Getting closer

Epidendrum porpax

I get tired of lugging a heavy tripod around when I want to take close-up pictures, but it’s a necessity with a heavy macro lens and long exposures. Yesterday I tried a different system on my trip to the botanical garden. Instead of the 100mm macro, I used a small, light and sharp 18-55mm zoom that is capable of near-macro work, and I added a diffuser to a hotshoe flash. It worked pretty well, as the above picture demonstrates. There are more pictures using the system here. I think it should be adequate for most pictures at the orchid show at Botanica November 3-4.

Flash plus diffuser works also with a true macro, as illustrated below. However, the lens I have is heavy, and it’s hard to hold the camera steady enough to keep the focus where I want it. A monopod would help, but that starts to get cumbersome.

For stacked focus (which is how I would ordinarily take pictures of small, intricate things) and extreme close-ups a tripod is indispensible, of course, but such stunt photography is generally not feasible outside of a studio.

This knight is four inches tall.

Orchid society meeting, October 21

At Botanica in Wichita. I get tired of lugging the tripod along on photo expeditions, so I’ve been looking for alternative methods of taking close-ups. All but the last picture here were taken with an inexpensive but quite nice 18-55mm zoom lens, with a diffuser on the hotshoe flash. The real test of the system … Continue reading “Orchid society meeting, October 21”

Dendrobium “Thai Jewel”

At Botanica in Wichita.

I get tired of lugging the tripod along on photo expeditions, so I’ve been looking for alternative methods of taking close-ups. All but the last picture here were taken with an inexpensive but quite nice 18-55mm zoom lens, with a diffuser on the hotshoe flash. The real test of the system will come at the orchid show in two weeks.

As always, click to enlarge and see in better color. To see at full size, right-click and open in a new window.

Continue reading “Orchid society meeting, October 21”

Miscellaneous quotes, decline and fall edition

Fillyjonk:

… something I read in this week’s The Week that is one of the sadder things I’ve heard recently: apparently animal behaviorists have found some dogs are “depressed” because of a lack of eye contact – because their owners spend so much time staring at their smartphones….

The Z Man:

The classical period featured a celebration of human beauty. The artists strove to capture the ideal of man in those beautiful statues we still have today. The medieval period had the celebration of God and his love for man. Walk into an old cathedral and you immediately feel the essence of that relationship. Of course, our canon is packed with poetry exploring the beauty of life, all of which was composed in a prior age, by men who are strangers to us now.

Walk into a modern building today and you know what it is like to be in the chute at a slaughter house.

William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906:

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

and

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places … It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

*****

Continue reading “Miscellaneous quotes, decline and fall edition”

Remembering Steven

Last Sunday marked the second year since Steven Den Beste’s last post. The internet has not been the same since he’s been gone. I miss checking Chizumatic first thing when I crank up the computer in the morning. He was by far the most indefatigable commenter here, and seeing his avatar when I review old posts is a bittersweet pleasure.

I’d occasionally read USS Clueless, but it was his commentary on Serial Experiments Lain (summarized here) that made it clear he was someone I could take seriously. He remains the most reliable guide to Japanese animation that I’ve found; if you’re interested in the period from Dirty Pair to Girls und Panzer, his reviews are a good place to start.

The sylph with the hairy chest

A pas de deux from the 1935 ballet Светлый ручей (The Bright Stream), with music by Shostakovich, libretto by Adrian Piotrovsky and choreography by Fedor Lopukhov, re-choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky for the ballet’s 2004 revival. There’s a story behind the ballet, and not one with a happy ending: “A work meant to be light, entertaining, and uplifting had proved the downfall of its creators.”

Winfield, at last

At the Beautiful Music booth

I thought I’d grabbed just a few snapshots at this year’s Walnut Valley Festival two weeks ago, but when I got home I discovered I had over a thousand frames. I finally sorted through them all. Here are a couple; there are more here and here.

Contra dancing

The fiddler in the contra dance band Friday evening was Roger Netherton, whom I’ve mentioned here many times. His first CD is finally available. If you like old-time fiddle or just enjoy good music, check it out.

Saliva as a cleaning agent, voodoo dolls in the office, medical applications of roller coasters, and more

The 2018 winners of the IgNobel Prize were announced earlier this month, recognizing noteworthy research in many fields. Perhaps the most provocative this year was the Nutrition Prize, awarded to James Cole “… for calculating that the caloric intake from a human-cannibalism diet is significantly lower than the caloric intake from most other traditional meat diets.” I’m not sure I look forward to the diet books that Cole’s work will inspire.

Are there straws in Vatican City?

Pope Frankie in perspective:

On September 1, 2018, this successor of Gregory I, who saw Latin civilization crumbling, and Leo IX, who grieved at the loss of Constantinople, and Pius V, who pitied souls lost in the heretical northern lands, implored and lamented: “We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic. Here, too, our active commitment is needed to confront this emergency.” The struggle against plastic litter must be fought “as if everything depended on us.”

(Via William Briggs.)

Psittacosis

It’s Squawk Like a Parrot Day. Here are the Bonzos with an appropriate tune.

Addendum: If it’s pirates you want, here’s a set of variations on a tune named for Gráinne Mhaol, alias Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland.1

Saa! Kaizoku no jikan da! Let’s not forget Marika Kato.

There are many space pirates in anime, and a surprising number of the are women. Their speech sounds like normal Japanese, and none of them gargle their rrrr’s.