.

So, I have something to keep me occupied through the slow winter months, that stimulates my creative proclivities and gives me some more challenges – I’m cool with that. Kind of obsessed, really, but until the bugs and lizards come back out I’ll be able to keep busy and grumble about the weather less.

Living in the past XIIV

Al Denelsbeck

Kaylee wrestling with her christmas gift
We’re sliding backwards a bit to 2011 here, solely because this was taken on this date back then. This is Kaylee, only about six months old here, with her christmas gift, and while she seems quite enamored of her stuffed toy, check the ears – she’s kicking the living hell out of it. Which was the intention, so it’s cool. For no more than two days she considered this a great punching bag, then showed no further interest in it from then on – we still have this cast-off Valentine’s Day gift, somewhere, and from time to time I test her with it to see if she’ll recover her interest in abusing it, but no dice so far.

Happy holidays, everyone! Here’s hoping you all receive something to try and disembowel, if only for a day.

Living in the past XII

Al Denelsbeck

shameless Photoshop job adding tourists to the Great Wall of China
This one goes way back before the origins of this blog, only not really – it’s been featured here before, though I’ll let you figure out when. And while The Manatee gets credit for the photo, twice really, I’m responsible for the carnage you see here. Truth be told, this is a crass Photoshop job; despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the seamlessness, despite the stunning realism, one of these people was not actually present, though decorum prevents me from indicating who. By my own hand was this belief that they’d seen the Great Wall in person promoted, and it’s been gnawing away at me ever since (my participation in this charade, not the Great Wall itself.) At last, I must come clean and cleanse myself of this foul act, revealing to the world that this is an editing job, because no one would have been able to tell otherwise – it’s that goddamn good.

By the most enormous of coincidences, it’s also the birthday of the person who really isn’t there, and what better time to challenge their boasts of having trodden the Great Wall? I say this early so you can get your own licks in, should you recognize the interloper. Too long, too long has this gone unchecked. Shatter this lie and scatter the pieces to the winds, however you do that.

But yeah, happy birthday anyway! Have fun living this one down!

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