Where's the dragonfly?

Boy, it's fun to go for my lunch walks with my camera again! As I mentioned before, I let the lens go without cleaning it for too long and my pictures were coming out either washed out or cloudy. Why do I let things like this go? If I could answer that, I'd be a millionaire and my wife, my kids and my mother wouldn't be so frustrated. But I've been like this my whole life. If I could put something off for a later time, I would put something off for a later time. At least in my personal life. I'm pretty good at work. I keep up with work and even get a little ahead sometimes.

Anyway, back to my pictures. Here are two pictures from today's walk. The top one is a picture of a dragonfly where I snapped the photo quickly from pretty far away because I wasn't sure how long my subject would stay around (I just missed a picture of another dragonfly because it wouldn't sit still for more than a few seconds at a time). Can you find it in the picture? I guess it's not too hard but it does blend into the wood debris pretty well.

The bottom picture is one I was able to take my time to focus and frame correctly. It still blends into the background pretty well but it's more obvious here. This dragonfly eventually moved after a few minutes but by then I had to move on myself. Happy hunting you voracious predator. I like dragonflies for a number of reasons but the number one reason? They eat mosquitoes! I hope there will be a few less mosquitoes for my walk tomorrow.

An amazing athlete

Josh Hamilton - from his Wikipedia article

There are many talented athletes in the world and there are many athletes who are also role models. But what do you call an athlete who has made big mistakes but has turned their life around? You don't want to call them a role model because you'd hate to see a young person make the same mistakes they made. But you have to admire them for making the change that was needed. So, I'd like to mention Josh Hamilton.

He is a baseball player for the Texas Rangers. He won the American League's Most Valuable Player award last year. He was injured earlier this year but is making a big comeback during the mid-season now. But that is not the big change I am talking about.

Mr. Hamilton was a promising young ball player when he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays (then called the Devil Rays) but got messed up with alcohol and drugs and almost lost his chance at playing in the big leagues. He hit bottom but turned it all around with the help of his faith in Jesus and the help of people around him. I had not noticed him before but last year, he was featured during a series in our church about the I Am Second movement. Their website says, "I am Second is a movement meant to inspire people of all kinds to live for God and for others." Part of that is a series of short videos featuring people from all backgrounds explaining their faith in God and how they've come to realize that they need to be in second place - behind God.

Go to the list of films here. Some of the people are famous and many are not. But they all have one thing in common.They are second. You can find Josh Hamilton's profile here. To watch the video featuring him, look for the button labeled "Watch the Film". I hope you will find it inspiring, too.

Now my pictures look better

After cleaning the lens on my camera, as I mentioned in my post The great lens cleaning, it's a pleasure to take pictures again. On my walk at lunch today, I saw this colorful orange mushroom (upper right picture) and this perfect little pink flower (lower left picture). It is nice to not have to retouch the pictures before posting them. I did crop them but I didn't have to change the brightness, contrast or the colors in any way.

Unfortunately, the mushroom looks like an ashtray with the stick laying on it like that. If I'd have noticed that before I'd taken the pictures, I'd have removed it. Another interesting note is that I didn't see the small white markings on the flower petals until I off-loaded the picture to my computer and looked at them full sized. Anyway, it's nice to be taking good (not great) pictures again.

My son's birthday

I'm actually entering this post on July 11 but I'm writing about three days ago so I'm labeling this as July 8 because that is my son's birthday. To be more specific, I've set the time to 9:38 PM - when he was actually born.

As usual, I can't believe another year has passed and I especially can't believe Evan is 15 years old! To bring out the well worn cliche, "...it seems like yesterday that he was born." My poor wife had to go through 32 hours of labor (is that right, Sweetheart?) before the doctors and nurses finally let her stop pushing and have a Cesarean Section to deliver our boy. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before but my first act as Evan's father, as I held him for the first time, was to apologize to him for all the mistakes I was going to make in bringing him up. And, it turns out, I underestimated the number of things I would get wrong. He is a bright, attentive, curious and handsome young man and I haven't done all I should to help him reach his potential. But I will keep trying to improve. I will try to remember to encourage him instead of criticizing him for slight problems. I will try to expose him to the wonders of this world more often. And I will try to help him develop his relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And I'm going to continue to try to beat him in games. But the number of things I can win is getting smaller every day.

