The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Photography & Images

Taking & making images.

  • Gas Flareoff

    While I was on that ride, I found this at the bottom of a smoky pillar rising along the Hudson River:

    Turns out Central Hudson Gas & Electric has a pipeline under the Hudson at that point and I’d admired their spherical storage tank from ground level some years back:

    Gas Storage Tank
    Gas Storage Tank

    I don’t know what they’re flaring off, but it looks messier than, say, propane. There’s another flare nozzle just out of the picture on the lower left, both along the edge of the circular concrete pad left over from a cylindrical storage tank, so they do this often enough to have some permanent infrastructure.

  • Ladybugs!

    These freshly hatched alligator-oid critters:

    Ladybug larvae
    Ladybug larvae

    …. quickly become something even more fearsome, at least to aphids smaller than they are:

    Ladybug Larva Eating Aphid
    Ladybug Larva Eating Aphid (by Cheryl Hearty – CCE/DC)

    Eventually they turn into Ladybugs who relentlessly stalk larger aphids on garden plants:

    Ladybug with aphids
    Ladybug with aphids

    And then they do this and the wheel goes around:

    Ladybugs mating
    Ladybugs mating

    Gardeners love them ever so much…

  • Sloop Clearwater: Sailing on the Hudson River

    Back in the old days, the Hudson was clogged with sailing ships; now only a few carefully tended reproductions remain:

    Sailing ship under Walkway Over the Hudson
    Sailing ship under Walkway Over the Hudson

    That’s the Sloop Clearwater as seen from the middle of the Poughkeepsie Bridge on an overcast day that brings out the vignetting in the long telephoto image.

    A bit earlier I was westbound on the Walkway Over the Hudson while the Clearwater was headed northbound:

    Sloop Clearwater
    Sloop Clearwater

    Turns out they carry a GPS tracker (accessible from a link on their site):

    Sloop Clearwater Track - 2012-05-14
    Sloop Clearwater Track – 2012-05-14

    So do I:

    KE4ZNU-9 APRS Track - 2012-05-14
    KE4ZNU-9 APRS Track – 2012-05-14

    It was a fine day for a ride (or a sail) before the storm!

  • Converting DICOM X-ray Images to Something Useful

    For reasons that aren’t relevant here, we have a CD bearing X-rays of Mary’s shoulder. Of course, they’re in DICOM image format and come with a relentlessly Window-centric viewer that won’t run in Wine and can’t export the files in a more useful format.

    Imagemagick to the rescue:

    
convert /media/floppy/DICOM/997313/00100000 "Mary Shoulder 2.jpg"
    Mary Shoulder 2 - detail
    Mary Shoulder 2 – detail

    They tell us she has great bones and everything worked out fine…

  • Bald Cardinal: Getting Worse

    The balding Northern Cardinal continues to lose small head feathers:

    Bald Cardinal - right side
    Bald Cardinal – right side

    The top of his black mask has lost some feathers near the middle:

    Bald Cardinal - front
    Bald Cardinal – front

    The poor critter looks a bit like a vulture now:

    Bald Cardinal - left side
    Bald Cardinal – left side

    These are tight crops from DSC-H5 images: 12X zoom with the 1.7 tele extender, taken from about 30 feet away, just before dusk. Turning off the focus assist LED let me stick the big lens out of the kitchen door, brace the affair on the door frame, and click away.

  • Bald Cardinal: Continuing Feather Loss

    Bald Cardinal - left side
    Bald Cardinal – left side

    The bald cardinal still stops by the feeder in the evening. He’s now losing the smaller red feathers around his eye and above his beak. The black feathers bordering his beak seem unaffected, although it’s hard to tell through the window glass blur.

    This image is a tight crop from the Sony DSC-H5, which has a lens about two stops faster than my Canon SX230HS pocket camera and is much better suited for evening photography. I’ll add the tele adapter to the stack and try to get a better picture from the door; I think the autofocus assist light spooks the poor bird.

  • Northern Cardinal With Tumor

    That missing leg surely involves an accident, those missing feathers may be mites, but now we have a male Northern Cardinal with what looks like a tumor on his head:

    Cardinal with tumor
    Cardinal with tumor

    It’s not obvious in that picture, but the black patch seems to be the rubbed-raw top of a growth.

    Prior to these birds, in all the years we’ve been birdwatching we’ve never seen any damaged cardinals…