Photography, nature, science, and more.
This tree stump is located on our side yard. I’ve always found it interesting and finally got around to actually taking a photo.
I used a very shallow focus to blur the background so the subject would stand out.
Looking at old trees and rocks is like looking at a Rorschach inkblot, you can see all kinds of animals or faces. Here I see an animal head, perhaps a bull.
Continue reading “Old tree stump”
Today we discuss how to use ImageMagick to add a frame and label to an image without obscuring any detail.
Most the image descriptions seen on web sites are written in HTML and are lost when the images are downloaded by a visitor.
You can add descriptions to the metadata stored in an image but some sites remove the metadata when the image is uploaded to reduce the file size. Even when the metadata remains intact many users don’t know how to access it.
Continue reading “Add a label and frame to an image”
This original 35mm half frame slide shows the model of the USS Enterprise that was used in the filming of the original “Star Trek” series.
The ship next to the Enterprise is the S.S. Botany Bay featured in the episode “Space Seed”
Continue reading “Restoring an image from the original Star Trek TV show.”
The above image is a motion gif of a luminous hickory nut shell showing the transition from room lighting to total darkness. This posting will explain how it was done.
One evening while walking through a small section of woods my wife noticed something glowing just off the trail. The object turned out to be hickory nut shell with some kind of luminous fungi or bacteria causing it to glow. We took it back home with us to take pictures. Since I didn’t know how long it would continue to glow I did a very quick photo setup by placing the nuts on a piece of white paper in a small dark room and mounted my camera on tripod.
In my last post I discussed annotating images with text using imagemagick.
This time I will show how to annotate an photographic image with a bitmap image which acts as a watermark. The watermark can contain text, corporate logos or even other photos.
Annotating your images with with text or images is a very common part of photo workflow and is often the last step before publishing.
Most workflow programs like darktable and album creation applications such as jalbum will allow you to automatically add logos, titles, and copyright notices to your images.
As good as these applications are they often have some limits on how much control you have over the process.
If you want near total control over the process and don’t want to custom edit every image in your photo editing application then command line tools are your best option
Remote controls are a great addition to your camera bag. For me, the greatest advantage for these devices is that you can take a picture without inducing any camera shake during long exposures.
You can buy commercial remote controls, or you can build one yourself that has more character.
There are a lot of sites online that describe the actual construction so I will refer you to one of them for the construction details.
A good site to use is: http://picsbylance.com/?p=1443 (link no longer works)
I made several changes in the construction to meet my requirements. Since I wanted this remote to do long duration “bulb” exposures I did not need the focus/exposure button. Since these would be for long exposures I used a toggle switch instead of the push button for the shutter.
The cable I used was from a 3.5mm standard stereo mini-plug and I left a junction in the middle so I could add an extender cable if I needed more distance from the camera.
I used an old 35 mm film container for the switch box for fun (it actually feels good in the hand).
Jim