using ropes and cables

 

Camp Timber-Lee has a High Ropes Course.  My sons climbed up there, while I took pictures from terra firma.  I wanted to show something with perspective, so instead of looking for an unobstructed view, I positioned myself so that a young person remained in the foreground.  I thought it would be easy because an overcast sky causes even lighting and reduces harsh shadows.  But that doesn't work so well when you're taking pics from below your subjects.  I used my new flash contraption to light up the girl on the left.

A couple posts ago I explained how "I took some non-functioning relics that used to be a wireless flash transmitter and receiver, stripped the guts, and hardwired it to make an extension cable from my camera's hot shoe to an external flash."  So for the shot above, I held the flash out with my left arm so we could see the details and color of her hair, backpack and jacket.  This is what my flash extension looks like:

 That was my first DSLR, by the way.  It doesn't work anymore, but I haven't pitched it.  Hey, do you want to see something fun?  Click on this last picture to have a good look at my son's expression as he looks down from the High Ropes.

struck by Lightnin'

Target shooting has always been a fascination of mine. Some of you may remember stories I've told about archery. But there has also been darts (tungsten) and throwing knives... basically, if you need to aim it, I want to practice it. They say "practice makes perfect," but I have been struck with the reality from an entirely different experience... that practice makes me frustrated, because I have never been made perfect in any of these disciplines. In fact, my nickname at the archery range was Lightnin'. Sounds cool, right? But do you know why they called me that? It's because "lightnin' don't strike the same spot twice."

.

Fortunately, I don't have the same problem with photography. My unsteady hands took this, somewhat long exposure (1/3 sec) without a tripod by laying down and using the dock as a brace. I expect that I hold my breath for just about all of my pics. Anti-shake technology is a big help, too. When I do not like the position, cropping and straightening is a simple (post-editing) fix.

.

Aim... focus... steady... click... Meh, that'll do.

.

Check out: 11 Surefire Landscape Photography Tips from Digital-Photography-School.com

sitsmoo

I had hoped to post something about a cow today. These are not cows, and I'll bet you figured that out already, because you are oh-so-clever. Well, they are not cows, but they are chocolate and vanilla... just like the calves that Leeloo showed on her project 365. And calves, of course are... baby cows. Lime's word verification was "sitsmoo." The prefix "sits" is what you do on top of this chocolate and vanilla pair, after they're trained and saddled.

.

So there we go! I've covered sits and moo with a recent pic. This one was from that day a few weeks ago when I took my son up to Wisconsin for a photo safari of sorts. I've been wanting to show you, but I got carried away with my eagerness with birds. Please be patient; I'll have more bird pics soon enough.

a very good day

Some of you know that the Craver household home educates our children. Most of what we do is home based curriculum, but there is a science camp up in Wisconsin that we use for Biology. It is a neat supplement to our educational program. I volunteered there as a camp counselor many moons ago. We went up to this place Saturday so that my daughter could dissect a frog. That meant that my son and I had from 8AM to 4PM to wander around on a perfect day.

.

S2 just received his first camera from a friend. It is a used, low-end compact, which is perfect for a starter camera. He is having a good time snapping pics of all kinds of stuff, so we decided to use the day for a photo safari of sorts. We both loved it!

.

We took pics of horses, birds, flowers, trees and bugs. The camp director is my friend, so I was given a special visitor's pass and roaming privileges camp, even though there were other programs going on at the same time.

.

It was pure delight to walk around with nothing to do but take random photos under blue skies. But it was over the top when my son said how much he appreciated what we were doing, and thanked me for getting him interested in photography. How cool is that! I am so glad that he and I can hang out together and enjoy similar things.

missed it

We took one of our kids to science camp this week. While I was there, I snapped a few shots in the reptile room. Most of the snakes were napping, and some of the tanks were smudged with fingerprints. These cages are usually cleaner, but the camp had 400 visitors last week, and I was taking photos early on Monday.

.

This Corn Snake snake was not sleeping, but it looked like an escape artist, probing the top of the tank, sniffing around for a way out. Have you ever had a pet like that?

.

This snake's flickering tongue would have been nice to include in a pic, and I tried over and over again, but missed the forked tongue. ...Probably because I was not using a flash. There were no workers in that room with me, and I did not know whether using a flash would bother the reptiles. It would also have been a hassle, as the light bounced off the glass tanks. I still want to nab a photo of that tongue!!

.

I like this snake's coloring. It reminded me of something, but I could not figure it out until this morning. Someone put treats out next to the coffee, inviting us to help ourselves to cinnamon candies. That's it... cinnamon! If I had one of these snakes as a pet, that's probably what I'd like to name it.

.

You know what else I missed? You. I have not been blogging as much as I like to this past week. I am sorry for neglecting you. I missed a couple days of work, and still need to dig out from this mountain of to-do's. Break times and lunches only allow me to do a little bit at a time. Say, do you know anybody who would be willing to pay me to visit blogs all day? ;-)

port side

Karen at Timber-lee was gracious enough to give me a little help with the identification of some of the photos I took up there. It turns out that the golden retriever puppy named fluffy was not a golden retriever puppy at all! It happens to be a twelve year-old plated lizard, who's name is Plato.

.

She also identified this fish picture for me. It is called a sand sifting goby or a sleeper goby. It swims along, scooping up sand or gravel in its mouth, and shoots it out from somewhere near the gills.

.

As I got ready to put this photo up, I had a foggy flashback to something about the protocol for fish photos. After a quick search, I found this from a web article written by the Aquatic & Terrestrial Research Team members Adam Blundell and Shane Silcox:

A second guideline for taking aquarium pictures deals specifically with taking pictures of fishes. When displaying a picture of a fish it is proper to take a picture of the left side of the fish. In other words, the fish is facing left. This isn’t always possible, and in general a picture of a fish facing right can be flipped and mirror image is used. There are of course exceptions to this rule including: never flip a picture that has a human in the photo, never flip a picture of a non-bilaterally symmetric fish (i.e. flounders), and internal dissection pictures are taken on the right sides of the fishes.

.

Did you know about that? Therefore, on account of this port side protocol, I flipped the original photograph.

leapin' lizards

You are part of a tour group, and the only one carrying a camera. You find something you like as the group is moving on. No time to doddle. You quickly snap a photo. Here's the problem: You forgot to look at the label on the tank and record a description your subject. What do you do?

.

Here's what I will do; I will make it up. That being said, what we have here is... a puppy. She is a six week old golden retriever named Fluffy. (Yes, I am referring to the picture at the top of this post.)

.

In the meantime, I sent off an email to the science center at Camp Timberlee for the name of a fish that I saw, but I don't know what kind hours the office administration keeps at this camp. I may have to be creative again next week.

.

Here below, we have a cleaner shrimp. I got that from a fun little exhibit that was patterned after some of the characters from Disney's Finding Nemo. Denise also took photos of cleaner shrimp on her Watery Wednesday post. Sea horses too, but I didn't post my sea horse piccie today.

.

My next post will be #500! To celebrate, you're all invited to a cyberspace party, right here in the blogosphere. All of the imaginary food and drink has absolutely zero calories... isn't that great? Please don't make a mess, because I don't want to get stuck with cleaning nothing for the next two days.