Snoopin’ with the Snoop

She lied to her teacher one day, but it wasn’t really a lie. Her teacher wanted to know how recess had gone; she wanted to know if the other girls had taunted the child with calls of “I wish you were dead” for another day. They hadn’t, but recess hadn’t been fine like the first-grader said. It had been worse.

She had a crush on a sixth-grader who rode her bus. He was tall, quiet, and dark-haired. He would later sign her yearbook — in cursive — and she wouldn’t read it until she was older.

With a kickball in her hands, up on the hill next to the warm brick of the building, with the noon-hour sun trekking up the southern sky from east to west, she smiled when she saw Aaron sitting with his lunch tray on his lap.

Bright and yellow was the day.

“Hi Aaron,” she called, bouncing the kickball high off the ground. Stretching her hands to retrieve it, she missed, and the kickball bounced happily into his mashed potatoes.

She blushed brick red and ran far across the playground to the swings and slider and spent the rest of recess dreading the coming question.

“How was recess?”
“Fine.”

But not really…

After giving up on consumer-level digital photography in low-light fast-action conditions, I went back to shooting basketball in the Shirk Center with my mom’s dad’s old Minolta XRTII manual SLR (no batteries needed!), and shot with a variety of film in order to choose the one I like best. All three of these films were developed by Cooper’s Imaging in CT. The summaries:

FOMAPAN action 400 black/white negative film

• Picks up detail well, but a little grainy.
• Needs slower shutter speeds (~250)
• Dark photos don’t have a lot of contrast
• Excellent dark/light contrast
• Out-of-focus shots really pull out the graininess

From the package: B/W negative film with good resolving power, low granularity and wide exposure latitude.

Ilford HP5 Plus 400 Black & White Film

scanner won’t read the photos – too dark. Think the stop-down communication between the lens and the camera body was not accurate. Too many photos too dark. Nonetheless…

• A very dull and dark negative switched into lab mode and then an auto-levels applied. Wow. Definitely can work with that, but it only works with some negatives.
  

  Original		Auto Levels		Curves
  009-01 original	–>	009-01 lab mode auto levels	–>	009-01 curves

• The negative edges curl, which makes it annoying to place in the negative holder for the scanner

Kentmere 400 Black & White Film

BH’s summary:

This is a fast black and white film geared for general use. It produces sharp images with fine grain. As a high speed film, it is suitable for normal and low light photography.

• Looks nice and bright until enlarged, and then not in focus. Humph. (But that’s my fault, not the films… unless it isn’t fast enough, but it’s bright enough to kick up the shutter speed one notch.)
• Sometimes bright, but not much contrast, which comes out when they aren’t too bright. BH says it has good contrast, but apparently not in low light conditions.
• I think this would be great for something other than Shirk photography.
• Then again, I kinda like it. There is no grain! It is a very sharp and clear film. This contrast puzzle bears a second look
  

  Icky		Nice
  Original: not much contrast	vs.	Original: better contrast; too bright?

Decision?

By the time I decide, basketball season will be over! Oh well. At least IWU’s celebration of 100 years of men’s basketball is this weekend, and I have approximately seven rolls of film (mostly Ilford).

Get Smiley icons

I upgraded my wordpress installation to 2.9 this evening, and it locked me out of my uploads folder (meaning that I could upload files, but could not view either through wordpress or by typing the address in the bar – 403 error). After hours of searching for a fix, I created a new uploads folder, transferred everything into that folder, deleted the uploads folder, recreated it, and transferred everything back in.

And it works…

Since I’m getting back into sports photography, I’ve been playing with photoshop again, this time referencing Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace. Best photos to edit in LAB mode are those that are washed out. For example, I edited a photo I entitled “missed — drowned rat” from my time out on Hutchinson Island in Florida spring 09. Unusually, there were massive amounts of kelp in the water; most of the time the water is teal blue, but the waves were mostly green.

The original:

Original as photographed

The final after editing curves in LAB mode:

Final as edited in LAB mode

Since I enabled the History Log in Photoshop (CS2), I’m adding that as reference here. For a quick recap, after converting to LAB mode, I cancelled out of Image>Adjustments>Threshold to not make any changes, but to determine that darkest and lightest points on the photo. Then  I increased the slope of the curves in the Lightness channel around my face so as to make it pop out of the shadow, and adjusted both the a and b channels to bring out both the turbulent green waves and the calmer blue troughs. After an Unsharp Mask on the Lightness Channel and a conversion back to RGB, I completed a brightness/contrast adjustment, saved and voila.

