Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Light Painting

While looking for ideas about night photography (especially with my camera that can't shoot star trails) I found this Copy Pasta blog that does some really neat things with light painting, especially with human outlines and in indoor settings.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Leica Dissecting Scope

Since last week was warm and wet my Botany class went out to collect mosses and took them back to the lab where we took pictures of some of them with the new dissecting scope/camera. I got a little distracted and in addition to moss I took a couple pictures of our Brassica rapa plants we're doing genetic work with and one other random flower in the lab. I did a little bit of editing in Lightroom, mostly to remove some background noise because the lab tables are not pure black. One of the things that was difficult about this kind of photography is that because it is so zoomed in on the plant, there is a really narrow depth of field (like we talked about in class today) but I can only focus the scope and move it slightly closer or farther away, which made things more difficult.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

This week I downloaded Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta in part to help me sort through the ridiculous amounts of pictures I took in Costa Rica, but mostly because it's free! (at least, until April when they release the actual version.) I've just started playing around with it, and I don't have Lightoom 2 to compare, but it definitely beats trying to do it on my laptop or walking over to the lab for photoshop.

So far I like how quick importing and sorting photos is, the side-by-side before and after comparisons, and how most of the tools are intuitive and fairly easy to use. One thing I don't really like is the spot repair tool: it's just not as easy to use or control as the clone or heal tool in photoshop. I'm sure I'll get better at it as I use it more. One thing I'm excited about trying is making a slide show set to music.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Costa Rica Part 5-People and Scenery (often at the same time)

Of course the trip wouldn't have been anything without people, and the land is stunning even without animals.











Sunset at La Leona and a view of Corcovado from the air.

Vines at Palo Verde and Rob with a lizard in La Selva.











Jeff hiking into La Leona and our crazy Corcovado guide Mike.












Kayhan and Laura birdwatching, and the class wading through the river in search of a boat-billed heron.












Our guide in Palo Verde Rapheal and one of the most terrifying trees ever.

Costa Rica Part 4--Insects (and other invertebrates)

Insects make up the vast majority of the animal biomass of the rainforest, and we saw a ton of them, but they were incredibly difficult to identify because of the sheer variety and quantity of them, but we did get pretty good at a couple of them. First up, the orb weaver spider:















Next up: the terrifying azteca ant. They defend acacia and cercropia trees, so don't even brush against them! The bite smarts for a good two hours.



One of the hundreds if not thousands of hermit crabs we saw in Corcovado.

Costa Rica Part 3--Mammals

Mammals!
I started off with the four species of monkey we saw (and all that exist in Costa Rica), more as proof that we saw them than really good photography. Oddly enough, their order of appearance correlates with how cooperative they were in pictures: white faced capuchin, howler, spider, and squirrel monkies.














Next up are a few of the other interesting mammals we saw: first a bizarre porcupine that we think may be an albino Mexican hairy porcupine, but no one is really sure about that. This is followed by our photogenic kinkajou who waited patiently for us to take pictures and get off the bridge before going across itself. They are followed up by a tamandua (anteater) and a bat I scared out of its day roost.








Costa Rica Part 2--Herpetofauna

Here is part 2: Herpetofauna (or reptiles and amphibians for non-environmental science nerds). I'm not very good with herps, so these IDs are very tentative and subject to change.















A ctenosaur sunning in Palo Verde and a leaf litter frog posing in La Selva.















A cane toad we chased under a bench and then took pictures of in La Selva.









A huge basilisk in La Selva. If and how these big ones run on water is a mystery. And a strawberry dart frog! We saw hundreds, but they are really difficult to get a decent picture of (partly because they are an understory species so the light always sucks, and partly because they move all the time).









This is not a good picture by any means, it's just in here for the memory. About 15 seconds after it was taken the snake (a barred forest racer) was handed off to me, and it promptly bit me. No worries though, it was young and didn't even break the skin.

Costa Rica Part 1--Birds

I took a lot of pictures in Costa Rica, and wanted to put some of them up even before I start editing, so here are some of my favorite bird shots-I'll follow this up with insects, mammals, landscapes, and herpetofuana. Because of difficulties formatting this blog at the moment here are the species in order: Bare-throated Tiger Heron, Wood Stork, Vultures (Black and Turkey), Rufous Motmot, Chestnut Mandibled Toucan, Ringed Kingfisher, Spotted Sandpiper, Scarlet Macaw.