Today's walk report: 062313

Back to normal... whatever that is.

For the 1st time in a week I was back to my routine journey, 8.79 km, same old, same old. Sunday walks are always nice, quiet, peaceful and because of that I typically take extra time to stop, reflect and often take more photos than on other days. This all occurring once I get to the garden which is at the 1.85 km mark.

Before I got there...

Camouflaged.

Oh look, already in the garden. How 'bout that. I was listening to a MP3 version of this show, I ripped it from the DVD I bought and it's so entertaining that time simply slips by.

I thought the spines looked amazing in the sunlight but I think you had to be there. The debris is mostly withered yellow flowers from the palo verde trees above. All their flowers are gone now. I always look forward to when the palo verde are in full bloom. There's a shot from May 3rd, here.

My egret friend was hanging out again today. The pond is full of crawdads (also called crayfish or crawfish) and lots of small mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), I think the egret enjoys both of these.

 Alyogyne huegelii, White Swan.

Eucalyptus iforgetwhatthefuckitis.

Looks like the ants and I get a second round of strawflowers.

Molecular buckwheat.

Sunset, almost home.

Today's walk report: 051813

For the most part I played with trying to successfully hand hold my camera in an effort to focus stack images on my walk today. These were all shot with a Canon 60mm Macro on a breezy day. There's no image stabilization with this lens and I've only tried this a couple of times before. Much of what your see are manual "tweaks" in Photoshop re-aligning images and pretty much hoping for the best with Photoshop's automated processes to do this. While it's not very complicated, it could be. If I were to really dedicate myself to perfecting some of the inconsistencies and make up for subject and camera movement, etc., this whole exercise would have become a lot more tedious. In a way I welcome the fact that my images weren't exceptional enough to warrant the extra work and I will also welcome a time in which they are. For now I had some fun and learned some of the pitfalls and idiosyncrasies of this process. Aside from the post work aspect I ended up coming home with 1,408 images. A new walk time record.

For those of you who don't know what I mean by focus stacking here's the description Wikipedia provides. If you want to know more then Google it or click the links which are coming along for the ride on my copy/paste below.

Focus stacking (also known as focal plane merging and z-stacking^[1] or focus blending) is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field (DOF) than any of the individual source images.^[2][3] Focus stacking can be used in any situation where individual images have a very shallow depth of field; macro photography and optical microscopy are two typical examples.
Focus stacking offers flexibility: as focus stacking is a computational technique, images with several different depths of field can be generated in post-processing and compared for best artistic merit or scientific clarity. Focus stacking also allows generation of images physically impossible with normal imaging equipment; images with nonplanar focus regions can be generated. Alternative techniques for generating images with increased or flexible depth of field include wavefront coding and plenoptic cameras.

Before all that got started I saw this tiny wasp dragging what appears to be a two-armed spider carcass on the sidewalk. I don't know if the darn thing was trying to fly or what but it's frenzied little dance made getting a picture pretty difficult besides this wasp not being much larger than an ant. That's not gravel, that's concrete sidewalk.

Kangaroo paws, 7 images merged and aligned.

This was 12 blended images. I liked the way those background colors came together.
The main composition could use some work. For the most part I'm going to try
and not point shit out. So....

6 blended images.

Apache Plume (Fallugia paradoxa) it's both a plume and a flower... well you can see that can't you?
This was 8 blended images.

Some succulent, 4 image stack.

Cabbage White (Pieris rapae). I would have liked a few more shots here
but overall I'm pretty happy for this butterfly's patience with me. 4 images.

Cropped, close-up, Cabbage White (Pieris rapae). This was a 4 image stack.

Aphids on Narrow-leaved milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). 4 images blended.

Ladybug (Coccinellidae family of beetles) on yarrow. 3 images blended.

Conejo Buckwheat or Saffron Buckwheat (Eriogonum crocatum). 9 images blended.

Paper wasp on Narrow-leaved milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). 6 images blended.

Rainbow Lantana, 5 images.

Bush Sunflower, 4 images.

Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis), 5 images.

Today's walk report: 050313

I am the god of hell fire and I bring you: Fire,
I'll take you to burn...

Whenever I see a fire that got started off the side of a freeway I immediately envision some asshole flicking his cigarette out a car window. I'll go out on a limb here a bit and say that 99% of all smokers are inconsiderate and irresponsible when it comes to their dirty habit. They're also totally self-righteous and obviously full of denial over the deleterious effects of their addiction. Seriously, smokers are about as sensible as a lemming on crack.

I quit a pack a day habit in 2003. I was an asshole too but at least I didn't think the world was my ashtray.

Anyway, to top off the fires burning to the west in Ventura County. I walked outside early this evening and it smelled like I was about 6' away from a campfire. I went back inside to check and found there was a fire blazing now off to the east in Glendale right off the 134 fwy. That's about 20 miles east of me. The air quality was certainly unhealthy so I decided on just a short, easy walk to the botanical garden and back although I ended up doing some extra to see if I could get above the valley enough to get a photo or two showing just how bad the air had gotten. I ended up doing about 3 miles/5km.

Meanwhile, back to the garden...
Blue Nolina (Nolina nelsonii) and Caesalpinia gilliesii.

 

Leucospermum (Pincushion, Pincushion Protea or Leucospermum) is a genus of about 50 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, native to Zimbabwe and South Africa. It's also commonly grown in Australia.

Conejo buckwheat (Eriogonum crocatum), finally opening its buds, also seen below. I've been enjoying the unopened buds for weeks now.

 

This pretty lantana is the variety I was hoping to find to plant here at home but I've never seen it at a nursery.

One of several species of Kangaroo paws in the garden, up close.

The lovely Palo verde flowers once again.

Heading back and another look at the smoky sunset. The sun was red. I didn't try get the balance right because I didn't care and I didn't have the proper lens for this shot. That dot you see is the LAPD helicopter, seeminly on the lookout for any other sparks erupting.