2009-12-06 20:53:08 File IMG_2043.jpg opened
Convert Mode
To: Lab color mode
Curves
Curves
Adjustment: curves adjustment list
curves adjustment
Channel: lightness channel
Curve: point list
point: 0, 0
point: 22, 37
point: 39, 70
point: 88, 115
point: 255, 255
curves adjustment
Channel: a channel
Curve: point list
point: 13, 0
point: 238, 255
curves adjustment
Channel: b channel
Curve: point list
point: 14, 0
point: 239, 255
Select lightness channel
Show a channel, b channel
Unsharp Mask
Unsharp Mask
Amount: 206%
Radius: 1.2 pixels
Threshold: 76
RGB Color
Convert Mode
To: RGB color mode
Brightness/Contrast
Brightness/Contrast
Brightness: 10
Contrast: 7
Save
As: JPEG
Quality: 12
Matte: none

Since all my sports photos will be manual and b/w, I’m not sure how extensively I’ll use LAB mode, but it is fun to play with.

2 inches of rain 2 weeks ago, 3.5 last week, and 2.75 so far this week, though they say it’s supposed to dry out now.

A creek is behind the cornfield

Think perhaps the bright yellow mushrooms in my backyard are Suillus americanus.

bright yellow – big – mushroom in backyard under poplar

After two straight days of rain and a little over two inches total, we had our first frost on Friday night (Oct 9-10), and I decided to not cover anything, though I did have some mulch down around the squash fruit and hardy plants (kale, cabbage, turnips, beets, carrots).

Some plants reacted according to my expectations, but I’m puzzled with my okra. Every source says okra will die with frost, but the plants look rather spunky and two plants have shot out beautiful blooms. Also, my Reisentraube tomatoes look quite perky. The thai large pumpkin, though resistant to powdery mildew, wilted immediately after the frost. I pulled out the rest of my Pennsylvania Dutch, and also the serranos (since they were already frozen solid, I stuck them directly in the freezer).

And this was during homecoming weekend, with Gretchen staying here from down South, and KC coming out to visit too!

1. Japanese Beetles like to eat my:
   • wild rose brambles
   • rose of sharon
   • lemonbalm
   • rhubarb
   • Hey! Japanese beetles love the taste of Bindweed leaves!
   • velvet leaf
   • okra
   • sunflower
   • purple thistle

   Beware of using traps, as they tend to more often attract the beetles:

   A question I am often asked is whether Japanese beetle traps provide control,” says Jones. “Unfortunately, research has revealed that frequently many more beetles are attracted to a trap than are actually caught. So, using traps can have the effect of increasing your beetle problem, rather than eliminating it. (University of Illinois, “Japanese Beetles: A Real Pain for Everybody”)

   And though the same article says that the damage is more localized than widespread, that statement totally depends on your field of reference. Sure, if you’re a corn or soybean farmer with hundreds of acres of fields, then yes, their damage swath is localized. It’s much harder for the small gardener to consider lost plants as localized damage when the plot total equals a handful of plants.

2. Margined blister beetles love(d) my Tiger-Eye Amaranth. They devoured the plants until, back in the beginning of August, I uprooted a stand of three-foot grass on the edge of the garden, which happened to be about five feet from the T-E Amaranth. They disappeared immediately, and I didn’t see them until weeding out more grass on the other side of the garden yesterday. My T-E has since recovered, though each plant is still only about 6 inches tall. I haven’t seen the blister beetles munching on anything else since they deserted the amaranth, but apparently they’re still in the garden.
3. Monsanto.
4. Not a garden pest, but we have moles in our yard. Sigh. Their foraging tunnels look like mini-chaotic-crop circles all over our backyard. I have flooded their tunnels (which according to the article merely forces them to the surface but does not get rid of them); however, given that they eat bugs and grubs, I’d like to keep them around, but know that is probably not acceptable to anyone but me. If only they didn’t cause grass root damage.