Summer on Sequoia

23 Nov '07 5:20 am

I am thrilled to see and read all about your garden,Jack...I know what you mean about self-doubt,as that is something I deal with too,in other endeavours,which is why I try so hard.
My favourite photo is the late light one-it is gorgeous,and the Rotary rose.I trust your new camera will bring much pleasure.I am still struggling with the micro thingee.
dixie.

23 Nov '07 4:12 pm

I could not but experiment again with the new camera when I woke up to a dark and thundery dawn... so here is a familiar scene - but finally I can include everything from the bridge to the swamp cypress, and take the pic, resting on the burgler bars, at 1/20th with reasonable sharpness...

23 Nov '07 6:25 pm

How wonderful to be able to achieve such atmospheric effects,and having a landscape lens will help to show us the bigger picture.Looking forward to some more scenes.Is the image stabiliser that you mention an icon that you can click on to?
Dixie.

23 Nov '07 7:22 pm

Dixie, it is one of the (many) wonders of modern technology. It is a built in ability in the lens to 'float' and to lock onto what it is seeing, thus countering any shaking... I think. Bottomline is that it extends the useful shutter speed. I was looking at the very large original (over 3000 KB) at 100% size and every drop of rain is a pinprick, the only movement showing is apparently the result of the actual movement of the water, not the camera!

More exciting still, but needing time to explore, is a facility to 'stitch' photos to create a panorama. I shall be working on that one!

24 Nov '07 2:24 am

Hi Jack. Your new camera shots are beautiful indeed, but then I always thought your photographs with the old one were outstanding. I will be curious to hear if you figure out the ability to "stitch" photos together to create panoramas since my new camera has that ability as well; however, I have not been very proactive in learning about all those special effects. Mine is a little Cannon PowerShot A630, which is probably not anywhere as powerful as yours, that has so many features that I don't yet understand. It does have that image stabilizer function which I really love. I have learned that most of the failures come from user error, not the camera. I tend to forget that you cannot use the close-up button and the zoom together. Now how fundamental is that? And yet my feeble brain forgets to click off the close-up feature and here I go taking totally blurred photos. Sometimes I have to trash half the images. Maybe Jack can teach this old dog some new camera tricks even if only by providing a positive example to follow.

25 Nov '07 5:11 pm

Faith: if it is any consolation I only discovered about 4 months ago - after 4 years - that my camera has an 'ideal' macro setting, which enabled me to take sharper pictures from really close up. And all that because the graphic was so small that I didn't realise it changed when zoomed off the ideal setting! Now I see my new Cannon has only one macro position. One of several things I need to get used to. I have discovered there are things my old camera can do that this one can't - but then the reverse is very true too! Now I'm waiting for time and clear days to play some more. At this stage I battle to find dramatic improvement. However the one thing the camera came without was the instruction manual. It only had a big sheet of basic info. So between the info on the net and playing with it, I need to come to grips with what it can and cannot do! Here are yesterday's attempts...

26 Nov '07 9:52 pm

Dear Jack!!!What lovely discoveries I just made!! Real treasures in every and eachone of these pages!! The Rotary Centenary!! What a Beauty!! The close-ups of the Butterfly and Achillea/Lily!! Pure marvels!!

Your garden photos with the late light are purely mystical creations!! LOVE them!!

I even need to congratulate you, for the wide and public success of your garden!!! You deserve every little bit of praise!! You are a gardener Worker/Thinker!!! And you passed it to them!!

28 Nov '07 1:50 am

These latest photos are super Jack! Thanks for the photo of the Anniversary Garden gate. I love the look of those massive timbers and boards paired with the airy bamboo filler. It gives such a powerful entrance to this beautiful garden. Is that lavendar flanking the path? If so, it is truly lovely. And my goodness, what a beautiful butterfly you captured. We have no butterflies like this one here, so it was especially nice to see.

1 Dec '07 8:21 pm

A sunny day - and more experimenting with the camera. There are still things which worked better on the old camera, but on a sunny afternoon I had a lot of fun taking these - especially as I am experimenting with a rather clever 'program' setting for 'foliage' which automatically uses more vivid colour in a snapshot mode... might end up easier than a more manual setting. Here meanwhile are some bugs, found in the Upper Rosemary Border.

3 Dec '07 5:45 am

Long time no see. I understand you are working your way to break one marking at a time. Good luck. We have a new district curricular blue print this year to satisfy and we're all having a difficult time getting to where we need to be for midterms in two weeks. We'll have a two week break beginning on the 21st of December but far from looking forward to it we are all focussed on squeezing as much as we can into the couple weeks of instruction which remain. Still, break will be most welcome when it gets here.

Nice critter shots! That fancy bug is very interesting. Probably not a butterfly and it doesn't really look like a beetle. Perhaps a moth, though I never saw one with wings like that. That new camera looks like a lot of fun. I've never seen a bee with a striped eye like the one you included here.

Makes me wonder about african bees generally. Around here people really freak out about the prospect of africanized honey bees spreading North out of Mexico. Apparently they are much more aggressive, easily provoked and then potentially deadly. Then I remember you live in Africa, garden and spend a good deal of time outdoors and yet you are still mercifully alive. Are there dangerous bees in your part of the continent? Do you take precautions or is the reported danger overblown? Maybe the ones which hybridized with european honey bees are worse than the african bees that helped parent them, or maybe the press is just trying to sell papers.

The Raubritter rose is one of the nicest tulip shaped roses I've seen. I grow Austin's The Nun but it doesn't compare. Enjoy your break. Travel plans?

Summer on Sequoia

Jack's garden

Thanks, Dixie!

Effects

Image stabiliser

Camera

Playing with cameras

Wow,....and.....Wow!!

New camera fun

More camera fun - bugs included

Hi Jack,