Impressionistic Sunset (Looking for the Transit of Venus)

As I looked closely at the unedited version of my picture here, looking for the Transit of Venus, I did not find the planet (which was probably hidden behind the street light, anyway.) Instead, I found all sorts of dust specks in my picture (yuck!). 

Rather than trash the picture, I took it over to Photoshop Elements 2.0. I applied the Dust & Scratches filter (Radius 37 pixels, Threshold 9 levels) and... voila! The dust specks are gone! Together with the dust specks, you've also lost the street lamppost (or, from what you can see of it, it looks nothing like a street lamppost) as well as the trees looking anything like... trees. But, since you couldn't see Venus anyway, the image has been somewhat salvaged to leave you with a pretty picture of the setting sun. (Canon XTi; June 5, 2012). 

That Little Dot on the Sun Might Just Be Venus

That little black dot on the right-side of the sun might just be Venus from the Transit of Venus (June 5, 2012). Or, it was an untimely piece of dust on my camera lens (but I really do think that it could be Venus). The black and white version below was the best that I could find from the photos that I took, in which I may have actually seen Venus making its transit.

Surreal View (or not) Transit of Venus (maybe) 2012

This photograph is from June of 2012, the day that the Transit of Venus was supposed to be visible. (It's the first in a series of several that I'll be posting.) I'm not sure that I ever saw Venus (except on Wikipedia or elsewhere online after the fact), but I did make several interesting sunset shots. I ran this particular image through Photomatix for a little single image HDR action, and then took it over to Elements 2.0 to do a little work on dust/spot removal. The mountains beneath the sun are really trees that have come out with some really cool colors to look like... mountains.

Islands and Trees on a Hazy Lake Horizon

It took me a little bit to come up with the right word for this picture. I wanted to say something about the hazy line of trees at the end of the lake, but the right word was escaping me. It's not really a 'vanishing point', as that requires some set of parallel lines that draw into each other.

The word was 'horizon', "the apparent line that separates earth from sky" (thanks, Wikipedia!). "At many locations, the true horizon is obscured by trees, buildings, mountains, etc." In this particular picture, the horizon is dotted with a line of trees/islands, which appear hazy, I suspect, at least in part because they are 'on the horizon'.

This picture is from our trip this past summer into Lake of the Woods. Sony NEX-6. Processed as a single image on Photomatix, and then sent through Aftershot Pro for cropping and other adjustments.

This Creepy Little Character Looks Like...

Every time I make one of these Play-doh heads, my kids walk over and say, "Is that Golem?" (No, they have not seen the live-people version of Lord of the Rings. They have watched the cartoon version, though....)

This time, I think I'll beat them to the punch. It wasn't quite what I was going got, but this one actually does look Golem-esque.

Having Some Optical Illusionary Fun

Ok. I admit that my optical illusion pic is not nearly as cool as some of the other optical illusion pictures out there.  But the more that I stare at this image, the less I see it for what it really is. (Does this make any sense?)

Maybe I'm trying really hard to not see it -- for what it really is. Maybe I'm  thinking too hard, that it would somehow be so much cooler... if it were something else? As I said, the more that I stare at it, the wider the lines seemed to be at the bottom, building up into the vanishing point of the circle at the top. This makes me start to think that it looks like a pyramid... a pyramid whose point disappears into some kind of circular doughnut?

Ok, I give, I give. It's really a water tower. I was shooting from the base of the water tower looking up. It was already a fairly gray water tower, shooting up into a fairly gray sky, on a boring, not much exciting to see (like pyramids) gray winter day. (I'm really not depressed or anything; I'm just playing with you. Remember? I'm having some optical illusionary fun. Thanks for looking!)

Strange Red Winter Berries

Living as I do in the winter-worn state of Minnesota, I get used to seeing a lot of gray outside during the wintertime. The other day offered something of a break in the cold, and -- when I went outside and saw these colorful berries, I took pictures. I'm not sure what kind of berries these are (or even, if they are really berries at all!), and wouldn't you know that the wind was blowing as I was trying to make three exposures, hand-held (i.e., no setting up the tripod in the snow for this particular shot.) Thankfully, Photomatix was able to successfully merge my three exposures (spaced at three; it's amazing what Photomatix can do when it comes to such photo merges), and after a little tinkering... voila! HDR red winterberries! (Or, whatever they are!)