This photo has been over two years in the making. It’s not a great photo either. This is a photo of the first orchid bloom from a plant I raised myself. Someone gave me this orchid over two years ago, and it was almost dead. The media in its pot had deteriorated into something that almost resembled black dirt, so the roots weren’t getting enough air and they were being over saturated at the same time. When I received it, I took it out of its pot and re-potted it with fresh sphagnum moss and started trying to revive it.
I have had other orchids in the past and never managed to keep them alive. Most of the time, I would simply forget about them and let them dry out. At this point, I have two orchids that I have kept alive for over two years, but this is the first one that has produced a bloom for me. This bloom is not nicely positioned on the stalk for photos, but I wanted to make the shot anyway. It’s been open for less than 24 hours, so it’s color will continue to develop. The bloom stalk has 10 buds on it at the moment, and I’m hoping it will have more later. It’s a rather large orchid so hopefully it will bloom for quite a while. The next bloom that will open on this plant will be in a lot better position to photograph, so hopefully I’ll have a nicer image soon…
The Hickory High Lady Tornadoes varsity basketball team is on it’s way to another run for the state championship. I’ll have to admit that the Lady Tornadoes didn’t look their best tonight against the Lady Bears of Bunker Hill. Three of Hickory’s starters were in foul trouble, and Karsyn Jarrett ended up on the bench with five with just under two minutes to play. Bunker Hill’s Kellie Rhoney also reached the foul limit before the end of play. Tonight was one of the first times this season that Hickory’s full-court press wasn’t particularly effective. Hickory didn’t produce the number of turnovers that they normally do, and they actually trailed Bunker Hill by two points at the end of the first period. I think it was just an off night for Hickory. Hickory won the game, but not by the margin they are used to. The Lady Tornadoes are still undefeated this season and will compete in the conference finals on Friday night…
I went to the Olde Hickory Tap Room this evening to photograph “Pan Jive” performing their steel drum sounds for the Sunday evening dinner crowd. Shooting in poor light is always a challenge, so I try to take advantage of blur when I can in these situations. The space is also tight in this local restaurant, so I can’t get more than a few feet away from the action for photos. I also shot a video clip of Pan Jive performing one of their original tunes…
I have decided to separate my SoFoBoMo project into a separate blog. If anyone is interested in following my progress on this project, the new blog site for it is here:
On that site, I have also listed the other known participants in the blogroll…
Going back to school at nearly 40 years old seems crazy to me at times. Making a career change at my age is nearly impossible without it though. I’m really enjoying the Radiography program. It’s a rather interesting extension of my photography hobby. There are some similarities between photography and radiography, but there are also some very significant differences. One of the most difficult concepts to grasp in radiography when looking at it from a photographer’s viewpoint is what you are actually seeing when you look at an x-ray. The x-ray tube is not the ‘camera’ as we would imagine. It’s the source of ‘light’ if you want to look at it that way. The actual ‘camera’ is the film cassette or digital image receptor on the wall or inside the table. If a patient is face up on the table, the actual image that you see in the finished x-ray is as if you were looking at their back rather than their front. The x-ray tube produces the radiation, some of which passes through the patient, and strikes the film screen or digital image receptor. Those x-ray photons that strike the image receptor are what creates the image. It’s really challenging sometimes to grasp this concept when looking at the x-ray images…
I have been blogging my experiences in Radiography school here:
http://www.setzler.net/radiography
Anyway…
This photo represents my graduation slush fund. I think this ceramic piggy bank will probably hold somewhere between $400 and $500 in pocket change… maybe even more… That, along with some additional stashes hidden here and there, is going to provide me with some sort of really nice vacation when I graduate from this program in May of 2009. I’ll be sure to take my camera wherever I decide to go…
I have still been experimenting with the extension tubes on my Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. This photo was made using the 20mm and 12mm extension tubes (Kenko) with the 50mm lens at f/2.0 with a shutter speed of 1/60″. I used the Canon 550EX flash and bounced the light from a wall directly to the right on this image. I started out playing with all three extension tubes stacked (36mm, 20mm, and 12mm) but quickly figured out that it was just too much for this particular composition. I haven’t had an opportunity to spend much time playing with the extension tubes on the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L yet, but I need to try that out as well to see what kind of results I can get and add some working distance to the subject.
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Digital SLR cameras continue to improve in quality and capabilities. I’m quite confident that theses cameras have surpassed the 35mm film market in many ways, and are approaching the medium format market rather quickly. As digital cameras develop, one of the areas of ‘improvement’ in each of them seem to be lowering the noise on high ISO images with each new revision of the image sensor technology. There will come a day when you simply can’t get a grainy image when you want one. You will have to find a way to add it with post processing techniques.
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I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this project, and I have made a few decisions. First of all, I do have my theme chosen and a game plan for executing it. I’ll be starting my project on either April 15 or May 1 due to my school schedule this semester. If I start on April 1, I’ll have to complete it before the end of April and it will be butting up against semester exams at the end, and I can’t deal with that. I need to take advantage of the semester break for a project like this. I’ll also have to manage my time more effectively in order to get things done on time anyway. I won’t be sharing my project theme until the project is complete.
My final product will be a PDF file to share online and a printed book. I plan to use CreateSpace as my publish on demand service for this book. The book will be an 8.25 x 8.25 paperback, but the advantage of using this particular service is that I can make the book available to anyone who wants a copy through amazon.com. Self publishing options are getting better as time goes by, but I still haven’t found an optimum solution that I can afford just yet…
If you want to read about the SoFoBoMo project, CLICK HERE.
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