Happy birthday, Evan.

The great lens cleaning

Before cleaning my camera's lens

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I've been letting the lens of my camera go without cleaning it. I noticed that many of my pictures were washed out and didn't have the contrast they used to have. The problem was that I'd heard too many horror stories about people trying to clean their camera lens and ending up scratching it. So, I've been looking for lens cleaning kits that were good but affordable. I've gone around and around with various suggestions from many sources but I could never come to a conclusion. I heard about kits with special brushes and air blowers. I heard about things called a Lens Pen that uses a special dry compound to clean the lens. Then, over the Fourth of July week-end, we were in a real camera store. Not the camera department of Walmart or Best Buy - a real camera store.

After cleaning my camera's lens

I asked what they recommended for cleaning camera lenses and they said they were out of kits just then but told me what was in it. It was a microfiber cloth with lens cleaning solution. I mentioned that I already had those things for my glasses and they said, "Well, whatever is good for your glasses will work for a camera lens. Just be careful and don't spray the cleaning solution on the lens. It could splash onto parts of the camera that it could react with. Just wet the cloth and use that to wipe the lens and then dry it with the other, non-moistened end of the cloth."

So, that's what I did. The two pictures here show the improvement. This type of scene caused the most problems. The light sky seemed to diffuse through the entire picture and wash it out. As you can see in the bottom, "After", picture, it's much better now. I look forward to taking more pictures and posting them here - without needing to run them through a photo editing program!

This points out what is nice about having real stores in town instead of buying everything off the Internet or having only mega stores that carry everything but are experts in nothing. I was able to ask questions of people who were professional photographers themselves. They took pride in their craft and were happy to share their knowledge with a novice. They had cameras there that we could try out and they would teach us how to use them correctly. When the time comes for our next purchase, we'll be going there.

A mushroom scene

This is a picture I took on my lunch walk last Wednesday (June 29). It's a photo of three mushrooms emerging from the ground and pushing up through the debris left from when the tree muncher cleared out a fire break in the forest behind our office. It's surprising how strong the soft little mushrooms are when they are seeking the open air.

As I've mentioned before, I like mushrooms. Besides the taste of edible ones, I like the look of them, too. Their shape and colors are appealing. But I also like the "setting" of these three. This almost looks like an abstract Christmas Manger Scene to me. The pushed up wood chips seem to make a shelter for the three huddling mushrooms. I've uploaded the full picture which you can expand if you click on the picture. Unfortunately, I had to retouch this photo. I had to play around with the contrast and brightness in a photo editor to bring out the subtle colors. I haven't cleaned the lens of my camera for too long and all the pictures I've taken recently seem washed out. But that's been corrected and I'll be adding a new post about that soon.

4,000 miles

I passed 4,000 miles on my scooter on the way home from work yesterday. Here's the odometer and you can see I had my helmet on in the reflection and yes, I was pulled over by the side of the road! Don't be fooled by the speedometer going up to 70 miles per hour. My scooter can only go about 50 mph and it doesn't like running that fast for long. I only have to do it for the final 200 yards of my ride into work when I have to ride on a four-lane highway to get to the entrance to our office.

So, 4000 miles! I could have traveled the entire length of US Route 6 and been on my way back. The reason I mention Route 6 is because it starts on Cape Cod and runs all the way to California. Before 1964, it was a transcontinental route and ran all the way to the Pacific Ocean ending in Long Beach, CA. But then California renumbered its roads and US Route 6 was changed to end in Bishop, CA. It doesn't have the fame of US Route 66 - no songs, few mentions in books - certainly not the famous mention as "The Mother Road" in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath that US Route 66 got.

I know people are probably tired of my mentions of mileposts (so to speak) about my scooter. But then, not many people read this blog so I only have to please myself and a few others. But I will say this - I'll be marking when I pass 5,000 miles and then I'll hold off until I get to 10,000. How's that for optimism?

I've thought about what it would be like to travel the whole Route 6 on my scooter but even averaging 40 mph for the whole length, it would take me over 160 hours (20 days traveling 8 hours a day) to make the round trip. I don't think that's going to happen.