wiredfool

This image has just barely enough detail and depth of field to work on screen. I suspect the water droplets and the depth of the flower really conspired to make this tough to grab.

This came in the mail a couple of days ago — a non-descript Dell catalog with more of the latest and greatest in cheap consumer computers. (And displays, but, I order online when the prices are favorable).

This looks like a nice little ad for Windows Security software. Attentive users, clean design. But wait, what’s that laptop? What we have here is a first generation tibook, complete with the paint rubbing off where the user’s wrists rest on the white surround. Oh, and the logo is photoshopped out of it.

I don’t know if this is Dell’s doing, or if it’s something from Trend Micro, but the message here is: It’s not safe to use our products on the net, and if you do, you need something else. And that something else is an old Mac.

I’m guessing here that someone took this as stock photography, and to avoid trademark issues, they surgically removed the big Apple logo on the screen lid. Someone picked it up and used it in the ad, not realizing that it’s a competitor’s laptop. If Dell commissioned it, I just don’t see them saying to just use a mac.

This is, oddly enough, an enfuse processed HDR image that is actually of a pretty low dynamic range scene, from three images that are each within the bounds of what could be captured by my sensor. There’s probably a stop of dynamic range to spare on the original middle exposed one. But running it through the enfuse HDR process changes the balance of the parts of the image, so that while there was detail in the sandbar in front in the original images, it’s more prominent here.

I’m not 100% sure I like it better, but it is different. It’s also not immediately noticeable as an hdr, and I’m sure that like that.

This is a well tweaked version of the mid exposure image, perhaps a sample of what can be pulled out without the HDR process.

We’ve got a small forest on the land here, and it’s a little over grown. Just a little, probably 2-3 times as many trees as the land can support. The arborist agreed, and pointed out the little trees that can go, and some of the medium sized ones that are split, twisted, or are missing tops. 10 years ago would have been a good time to thin this out.

I’ve been cleaning up the forest a little bit, cutting up the trees that fell this winter, clearing some deadwood, and have noticed that the smaller trees are really on the losing end of the growth lottery. This one is one of the more successful ones, as it was still mostly alive. It had 10 years of good growth, then 16 years of increasingly bad growth.

One of the dead ones that fell was more like 10 good years, 10 bad years, and 10 years of rings so tightly packed I could barely make them out. It died due to lack of light, or lack of root space. But mainly, it just didn’t grow fast enough.

I halfway suspect that all but the biggest trees here are all the same age, some are winners, and some just aren’t.

Yet another camera that’s found a home here. This is not so much a working camera, but I’m pondering pulling the lens and trying to fit a bellows to the dslr.