I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours Mon Aug 24
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11 years agoTo expand on yesterday's post of a HORNETS nest. This is one from a tree in our yard 3 years ago. After some cold weather, bluejays attacked it tearing off most of the outside cover. See what it looked like after they were done with it. Again, what a work of art!
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I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours Mon Aug 03
Comments (11)We spent the last two weeks on Block Island. One of the highlights of the trip was joining the Block Island Club. My wife's family always used to join when they came to the island when she was growing up, and her father even helped import the first 420 sailboats the club used. Its friendly and low key, and has sailboats, kayaks, paddleboards, a couple of tennis courts with a really good instructor, and even held a potluck cocktail party one evening.A sailboat race hosted by the club.The clubhouse.The sunset cocktail party.The view from the tennis courts as a scary storm moved in....See MoreI'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours Mon Aug 31
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Comments (27)Wow! First thing I do when someone brings me a cat or kitten or one shows up is cart it off to the vet before it is even brought inside with the others. Soon as they are old enough they go off to be fixed! I have heard people tell me Oh, I will get them fixed but I want her to have one litter before I do? Why? Why? So because you"think" you will get one just like the mother father, you bring 4-8 more kittens into the world that you will have to give away free to good home and those people wont fix them and they will breed and just keep breeding. Sigh. Sadly with cats there are so many that a re-homing fee doesn't work. If you charge a re-homing fee a lot of people will just go where they are free. Most of my rescue work is with feral cats and Kittens. The shelters and Rescues are so over run that any feral brought in is usually put down right away because they just don't have the resources to socialize them. It is just extremely sad....See More
11 years agoDue to a bit of an illusion from the camera, this green heron appears to not mind high dives.
- 11 years ago
Underwater photos from snorkeling on Block Island.
I think this last one is a sea urchin. - 11 years ago
- 11 years ago
11 years ago- 11 years ago
The above underwater pictures were heavily post-processed using Picasa. The human eye is pretty good at automatically adjusting the color balance so that what you see looks more vibrant. Here are a couple of the underwater pictures as they looked right out of the camera:
and the "after" versions:
At least with my camera and its waterproof case, it is really hard to see what you are taking a picture of, especially if you are zoomed in a fair bit. Starting with the none-too-bright LCD display of the camera, which is hard enough to see in brightly lit conditions, put it in the waterproof case which adds another layer of plastic, and then add in the swim mask your are wearing which is usually a little bit fogged, and it is mostly a guess as to what you are taking a picture of. The fact that the sea urchin in the earlier images is centered and in focus, at the equivalent of a 300mm zoom is beyond lucky.
On one of the three attempts at snorkeling on the island the glass lens of the waterproof case fogged up, pretty much ruining most of that set of images. Below is the best one of that set straight from the camera, and after post-processing.
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