52 Week Challenge: Week 23

WEEK 23: Landscape: Weather – This week should be as unpredictable as the weather! Feature the weather in this week’s landscape.

How difficult can this be, fer cryin’ out loud? I am still British (as well as American) so I should have a genetic predisposition to evaluating the weather for hours on end. After all, my homeland is famously described as a country that “doesn’t have a climate, only weather.”

However, this may be one of those instances when too much interest is a bad thing, since my desire for an interesting shot of our summer weather in Pennsylvania has resulted in nothing but procrastination and delay on this assignment for weeks on end.

I may have mentioned previously that I usually keep at least one camera in the car with me so, as there were storm clouds rolling in on my drive to work, I stopped off and decided to get a shot of those to support the rather surprising statistic that July is our wettest month here.

As I picked up my camera I thought I’d make the shot more interesting by creating a high dynamic range (HDR) image to bring out the clouds. This entails taking 3 identical shots with slightly different exposure settings (+/- 0.3EV) to bring out the highlights and shadows and then merging them into one image. The resulting image is technically a low dynamic range representation of the HDR composition following tonemapping, but we still call them HDR photos. Anyway, using the portable version of the superb free software LuminanceHDR I created the following image of clouds rumbling in over the trees and the communication antenna tower near to where I work.

If you’d like to see some more of my HDR work click the image above or here.

~Richard

July 14, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 21

WEEK 21: Artistic: Fantasy – Is this real life, or is this just fantasy… Your artistic inspiration this week is fantasy.

Ok, this is a bit of a cheat, as I made this last year, but it fits in with the remit and I am still playing catch up, so I feel justified in my actions.

This is a composite of two photographs, one from Bermuda at the aquarium and the other at Philadelphia zoo. After a bit of playing around in my favorite free photo editor, GIMP we have the fantastically formidable looking striped rhino fish.

~Richard

July 13, 2016 0

Corporate Inclusion

I have eluded briefly to the workings of my corporate overlords in a few previous posts, and today I feel the need for another such reference.

I work in a large US office, employing over 500 people, for an international corporation which, in turn, employs several thousand individuals on four continents. Very recently, our local office staff received a mail missive explaining how a new corporate initiative is being launched to connect, inspire and develop us all. This carefully crafted communication explained how the organization is celebrating Diversity and Inclusion as major principles within the work environment and that sharing of ideas will be key to helping to energize us all. These are very laudable goals and ones to which we should all happily ascribe and promote.

The email contained a colorful invitation, in corporate colors, to attend the kick off initiative and enable us to “connect” with key leaders and be inspired by their unique stories of personal and professional growth. It looks like an interesting opportunity to learn more from those who shape our daily routine perhaps, but as I read to the bottom of the invitation there was a statement, written in bold font, “maximum attendance of 40 colleagues.”

How ironic that in their attempt to be inclusive the organization automatically excludes over 90% of the potential audience!

I wonder if I am the only one to see it?

~Richard

July 12, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 22

As I mentioned previously I am playing catch up with a few of these challenges. I finally got around to this exercise and also decided to make it a black and white image as I liked the subtle shadow.

WEEK 22: Portrait: Hands – Usually the face is the strongest element in the frame; with the hands being second. Make the hands the most important element in your image this week.

160711_52WK22_Hands

~Richard

July 11, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 26

WEEK 26: Landscape: Simplify – Simply the scene to make your primary subject stand out.

If you look closely at this dead tree it resembles a hand curling out of the marsh. A bird must have thought it a potential place for a nest, but it really wasn’t given the straw debris beneath its crooked fingers.

Did the nest slip, or did the tree let go?

160709_52WK26_Simplify

~Richard

July 9, 2016 0

Haiku – Philosophical Ablution

Morning instruction:

Breathe Deeply for Best Results.

Sagacious hairwash

~Richard

July 8, 2016 0

Protecting our Chickens with PVC piping

A year or so ago we bought chickens and I built the girls a run in which to place their coop and provide protection against predators. As is my wont I built it without plans and soon it became fairly clear that we would need a cover to keep out the rain and snow. As I had already put a mesh roof on it to keep out raccoons this was no mean feat, and after trial and error, I ended up cobbling together a makeshift sloping roof by placing a couple of upturned buckets on the top with a wooden pole between them and then draping a tarpaulin over this. It served us fairly well over the last 12 months as I struggled with motivation on how I was going to come up with a longer term solution.

This year we restarted out raised bed garden and I used PVC piping to make hoop covers for my new plants. Then it hit me – why not apply the same approach to the chicken run? After all, all I need is to put a slope under the tarp so that water runs off and doesn’t pool on the surface.

After a few hours work here’s my current set-up. I used 3 x 10 ft ¾ inch internal diameter PVC pipes and 4 T-joints. The T-joints form “feet” for the poles which are bent to provide a dome shape. The feet are connected to the top of the run using cable ties. The whole frame cost $12.

I have a similar arrangement on the adjoining chain link chicken run, but that has the advantage that I can use bungee tarp cords to put the tarp under tension. On the original run the mesh is ½ inch and so I cannot do this. Therefore, I modified the design a bit by using nylon washing line from corner to corner to add some tension. Now we wait for the rains…

160707_ChickenRun2 — PVC tubing bent to form a dome

160707_ChickenRun3 — Nylon Clothes Line used for corner tension

160707_ChickenRun5 — Final tarpaulin cover

~Richard

July 7, 2016 0

Hidden Meaning?

I am not a great fan of whimsical garden ornaments, gnomes, fairies, bunnies and such like. Often they seem to just clutter up a garden and add nothing to the scenery. However, on a recent trip to Ocean City, NJ we spotted this delightful duo on a property’s side yard which caused us to stop and do a “double take.”

What message is being conveyed here? Should children be wary of alligators (even though there are none in NJ) ? Is this a warning against being too engrossed in reading a book? Or is the rosy-cheeked child calming the beast by reading to it? It’s certainly an unusual pairing in my experience. Do you have any other suggestions for interpretation?

~Richard

July 6, 2016 0

52 Week Challenge: Week 24

WEEK 24: Artistic: Sparkle! – Shoot what inspires you this week, just make sure it sparkles.

I’m still playing catch up with the 52-week challenge. This week was July 4th and the traditional time for playing (carefully) with sparklers, so this was easy to take literally! We did some light painting, but I ended up choosing this one, as I loved the soft lighting.

160706_52WK24Sparkle

~Richard

July 5, 2016 0

Quintessentially British July 4th Celebration

Yes, as a naturalized American I am well aware that today is the day we celebrate Independence and the shedding of the shackles of tyranny from our historical overlords, however, there are already millions of web pages covering this theme today. So, instead I am going to use this post to celebrate something that happened yesterday.

Depending on the day, I have the privilege/honor/burden to curate the art group Quintessentially British on the art website pixels.com. I set up this group almost 4 years ago, on July 9th 2012, to showcase art that represents Britishness in some way and it how hosts images from over 670 members. Yesterday, I accepted the 10,000th image to the collection, which I share here.

In between hot dogs and fireworks why not take a look at some of the images from the land of the old Imperial Overlords?

Happy July 4th!

~Richard

July 4, 2016 2

Month: July 2016

52 Week Challenge: Week 23

52 Week Challenge: Week 21

Corporate Inclusion

52 Week Challenge: Week 22

52 Week Challenge: Week 26

Haiku – Philosophical Ablution

Protecting our Chickens with PVC piping

Hidden Meaning?

52 Week Challenge: Week 24

Quintessentially British July 4th Celebration

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