Mum's The Word

The local Gardens deprived me of my Mass Chrysanthemum fix this fall, so I dug up my pictures from years past. Here's a couple:

I went back today, and it was more like:

Nice fall weather, sunlight, breeze . . . and more than half the people there were wearing masks. Sigh.

October Gardens

I expected to see banks upon banks of chrysanthemums, begging to be photographed. But there weren't many this year. I also saw:

Giant Mexican Marigolds

Lantana Camara

Even Newer Natural History

Helianthus ferreus

A splendid example of the American Toolflower (Helianthus ferreus). The Toolflower requires a temperate climate, plenty of sun and iron-rich soil. It is often found in abandoned farmlands and gardens. The Toolflower is highly susceptible to fungal infections such as Stem Rust, Black Rust, and, in fact, pretty much any kind of rust.

Back to the Garden

This time I got several unblurred (almost) pictures of things that were further than six feet away. I continue my slow, steady progress toward becoming this century's Ansel Adams.

"My God, It's full of flars!"

The Mutant Japanese Maple oozes onto the walkway in search of prey.

We got Canada Geese around here like New York City's got rats.

Tennis Balls of the Gods

Picture This

 

A few weeks ago, in order to do a post about a local street sign, I dug out my old, cheap digital camera that I hadn't used in years. This weekend I took it for a spin in the gardens at a nearby regional park. The results were pretty sad. I took ten pictures, and eight of them were blurred and unusable; including, unfortunately, a zoomed-in picture of a goldfinch in some flowers. The other two you see above.

It was a cloudy day, and I guess the problem was the shutter had to stay open too long, and I couldn't hold the camera steady enough. I don't know why the two that worked, worked. I'll try again on a sunny day and see what happens. I suppose a tripod would fix the problem, but I'm damned if I'm going to be seen using a tripod with a Nikon CoolPix.

For those of you who are interested in the botanical details: the top picture is some kind of dogwood, and the bottom one is some purple flowers and orange-leaved plants in a big concrete pot.

Study: Taking a photo of something impairs your memory of it

"Around 50 undergraduates viewed paintings one at a time onscreen. In one block, participants took a photo of each painting with a smartphone, and then had 15 seconds to look at the painting itself. In a second experimental block, the participants took a photo of each painting, deleted the photo immediately (so they knew it could never been accessed in the future), then had 15 seconds to look at the painting. Finally, in another experimental block, they took no photos and simply viewed each painting for 15 seconds."

After a ten minute delay (during which phones were confiscated) came a multiple- choice memory test probing what the participants remembered about the various paintings. Compared to paintings that were simply viewed, performance was poorer for paintings that were photographed. Critically, this was true both for the condition where the photo was stored, and for the condition where it was deleted, meaning the participant knew they could not rely on it as a future memory partner.

This suggests that offloading may not be the cause of the memory disadvantage associated with taking photos. One alternative explanation is that using a camera forces us to disengage from properly taking in the stimulus, as our attention flows to the mechanics of operating buttons, checking brightness, exposure etc. This is something commonly reported by people as part of their photo-taking experience, and also tallies with the fact that automatic wearable cameras that store images for later don’t produce the memory impairment. However, in the current experiment, after taking pictures (or not), every participant had the same amount of time to take in the paintings without use of equipment, so any distraction effect would need to include some sort of delayed effect on memory processing even after the act of taking a photo was over.

Soares and Storm have a speculative second interpretation....

Inside Outside

Son Doong cave, Vietnam!

Sunset on the Oregon Coast

2016 Wildlife Photography finalist

Link to expand

Earth Wind and Fire

child commanding a fleet of kites

photograph of a plane

Firefight

National Geographic photography

"Like will-o’-the-wisps on a humid summer night, male blue ghost fireflies illuminate the woods near Brevard, North Carolina. This image was made by digitally stitching together more than 300 30-second exposures spanning four hours." (Link to expand) 

"In this vertiginous view of Hong Kong, low clouds race above the Quarry Bay neighborhood, reflecting the city lights below. Most of the 18- to 20-story residential buildings in this shot were erected in 1972."
(Link to expand)

The Towers of Greenland and Yosemite's Waterfall

The Towers of Greenland. Mountain peaks rising above their fjord with immense walls of solid granite.

Yosemite's waterfalls just right to make it light up in a golden hue.

Canada and California

Wells Gray Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada (Enlargement)

 

Big Sur, California is beautiful (Enlargement)

Cityscapes

Running on Fumes (click to enlarge)

A colorful rainy night in Tokyo (click to enlarge)

Inside Outside

The Milky Way

The Milky Way Over the Oregon Coast (click to enlarge)





















"Stars over the sunflower" SE Queensland, Australia (click to enlarge)

North Palm Beach

Up on the roof

If you had to choose one...

Appalachian Trail, Virginia (Link to original size)

Beauvert Lake in Jasper, Alberta (Link to original size)

Live feed view of Earth from the International Space Station

Link

Dead Sea from the Israel side (Link)

Spirit Falls, on the WA side of the Columbia River Gorge

Link to pan and zoom

Wall beach journal

Water wall...

Sand sculpture...