Tripping the light fantastic… wait, what the heck is that?… part 1…

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Well, I guess you are going to have to come back for part 2… and so on… to find out. HA!

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Snake eyes…

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Before I go any further, I have to apologize. I killed a rattlesnake yesterday. It had my daughter and her friend trapped in a car. They couldn’t get out, or move without running it over. I would have moved it if I could, but there are little kids in the neighborhood, and animal control doesn’t respond to snake calls unless they are inside your house or in your yard.

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So, I feel bad, but not so bad that I didn’t break out the digital microscope.

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Seriously, I feel horrible. But it was a wet year in Southern California, which means more plants, which means more bunnies and gophers and rats and mice, which means more snakes and hawks.

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So feel free to hate me as much as I hate myself.

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But it is amazing the variety of scales this thing has… had…

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I could have just thrown it away and not told you about it.

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That is part of his rattle.

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Okay, once again, I am sorry.

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I sort of panicked in the moment. The girls were screaming because Mollie’s friend almost stepped on it trying to get out of the car before they knew it was there, my wife was freaking out, the dogs were barking, the cat was circling. I did the best I could.

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Bye.

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Making the big money… part 1…

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Just playing with my digital microscope.

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I am almost done with the paper money, including ones from my travels.

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This post focuses… HA!… on an American two-dollar bill, and a British pound note.

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I am starting the post with the two-dollar bill.

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Then the pound note.

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See if you can tell when the pound note shows up.

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These are all taken at the zoomed-out level of the digital microscope. I was thinking of running it over these same two bills on the really-zoomed-in level after this, if anyone is interested. If not, I will start on some coins, after a suitable break for other stuff.

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Uh, that is two lips and a nose. At this level, you can see what things are.

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I did notice a strange thing on the back of the back of this bill. There is a reproduction of a famous painting done as an engraving.

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When you zoom in like this, it is funny how many people in it look like George Washington.

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Not all of them do.

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It is amazing how these dots look like little people through the naked eye.

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Ooooh… fancy shoe buckles!

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1776 was a good year… for freedom!

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That guy didn’t shave.

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And that rude gentleman still has his hat on indoors.

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Does anybody want to see all this even closer?

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We can zoom in until those lines fill most of the image. You can see the filaments in the paper. You can see the ink spreading into the paper.

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Or are you sick of this. I do wonder what the coins will look like.

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They might be boring, but I doubt it.

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Uh… does that say: kofefe???

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I know what that is.

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Could you tell when we moved on to the pound note???

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I want to watch a documentary about printing money!

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Is that Issac Newton???

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Did you know he was on the back of the pound note?

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Oh yeah, I would recognize his fingernails anywhere.

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Have I mentioned that I love Photoshop?… part 2…

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Any crazy, silly idea that pops into my crack squirrel-infested mind, I can make it happen!

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Have I mentioned that I love Photoshop?… part 1…

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Every night at work, while I am making my security patrols, I pass the door marked: Human Resources. It seems like such a strange turn of phrase, I thought I would make it stranger… and darker.

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Show me the money!!! More micro-photography fun…

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I figured, as long as I had my digital microscope out, I would do some more pictures of money.

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That looks like a blanket made out of popcorn kernels… but it isn’t.

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Melanoma moles??? No!

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These photos, not including the first one, or some that will come later in the post, are what happens when I use the really intense close-up view of the microscope on a bill from Mexico.

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Yes, even paper money is surreal when looked at up close.

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You see details, but you don’t have much context.

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You can’t make sense of what you are seeing.

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It could be almost anything.

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But it is interesting.

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When you zoom back out to the next level, you can see more area. You can make sense of some things, as long as those things are really small to begin with.

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You can see shapes, instead of one little part of a shape.

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It looks more like a thing than a something.

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It is all a matter of scale, of perspective.

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I couldn’t even find that eye when I was zoomed way in.

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I find all of this fascinating, and most of all, I love being able to catch a photo of what I am looking at.

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Seriously, get one of these digital microscopes. They are pretty cheap. You just plug it into your laptop and go.

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Explore nature and the world around you.

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And you can scan yourself and your family and friends for malignant growths.

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So maybe you can write it off on your taxes as a medical expenditure.

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Okay, I will do more of these. I have paper and metal money from all over the world, some from my travels back when Europe had more kinds of money. But tomorrow I am going see if, with my daughter’s help, I can get some really close up views of spider webs.

 

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To bee or not to bee: more micro-photography fun…

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That little spike at the left, dear readers, is a bee stinger. I decided to play with my digital microscope. I might be able to get some wet web images with it when my younger daughter comes home later today from the camp for special needs kids that she works at when she isn’t going to college to learn to be a nurse. I need her help to click the camera button while I try to steady the microscope.

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That is a bee’s eye. While I was figuring out that I needed help, I spotted a dead bee.

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Why let a dead bee go to waste?

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We can give her death meaning by learning about bees.

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I don’t know what we are learning exactly, other than the fact that the bee was covered with dirt.

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Also that things are weird and strange when looked at too closely.

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But we already knew that, right?

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When you zoom out a little, and make things a little less huge, they are more recognizable. That is the eye again, but you can’t see the facets.

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There is the stinger again.

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Stripes.

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She’s got legs, and she knew how to use them… to pollinate plants.

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Anyway…

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The bee’s knees. Ha! I crack me up.

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More experiments with ‘wet web photography’…

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I was out in the yard this morning, annoying my spider relatives again, using my mist spraying bottle to put fake dew on their little homes.

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This time, I played with an array of options, using all three macro lenses, with the regular lens and the zoom lens.

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I will be honest. I can’t tell from looking at these which I took with which combination.

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I did crop a few of these a little. Macro photography seems to want to focus only on one distance.

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Or it has a narrow field of focus, if that is what that means. Notice the annoyed spider in the right corner… not in focus.

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I was hoping to get some really big water drops, with sparkles of light from the sun. Little balls of rainbow.

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What I got were some marginally interesting pictures of moist webs.

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But, it is in experimenting that you sometimes find something new.

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Not that I found anything new today.

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I suppose I could have cropped down the pictures more.

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Like way down to a small group of drops.

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Oooooh… I wonder if I can use my digital microscope camera on a wet web. How would I do that???

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I will mull that idea over. Notice the little bug in the center of that photo. Funnel webs are not only a home, but a hunting ground, a food source, a trap skillfully and cunningly planned and constructed. The front lawn of doom! The devil’s doorstep!

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I mean, when humans were still mostly hunter gatherers, how many times do you think a guy just sat in the mouth of his cave and waited until a mammoth walked by into spear range?

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Anyway, now I am thinking about my microscope, and I think I will play with it.

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So I should have some more photos soon. Bye.

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My dogs love me…

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Epic web photo failure!!!

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All I wanted to do was get a good picture of this garden spider and her orb web with my phone at work the other night.

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I tried it with the flash too, and ended up with a ghost spider.

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I was hoping the parking lot lights back lighting the web would be enough for a good photo.

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But it is hard to get your phone to focus on thin webs and small spiders.

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So I guess I like the ghost spider ones best.

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And there was a nice sunset earlier.

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